A Guide to The Good Life by William B. Irvine
The Book in Three Sentences
1. The insight and advice of the Stoic philosophy is still, remarkably applicable today.
2. The Stoics had psychological techniques for attaining tranquility, minimizing worry and more.
3. Contentedness comes from appreciating what we already have.
The Five Big Ideas
1. If you lack a grand goal in living, you lack a coherent philosophy in life. Without one, there is a danger you will mislive and you will end up living a bad life.
2. While enjoying the companionship of loved ones, then, we should periodically stop to reflect on the possibility that this enjoyment will come to an end. By consciously thinking about the loss of what we have, we can regain our appreciation of it, and with this regained appreciation we can revitalize our capacity for joy.
3. Our most important choices in life, according to Epictetus, is whether to concern ourselves with things external to us or things internal.
4. Suppose you find out that someone has been saying bad things about you. Epictetus advises you to respond not by behaving defensively but by questioning his competence as an insulter.
5. To help us advance our practice of Stoicism, Seneca advises that we periodically meditate on the events of daily living, how we responded to these events, and how, in accordance with Stoic principles, we should have responded to them.
A Guide to The Good Life Summary
• If you lack a grand goal in living, you lack a coherent philosophy of life.
• Tranquility is a state marked by the absence of negative emotions such as anger, grief, anxiety, and fear, and the presence of positive emotions—in particular, joy.
• “Pay attention to your enemies, for they are the first to discover your mistakes.”—Antisthenes
• The Stoics enjoyed whatever “good things” happened to be available, but even as they did so, they prepared themselves to give up the things in question.
• For the Stoics, a person’s virtue does not depend, for example, on her sexual history. Instead, it depends on her excellence as a human being—on how well she performs the function for which humans were designed.
• To be virtuous is to live as we were designed to live; it is to live, as Zeno put it, in accordance with nature.
• Stoic tranquility was a psychological state marked by the absence of negative emotions, such as grief, anger, and anxiety, and the presence of positive emotions, such as joy.
• “Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness—all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil.”— Marcus Aurelius
• “He robs present ills of their power who has perceived their coming beforehand.”—Seneca
• Irvine on hedonic adaptation: “We humans are unhappy in large part because we are insatiable; after working hard to get what we want, we routinely lose interest in the object of our desire. Rather than feeling satisfied, we feel a bit bored, and in response to this boredom, we go on to form new, even grander desires.”
• “One key to happiness is to forestall the [hedonic] adaptation process: We need to take steps to prevent ourselves from taking for granted, once we get them, the things we worked so hard to get.”
• “The easiest way for us to gain happiness is to learn how to want the things we already have.”
• “The Stoics recommended that we spend time imagining that we have lost the things we value—that our wife has left us, our car was stolen, or we lost our job.”
• “We should love all of our dear ones …, but always with the thought that we have no promise that we may keep them forever—nay, no promise even that we may keep them for long.”—Seneca
• While enjoying the companionship of loved ones, we should periodically stop to reflect on the possibility that this enjoyment will come to an end. If nothing else, our own death will end it.
• “We should live as if this very moment were our last.”
• As we go about our day, we should periodically pause to reflect on the fact that we will not live forever and therefore that this day could be our last.
• “When the Stoics counsel us to live each day as if it were our last, their goal is not to change our activities but to change our state of mind as we carry out those activities.”
• Besides contemplating the loss of our life, we should contemplate the loss of our possessions.
• “After expressing his appreciation that his glass is half full rather than being completely empty, [a Stoic] will go on to express his delight in even having a glass: It could, after all, have been broken or stolen.”
• “Hedonic adaptation has the power to extinguish our enjoyment of the world. Because of adaptation, we take our life and what we have for granted rather than delighting in them.”
• Negative visualization is a powerful antidote to hedonic adaptation. By consciously thinking about the loss of what we have, we can regain our appreciation of it, and with this regained appreciation we can revitalize our capacity for joy.
• The negative visualization technique can also be used in reverse: Besides imagining that the bad things that happened to others happen to us, we can imagine that the bad things that happen to us happened instead to others.
• “If we were at someone’s house and his servant broke a cup, we would be unlikely to get angry; indeed, we might try to calm our host by saying ‘It’s just a cup; these things happen.’”
• A few times each day or a few times each week a Stoic will pause in his enjoyment of life to think about how all this, all these things he enjoys, could be taken from him.
• “Negative visualization teaches us to embrace whatever life we happen to be living and to extract every bit of delight we can from it. But it simultaneously teaches us to prepare ourselves for changes that will deprive us of the things that delight us. It teaches us, in other words, to enjoy what we have without clinging to it.”
• “By contemplating the impermanence of everything in the world, we are forced to recognize that every time we do something could be the last time we do it, and this recognition can invest the things we do with a significance and intensity that would otherwise be absent.”
• “Our most important choice in life, according to Epictetus, is whether to concern ourselves with things external to us or things internal.”
• A good strategy for getting what you want is to make your goal to want only those things that are easy to obtain—and ideally to want only those things that you can be certain of obtaining.
• “While most people seek to gain contentment by changing the world around them, Epictetus advises us to gain contentment by changing ourselves—more precisely, by changing our desires.”
• “Your primary desire, says Epictetus, should be your desire not to be frustrated by forming desires you won’t be able to fulfill.”
• “There are things over which we have complete control, things over which we have no control at all, and things over which we have some but not complete control.”
• “One way to preserve our tranquility, the Stoics thought, is to take a fatalistic attitude toward the things that happen to us.”
• “According to Epictetus, we should keep firmly in mind that we are merely actors in a play written by someone else—more precisely, the Fates.”
• “We must learn to welcome whatever falls to our lot and persuade ourselves that whatever happens to us is for the best.”
• “We sometimes should think about the past to learn lessons that can help us in our efforts to shape the future.”
• “Instead of thinking about how our situation could be worse, we refuse to think about how it could be better.”
• “Besides contemplating bad things happening, we should sometimes live as if they had happened.”
• Irvine on voluntary discomfort: “By exposing ourselves to a small amount of a weakened virus now, we create in ourselves an immunity that will protect us from a debilitating illness in the future.”
• “Besides periodically engaging in acts of voluntary discomfort, we should, say the Stoics, periodically forgo opportunities to experience pleasure.”
• The Stoics discovered that willpower is like muscle power: The more they exercised their muscles, the stronger they got, and the more they exercised their will, the stronger it got. Indeed, by practicing Stoic self-denial techniques over a long period, Stoics can transform themselves into individuals remarkable for their courage and self-control.
• The Stoics discovered that exercising self-control has certain benefits that might not be obvious. In particular, as strange as it may seem, consciously abstaining from pleasure can itself be pleasant.
• “To help us advance our practice of Stoicism, Seneca advises that we periodically meditate on the events of daily living, how we responded to these events, and how, in accordance with Stoic principles, we should have responded to them.”
• “When contemplating whether to criticize someone, he should consider not only whether the criticism is valid but also whether the person can stand to be criticized.”
• “If you are going to publish, you must be willing to tolerate criticism.”
• Epictetus suggests that as we go about our daily business, we should simultaneously play the roles of participant and spectator.
• “Throughout the millennia and across cultures, those who have thought carefully about desire have drawn the conclusion that spending our days working to get whatever it is we find ourselves wanting is unlikely to bring us either happiness or tranquility.”
• “The Stoics recommend that we prepare for our dealings with other people before we have to deal with them.”
• “Spend time with an unclean person, and we will become unclean as well.”
• “Marcus recommends that when we interact with an annoying person, we keep in mind that there are doubtless people who find us to be annoying.”
• “When we find ourselves irritated by someone’s shortcomings, we should pause to reflect on our own shortcomings. Doing this will help us become more empathetic to this individual’s faults and therefore become more tolerant of him.”
• “When dealing with an annoying person, it also helps to keep in mind that our annoyance at what he does will almost invariably be more detrimental to us than whatever it is he is doing.”
• “A good Stoic, Marcus says, will not think about what other people are thinking except when he must do so in order to serve the public interest.”
• Irvine on social fatalism: “In our dealings with others, we should operate on the assumption that they are fated to behave in a certain way.”
• “One of their sting-elimination strategies is to pause, when insulted, to consider whether what the insulter said is true.”
• “Another sting-elimination strategy, suggested by Epictetus, is to pause to consider how well-informed the insulter is.”
• “One particularly powerful sting-elimination strategy is to consider the source of an insult.”
• “Under such circumstances, rather than feeling hurt by his insults, I should feel relieved: If he disapproves of what I am doing, then what I am doing is doubtless the right thing to do.”
• “When a dog barks, we might make a mental note that the dog in question appears to dislike us, but we would be utter fools to allow ourselves to become upset by this fact, to go through the rest of the day thinking, ‘Oh, dear! That dog doesn’t like me!’”
• “One other important sting-elimination strategy, say the Stoics, is to keep in mind, when insulted, that we ourselves are the source of any sting that accompanies the insult.”
• “Remember,” says Epictetus, “that what is insulting is not the person who abuses you or hits you, but the judgment about them that they are insulting.”
• Counter insults with humor.
• “Epictetus advises you to respond not by behaving defensively but by questioning his competence as an insulter; for example, you can comment that if the insulter knew you well enough to criticize you competently, he wouldn’t have pointed to the particular failings that he did but would instead have mentioned other, much worse failings.”
• The Stoics advocated a second way to respond to insults: with no response at all.
• “Refusing to respond to an insult is, paradoxically, one of the most effective responses possible.”
• “Notice, too, that by not responding to an insulter, we are showing him and anyone who is watching that we simply don’t have time for the childish behavior of this person.”
• “If in the course of trying to train a horse, we punish him, it should be because we want him to obey us in the future, not because we are angry about his failure to obey us in the past.”
• “The best way to deal with insults directed at the disadvantaged, Epictetus would argue, is not to punish those who insult them but to teach members of disadvantaged groups techniques of insult self-defense.”
• “The Stoics primary grief-prevention strategy was to engage in negative visualization.”
• “In normal, prospective negative visualization, we imagine losing something we currently possess; in retrospective negative visualization, we imagine never having had something that we have lost.”
• “Epictetus also offers advice on grief management. He advises us, in particular, to take care not to “catch” the grief of others.”
• “When angry, says Seneca, we should take steps to ‘turn all [anger’s] indications into their opposites.’ We should force ourselves to relax our face, soften our voice, and slow our pace of walking. If we do this, our internal state will soon come to resemble our external state, and our anger, says Seneca, will have dissipated.”
• Stoics value their freedom, and they are therefore reluctant to do anything that will give others power over them.
• “If we wish to retain our freedom, says Epictetus, we must be careful, while dealing with other people, to be indifferent to what they think of us.”
• “Marcus agrees with Epictetus that it is foolish for us to worry about what other people think of us and particularly foolish for us to seek the approval of people whose values we reject.”
An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth by Chris Hadfield
The Book in Three Sentences
1. Things are never as bad (or as good) as they seem at the time.
2. Success is feeling good about the work you do throughout the long, unheralded journey.
3. Fear comes from not knowing what to expect and not feeling you have any control over what’s about to happen. When you feel helpless, you’re far more afraid than you would be if you knew the facts. If you’re not sure what to be alarmed about, everything is alarming.
The Five Big Ideas
1. In order to stay calm in a high-stress, high-stakes situation, all you really need is knowledge.
2. Feeling ready to do something doesn’t mean feeling certain you’ll succeed. Truly being ready means understanding what could go wrong—and having a plan to deal with it.
3. Anticipating problems and figuring out how to solve them is actually the opposite of worrying: it’s productive.
4. Optimism and confidence comes not from visualizing victory, but from visualizing defeat and figuring out how to prevent it.
5. If you’re striving for excellence—whether it’s in playing the guitar or flying a jet—there’s no such thing as over-preparation. It’s your best chance of improving your odds.
An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth Summary
• “What I do each day determines the kind of person I’ll become”.
• “My attitude was more, ‘It’s probably not going to happen, but I should do things that keep me moving in the right direction, just in case—and I should be sure those things interest me, so that whatever happens, I’m happy’.”
• “As I have discovered again and again, things are never as bad (or as good) as they seem at the time”.
• “An astronaut is someone who’s able to make good decisions quickly, with incomplete information, when the consequences really matter”.
• “It sounds strange, probably, but having a pessimistic view of my own prospects helped me love my job”.
• “However, success, to me, never was and still isn’t about lifting off in a rocket (though that sure felt like a great achievement). Success is feeling good about the work you do throughout the long, unheralded journey that may or may not wind up at the launch pad”.
• “Ultimately, I don’t determine whether I arrive at the desired professional destination. Too many variables are out of my control. There’s really just one thing I can control: my attitude during the journey, which is what keeps me feeling steady and stable, and what keeps me headed in the right direction. So I consciously monitor and correct, if necessary, because losing attitude would be far worse than not achieving my goal”.
• “‘Be ready. Work. Hard. Enjoy it!’ It fits every situation”.
• “I never stopped getting ready. Just in case”.
• “In my experience, fear comes from not knowing what to expect and not feeling you have any control over what’s about to happen. When you feel helpless, you’re far more afraid than you would be if you knew the facts. If you’re not sure what to be alarmed about, everything is alarming”.
• “Knowledge and experience have made it possible for me to be relatively comfortable with heights, whether I’m flying a biplane or doing a spacewalk or jumping into a mountain of corn. In each case, I fully understand the challenge, the physics, the mechanics, and I know from personal experience that I’m not helpless. I do have some control”.
• “But in order to stay calm in a high-stress, high-stakes situation, all you really need is knowledge”.
• “Feeling ready to do something doesn’t mean feeling certain you’ll succeed, though of course that’s what you’re hoping to do. Truly being ready means understanding what could go wrong—and having a plan to deal with it”.
• “‘Working the problem’ is NASA-speak for descending one decision tree after another, methodically looking for a solution until you run out of oxygen”.
• “No one was moving in a leisurely fashion, but the response was one of focused curiosity, as though we were dealing with an abstract puzzle rather than an imminent threat to our survival”.
• “Each time you manage to do that your comfort zone expands a little, so if you ever face that particular problem in real life, you’re able to think clearly”.
• “To drive that message home, we have what we euphemistically refer to as “contingency sims”—death sims, actually—which force us to think through our own demise in granular detail: not only how we’d die, but what would happen afterward to our families, colleagues and the space program itself”.
• “Rehearsing for catastrophe has made me positive that I have the problem-solving skills to deal with tough situations and come out the other side smiling”.
• “Anticipating problems and figuring out how to solve them is actually the opposite of worrying: it’s productive”.
• “My optimism and confidence come not from feeling I’m luckier than other mortals, and they sure don’t come from visualizing victory. They’re the result of a lifetime spent visualizing defeat and figuring out how to prevent it”.
• “Like most astronauts, I’m pretty sure that I can deal with what life throws at me because I’ve thought about what to do if things go wrong, as well as right. That’s the power of negative thinking”.
• “I couldn’t afford to be unprepared in any situation where I was going to be evaluated, formally or not. I had to be ready, always”.
• “But if you’re striving for excellence—whether it’s in playing the guitar or flying a jet—there’s no such thing as over-preparation. It’s your best chance of improving your odds”.
• “In any field, it’s a plus if you view criticism as potentially helpful advice rather than as a personal attack”.
• “During a sim, the flight director or lead astronaut makes notes on major events, and afterward, kicks off the debrief by reviewing the highlights: what went well, what new things were learned, what was already known but needs to be re-emphasized. Then it’s a free-for-all. Everyone else dives right in, system by system, to dissect what went wrong or was handled poorly”.
• “It’s not a public flogging: the goal is to build up collective wisdom”.
• “That’s one good thing about habitually sweating the small stuff: you learn to be very, very patient”.
• “This is why, individually and organizationally, we have the patience to sweat the small stuff even when—actually, especially when—pursuing major goals. We’ve learned the hardest way possible just how much little things matter”.
• “Good leadership means leading the way, not hectoring other people to do things your way”.
• “Whining is the antithesis of expeditionary behavior, which is all about rallying the troops around a common goal”.
• “When you have some skills but don’t fully understand your environment, there is no way you can be a plus one”.
• “If you start thinking that only your biggest and shiniest moments count, you’re setting yourself up to feel like a failure most of the time”.
• “Life is just a lot better if you feel you’re having 10 wins a day rather than a win every 10 years or so”.
Anything You Want by Derek Sivers
The Book in Three Sentences
1. “Business is not about money. It’s about making dreams come true for others and for yourself”.
2. “Making a company is a great way to improve the world while improving yourself”.
3. “Never do anything just for the money”.
The Five Big Ideas
1. “Don’t pursue business just for your own gain. Only answer the calls for help”.
2. “Success comes from persistently improving and inventing, not from persistently promoting what’s not working”.
3. “You don’t need money to start helping people”.
4. “The real point of doing anything is to be happy, so do only what makes you happy”.
5. “When deciding whether to do something, if you feel anything less than ‘Wow! That would be amazing! Absolutely! Hell yeah!’—then say ‘no.’”
Anything You Want Summary
• “Don’t be on your deathbed someday, having squandered your one chance at life, full of regret because you pursued little distractions instead of big dreams”.
• “Business is not about money. It’s about making dreams come true for others and for yourself”.
• “Making a company is a great way to improve the world while improving yourself”.
• “When you make a company, you make a utopia. It’s where you design your perfect world”.
• “Never do anything just for the money”.
• “Don’t pursue business just for your own gain. Only answer the calls for help”.
• “Success comes from persistently improving and inventing, not from persistently promoting what’s not working”.
• “Your business plan is moot. You don’t know what people really want until you start doing it”.
• “Starting with no money is an advantage. You don’t need money to start helping people”.
• “You can’t please everyone, so proudly exclude people”.
• “Make yourself unnecessary to the running of your business”.
• “The real point of doing anything is to be happy, so do only what makes you happy”.
• “Success comes from persistently improving and inventing, not from persistently doing what’s not working”.
• “When deciding whether to do something, if you feel anything less than ‘Wow! That would be amazing! Absolutely! Hell yeah!’—then say ‘no.’”
• “Any time you think you know what your new business will be doing, remember this quote from Steve Blank: No plan survives first contact with customers”.
• “Necessity is a great teacher”.
• “Never forget that absolutely everything you do is for your customers. Make every decision—even decisions about whether to expand the business, raise money, or promote someone—according to what’s best for your customers”.
• “It’s counterintuitive, but the way to grow your business is to focus entirely on your existing customers. Just thrill them, and they’ll tell everyone”.
• “Starting small puts 100 percent of your energy on actually solving real problems for real people”.
• “Never forget why you’re really doing what you’re doing”.
• “Care about your customers more than about yourself, and you’ll do well”.
• “Set up your business like you don’t need the money, and it’ll likely come your way”.
• “When one customer wrongs you, remember the hundred thousand who did not”.
• “Please know that it’s often the tiny details that really thrill people enough to make them tell all their friends about you”.
• “There’s a benefit to being naïve about the norms of the world— deciding from scratch what seems like the right thing to do, instead of just doing what others do”.
• “In the end, it’s about what you want to be, not what you want to have”.
• “To be a true business owner, make sure you could leave for a year, and when you came back, your business would be doing better than when you left”
• “Trust, but verify. Remember it when delegating. You have to do both”.
Atomic Habits by James Clear
The Book in Three Sentences
1. An atomic habit is a regular practice or routine that is not only small and easy to do but is also the source of incredible power; a component of the system of compound growth.
2. Bad habits repeat themselves again and again not because you don’t want to change, but because you have the wrong system for change.
3. Changes that seem small and unimportant at first will compound into remarkable results if you’re willing to stick with them for years.
The Five Big Ideas
1. Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement.
2. If you want better results, then forget about setting goals. Focus on your system instead.
3. The most effective way to change your habits is to focus not on what you want to achieve, but on who you wish to become.
4. The Four Laws of Behavior Change are a simple set of rules we can use to build better habits. They are (1) make it obvious, (2) make it attractive, (3) make it easy, and (4) make it satisfying.
5. Environment is the invisible hand that shapes human behavior.
Atomic Habits Summary
Chapter 1: The Surprising Power of Tiny Habits
“Success is the product of daily habits—not once-in-a-lifetime transformations.”
“You should be far more concerned with your current trajectory than with your current results.”
“Your outcomes are a lagging measure of your habits. Your net worth is a lagging measure of your financial habits. Your weight is a lagging measure of your eating habits. Your knowledge is a lagging measure of your learning habits. Your clutter is a lagging measure of your cleaning habits. You get what you repeat.”
“Time magnifies the margin between success and failure. It will multiply whatever you feed it. Good habits make time your ally. Bad habits make time your enemy.”
“Goals are about the results you want to achieve. Systems are about the processes that lead to those results.”
“If you want to predict where you’ll end up in life, all you have to do is follow the curve of tiny gains or tiny losses, and see how your daily choices will compound ten or twenty years down the line.”
“Breakthrough moments are often the result of many previous actions, which build up the potential required to unleash a major change.”
If you find yourself struggling to build a good habit or break a bad one, it is not because you have lost your ability to improve. It is often because you have not yet crossed what James calls, “Plateau of Latent Potential.”
“When you finally break through the Plateau of Latent Potential, people will call it an overnight success.”
“The purpose of setting goals is to win the game. The purpose of building systems is to continue playing the game. True long-term thinking is goal-less thinking. It’s not about any single accomplishment. It is about the cycle of endless refinement and continuous improvement.”
“Ultimately, it is your commitment to the process that will determine your progress.”
“Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement.”
“Getting 1 percent better every day counts for a lot in the long-run.”
“Habits are a double-edged sword. They can work for you or against you, which is why understanding the details is essential.”
“Small changes often appear to make no difference until you cross a critical threshold. The most powerful outcomes of any compounding process are delayed. You need to be patient.”
“An atomic habit is a little habit that is part of a larger system. Just as atoms are the building blocks of molecules, atomic habits are the building blocks of remarkable results.”
“If you want better results, then forget about setting goals. Focus on your system instead.”
“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”
Chapter 2: How Your Habits Shape Your Identity (and Vice Versa)
“Changing our habits is challenging for two reasons: (1) we try to change the wrong thing and (2) we try to change our habits in the wrong way.”
“There are three layers of behavior change: a change in your outcomes, a change in your processes, or a change in your identity.”
“Outcomes are about what you get. Processes are about what you do. Identity is about what you believe.”
“With outcome-based habits, the focus is on what you want to achieve. With identity-based habits, the focus is on who you wish to become.”
“The ultimate form of intrinsic motivation is when a habit becomes part of your identity.”
“It is a simple two-step process: Decide the type of person you want to be. Prove it to yourself with small wins.”
“Ask yourself, “Who is the type of person that could get the outcome I want?”
“The most effective way to change your habits is to focus not on what you want to achieve, but on who you wish to become.”
“Your identity emerges out of your habits. Every action is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.”
“Becoming the best version of yourself requires you to continuously edit your beliefs, and to upgrade and expand your identity.”
“The real reason habits matter is not because they can get you better results (although they can do that), but because they can change your beliefs about yourself.”
Chapter 3: How to Build Better Habits in 4 Simple Steps
Whenever you want to change your behavior, ask yourself:
1. How can I make it obvious?
2. How can I make it attractive?
3. How can I make it easy?
4. How can I make it satisfying?
“A habit is a behavior that has been repeated enough times to become automatic.”
“The ultimate purpose of habits is to solve the problems of life with as little energy and effort as possible.”
“Any habit can be broken down into a feedback loop that involves four steps: cue, craving, response, and reward.”
“The Four Laws of Behavior Change are a simple set of rules we can use to build better habits. They are (1) make it obvious, (2) make it attractive, (3) make it easy, and (4) make it satisfying.”
Chapter 4: The Man Who Didn’t Look Right
“If you’re having trouble determining how to rate a particular habit, ask yourself: ‘Does this behavior help me become the type of person I wish to be? Does this habit cast a vote for or against my desired identity?’”
“With enough practice, your brain will pick up on the cues that predict certain outcomes without consciously thinking about it.”
“Once our habits become automatic, we stop paying attention to what we are doing.”
“The process of behavior change always starts with awareness. You need to be aware of your habits before you can change them.”
“Pointing-and-Calling raises your level of awareness from a nonconscious habit to a more conscious level by verbalizing your actions.”
“The Habits Scorecard is a simple exercise you can use to become more aware of your behavior.”
Chapter 5: The Best Way to Start a New Habit
“The 1st Law of Behavior Change is make it obvious.”
“Many people think they lack motivation when what they really lack is clarity.”
“The Diderot Effect states that obtaining a new possession often creates a spiral of consumption that leads to additional purchases.”
“One of the best ways to build a new habit is to identify a current habit you already do each day and then stack your new behavior on top. This is called habit stacking.”
“The habit stacking formula is: ‘After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT].’”
“The two most common cues are time and location.”
“Creating an implementation intention is a strategy you can use to pair a new habit with a specific time and location.”
“The implementation intention formula is: I will [BEHAVIOR] at [TIME] in [LOCATION].”
“Habit stacking is a strategy you can use to pair a new habit with a current habit.”
“The habit stacking formula is: After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT].”
Chapter 6: Motivation is Overrated; Environment Often Matters More
“Environment is the invisible hand that shapes human behavior.”
“Small changes in context can lead to large changes in behavior over time.”
“Every habit is initiated by a cue. We are more likely to notice cues that stand out.”
“Make the cues of good habits obvious in your environment.”
“Gradually, your habits become associated not with a single trigger but with the entire context surrounding the behavior. The context becomes the cue.”
“It is easier to build new habits in a new environment because you are not fighting against old cues.”
Chapter 7: The Secret to Self-Control
“The inversion of the 1st Law of Behavior Change is make it invisible.”
“Once a habit is formed, it is unlikely to be forgotten.”
“People with high self-control tend to spend less time in tempting situations. It’s easier to avoid temptation than resist it.”
“One of the most practical ways to eliminate a bad habit is to reduce exposure to the cue that causes it.”
“Self-control is a short-term strategy, not a long-term one.”
Chapter 8: How to Make a Habit Irresistible
“The 2nd Law of Behavior Change is make it attractive.”
“The more attractive an opportunity is, the more likely it is to become habit-forming.”
“Habits are a dopamine-driven feedback loop. When dopamine rises, so does our motivation to act.”
“It is the anticipation of a reward—not the fulfillment of it—that gets us to take action. The greater the anticipation, the greater the dopamine spike.”
“Temptation bundling is one way to make your habits more attractive. The strategy is to pair an action you want to do with an action you need to do.”
Chapter 9: The Role of Family and Friends in Shaping Your Habits
“The culture we live in determines which behaviors are attractive to us.”
“We tend to adopt habits that are praised and approved of by our culture because we have a strong desire to fit in and belong to the tribe.”
“We tend to imitate the habits of three social groups: the close (family and friends), the many (the tribe), and the powerful (those with status and prestige).”
“One of the most effective things you can do to build better habits is to join a culture where (1) your desired behavior is the normal behavior and (2) you already have something in common with the group.”
“The normal behavior of the tribe often overpowers the desired behavior of the individual. Most days, we’d rather be wrong with the crowd than be right by ourselves.”
“If a behavior can get us approval, respect, and praise, we find it attractive.”
Chapter 10: How to Find and Fix The Cause of Your Bad Habits
“The inversion of the 2nd Law of Behavior Change is make it unattractive.”
“Every behavior has a surface level craving and a deeper underlying motive.”
“Your habits are modern-day solutions to ancient desires.”
“The cause of your habits is actually the prediction that precedes them. The prediction leads to a feeling.”
“Highlight the benefits of avoiding a bad habit to make it seem unattractive.”
“Habits are attractive when we associate them with positive feelings and unattractive when we associate them with negative feelings. Create a motivation ritual by doing something you enjoy immediately before a difficult habit.”
Chapter 11: Walk Slowly, But Never Backward
“The 3rd Law of Behavior Change is make it easy.”
“The most effective form of learning is practice, not planning.”
“Focus on taking action, not being in motion.”
“Habit formation is the process by which a behavior becomes progressively more automatic through repetition.”
“The amount of time you have been performing a habit is not as important as the number of times you have performed it.”
Chapter 12: The Law of Least Effort
“Human behavior follows the Law of Least Effort.”
“We will naturally gravitate toward the option that requires the least amount of work.”
“Create an environment where doing the right thing is as easy as possible.”
“Reduce the friction associated with good behaviors. When friction is low, habits are easy.”
“Increase the friction associated with bad behaviors. When friction is high, habits are difficult.”
“Prime your environment to make future actions easier.”
Chapter 13: How to Stop Procrastinating by Using the Two-Minute Rule
Every day, there are a handful of moments that deliver an outsized impact. James refers to these little choices as “decisive moments.”
“Decisive moments set the options available to your future self.”
“A habit must be established before it can be improved.”
“Habits can be completed in a few seconds but continue to impact your behavior for minutes or hours afterward.”
“Many habits occur at decisive moments—choices that are like a fork in the road—and either send you in the direction of a productive day or an unproductive one.”
“The Two-Minute Rule states, ‘When you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do.’”
“The more you ritualize the beginning of a process, the more likely it becomes that you can slip into the state of deep focus that is required to do great things.”
“Standardize before you optimize. You can’t improve a habit that doesn’t exist.”
Chapter 14: How to Make Good Habits Inevitable and Bad Habits Impossible
“The inversion of the 3rd Law of Behavior Change is make it difficult.”
“A commitment device is a choice you make in the present that locks in better behavior in the future.”
“The ultimate way to lock in future behavior is to automate your habits.”
“Onetime choices—like buying a better mattress or enrolling in an automatic savings plan—are single actions that automate your future habits and deliver increasing returns over time.”
“Using technology to automate your habits is the most reliable and effective way to guarantee the right behavior.”
Chapter 15: The Cardinal Rule of Behavior Change
“The 4th Law of Behavior Change is make it satisfying.”
“We are more likely to repeat a behavior when the experience is satisfying.”
“The human brain evolved to prioritize immediate rewards over delayed rewards.”
“The Cardinal Rule of Behavior Change: What is immediately rewarded is repeated. What is immediately punished is avoided.”
“To get a habit to stick you need to feel immediately successful—even if it’s in a small way.”
“The first three laws of behavior change—make it obvious, make it attractive, and make it easy—increase the odds that a behavior will be performed this time. The fourth law of behavior change—make it satisfying—increases the odds that a behavior will be repeated next time.”
Chapter 16: How to Stick with Good Habits Every Day
“Named after the economist Charles Goodhart, Goodhart’s Law states, ‘When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.’”
“One of the most satisfying feelings is the feeling of making progress.”
“A habit tracker is a simple way to measure whether you did a habit—like marking an X on a calendar.”
“Habit trackers and other visual forms of measurement can make your habits satisfying by providing clear evidence of your progress.”
“Don’t break the chain. Try to keep your habit streak alive.”
“Never miss twice. If you miss one day, try to get back on track as quickly as possible.”
“Just because you can measure something doesn’t mean it’s the most important thing.”
Chapter 17: How an Accountability Partner Changes Everything
“The inversion of the 4th Law of Behavior Change is make it unsatisfying.”
“We are less likely to repeat a bad habit if it is painful or unsatisfying.”
“An accountability partner can create an immediate cost to inaction. We care deeply about what others think of us, and we do not want others to have a lesser opinion of us.”
“A habit contract can be used to add a social cost to any behavior. It makes the costs of violating your promises public and painful.”
“Knowing that someone else is watching you can be a powerful motivator.”
Chapter 18: The Truth About Talent (When Genes Matter and When They Don’t)
“The secret to maximizing your odds of success is to choose the right field of competition.”
“Pick the right habit and progress is easy. Pick the wrong habit and life is a struggle.”
“Genes cannot be easily changed, which means they provide a powerful advantage in favorable circumstances and a serious disadvantage in unfavorable circumstances.”
“Habits are easier when they align with your natural abilities. Choose the habits that best suit you.”
“Play a game that favors your strengths. If you can’t find a game that favors you, create one.”
“Genes do not eliminate the need for hard work. They clarify it. They tell us what to work hard on.”
Chapter 19: The Goldilocks Rule—How to Stay Motivated in Life and Work
“The Goldilocks Rule states that humans experience peak motivation when working on tasks that are right on the edge of their current abilities.”
“The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom.”
“As habits become routine, they become less interesting and less satisfying. We get bored.”
“Anyone can work hard when they feel motivated. It’s the ability to keep going when work isn’t exciting that makes the difference.”
“Professionals stick to the schedule; amateurs let life get in the way.”
Chapter 20: The Downside of Creating Good Habits
“The upside of habits is that we can do things without thinking. The downside is that we stop paying attention to little errors.”
“Habits + Deliberate Practice = Mastery”
“Reflection and review is a process that allows you to remain conscious of your performance over time.”
“The tighter we cling to an identity, the harder it becomes to grow beyond it.”
Awaken The Giant Within by Anthony Robbins
The Book in Three Sentences
1. “Any time you sincerely want to make a change, the first thing you must do is to raise your standards and believe you can meet them”.
2. “We must change our belief system and develop a sense of certainty that we can and will meet the new standards before we actually do”.
3. “It’s not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives, but what we do consistently”.
The Five Big Ideas
1. “The three decisions that control your destiny are: 1. Your decisions about what to focus on. 2. Your decisions about what things mean to you. 3. Your decisions about what to do to create the results you desire”.
2. “By changing any one of these five elements—whether it’s a core belief or rule, a value, a reference, a question, or an emotional state—you can immediately produce a powerful and measurable change in your life”.
3. “Everything you and I do, we do either out of our need to avoid pain or our desire to gain pleasure”.
4. “It’s not the events of our lives that shape us, but our beliefs as to what those events mean”.
5. “Focus on where you want to go, not on what you fear”.
Awaken The Giant Within Summary
• “Any time you sincerely want to make a change, the first thing you must do is to raise your standards and believe you can meet them”.
• “We must change our belief system and develop a sense of certainty that we can and will meet the new standards before we actually do”.
• “You see, in life, lots of people know what to do, but few people actually do what they know”.
• “In essence, if we want to direct our lives, we must take control of our consistent actions. It’s not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives, but what we do consistently”.
• “It’s in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped”.
• “Not only do you have to decide what results you are committed to, but also the kind of person that you’re committed to becoming”.
• “If you don’t set a baseline standard for what you’ll accept in your life, you’ll find it’s easy to slip into behaviors and attitudes or a quality of life that’s far below what you deserve”.
• “If you truly decide to, you can do almost anything”.
• “Making a true decision means committing to achieving a result, and then cutting yourself off from any other possibility”.
• “The three decisions that control your destiny are 1. Your decisions about what to focus on. 2. Your decisions about what things mean to you. 3. Your decisions about what to do to create the results you desire”.
• “It’s likely that whatever challenges you have in your life currently could have been avoided by some better decisions upstream”.
• “Your Master System is comprised of five components: 1) your core beliefs and unconscious rules, 2) your life values, 3) your references, 4) the habitual questions that you ask yourself, and 5) the emotional states you experience in each moment”.
• “By changing any one of these five elements—whether it’s a core belief or rule, a value, a reference, a question, or an emotional state—you can immediately produce a powerful and measurable change in your life”.
• “Remember: Success truly is the result of good judgment. Good judgment is the result of experience, and experience is often the result of bad judgment!”
• “In order to succeed, you must have a long-term focus”.
• “God’s delays are not God’s denials”.
• “Often, what seems impossible in the short term becomes very possible in the long term if you persist”.
• “Remember the true power of making decisions”.
• “Realize that the hardest step in achieving anything is making a true commitment—a true decision”.
• “A critical rule I’ve made for myself is never to leave the scene of a decision without first taking a specific action toward its realization”.
• “Make decisions often and learn from them”.
• “Ask yourself, ‘What’s good about this? What can I learn from this?'”
• “Stay committed to your decisions, but stay flexible in your approach”.
• “Know that it’s your decisions, and not your conditions, that determine your destiny”.
• “Everything you and I do, we do either out of our need to avoid pain or our desire to gain pleasure”.
• “For most people, the fear of loss is much greater than the desire for gain”.
• “Why is it that people can experience pain yet fail to change? They haven’t experienced enough pain yet; they haven’t hit what I call emotional threshold”.
• “If we link massive pain to any behavior or emotional pattern, we will avoid indulging in it at all costs”.
• “It’s our neuro-associations— the associations we’ve established in our nervous systems—that determine what we’ll do”.
• “Any time we’re in an intense emotional state, when we’re feeling strong sensations of pain or pleasure, anything unique that occurs consistently will become neurologically linked”.
• “Most of us base our decisions about what to do on what’s going to create pain or pleasure in the short term instead of the long term”.
• “It’s not actual pain that drives us, but our fear that something will lead to pain. And it’s not actual pleasure that drives us, but our belief—our sense of certainty—that somehow taking a certain action will lead to pleasure”.
• “We’re not driven by the reality, but by our perception of reality”.
• “Remember, anything you want that’s valuable requires that you break through some short-term pain in order to gain long-term pleasure”.
• “It’s not the events of our lives that shape us, but our beliefs as to what those events mean”.
• “It’s never the environment; it’s never the events of our lives, but the meaning we attach to the events—how we interpret them—that shapes who we are today and who we’ll become tomorrow”.
• “What are our beliefs designed for? They’re the guiding force to tell us what will lead to pain and what will lead to pleasure”.
• “Whenever something happens in your life, your brain asks two questions: 1) Will this mean pain or pleasure? 2) What must I do now to avoid pain and/or gain pleasure?”
• “The challenge is threefold: 1) most of us do not consciously decide what we’re going to believe; 2) often our beliefs are based on misinterpretation of past experiences; and 3) once we adopt a belief, we forget it’s merely an interpretation”.
• “Global beliefs are the giant beliefs we have about everything in our lives: beliefs about our identities, people, work, time, money, and life itself, for that matter”.
• “These giant generalizations are often phrased as is/am/are: ‘Life is…’ ‘I am…’ ‘People are …’.”
• “If you can think of an idea as being like a tabletop with no legs, you’ll have a fair representation of why an idea doesn’t feel as certain as a belief. Without any legs, that tabletop won’t even stand up by itself. Belief, on the other hand, has legs. If you really believe, ‘I’m sexy’, how do you know you’re sexy? Isn’t it true that you have some references to support the idea—some experiences in life to back it up? Those are the legs that make your tabletop solid, that make your belief certain”.
• “Sometimes we gather references through information we get from other people, or from books, tapes, movies, and so on. And sometimes we form references based solely on our imagination”.
• “The strongest and most solid legs are formed by personal experiences that we have a lot of emotion attached to because they were painful or pleasurable experiences”.
• “If you develop the absolute sense of certainty that powerful beliefs provide, then you can get yourself to accomplish virtually anything, including those things that other people are certain are impossible”.
• “The most effective way is to get your brain to associate massive pain to the old belief”.
• “New experiences trigger change only if they cause us to question our beliefs. Remember, whenever we believe something, we no longer question it in any way”.
• “If you question anything enough, eventually you’ll begin to doubt it”.
• “I’ve classified beliefs into three categories: opinions, beliefs, and convictions”.
• “An opinion is something we feel relatively certain about, but the certainty is only temporary because it can be changed easily”.
• “A belief, on the other hand, is formed when we begin to develop a much larger base of reference legs, and especially reference legs about which we have strong emotion”.
• “A conviction, however, eclipses a belief, primarily because of the emotional intensity a person links to an idea. A person holding a conviction does not only feel certain, but gets angry if their conviction is even questioned. A person with a conviction is unwilling to ever question their references, even for a moment; they are totally resistant to new input, often to the point of obsession”.
• “Someone with a conviction is so passionate about their belief that they’re even willing to risk rejection or make a fool of themselves for the sake of their conviction”.
• “So how can you create a conviction? 1) Start with the basic belief. 2) Reinforce your belief by adding new and more powerful references. 3) Then find a triggering event, or else create one of your own. Associate yourself fully by asking, ‘What will it cost me if I don’t?’ Ask questions that create emotional intensity for you. 4) Finally, take action. Each action you take strengthens your commitment and raises the level of your emotional intensity and conviction”.
• “The way to expand our lives is to model the lives of those people who are already succeeding. It’s just a matter of asking questions: ‘What do you believe makes you different? What are the beliefs you have that separate you from others?'”
• “At the end of each day I ask myself these questions: What have I learned today? What did I contribute or improve? What did I enjoy?”
• “NAC is a step-by-step process that can condition your nervous system to associate pleasure to those things you want to continuously move toward and pain to those things you need to avoid in order to succeed consistently in your life without constant effort or willpower”.
• “We all want to change either 1) how we feel about things or 2) our behaviors”.
• “There are three specific beliefs about responsibility that a person must have if they’re going to create long-term change: 1) First, we must believe, ‘Something must change’—not that it should change, not that it could or ought to, but that it absolutely must. Second, we must not only believe that things must change, but we must believe, ‘I must change it’. Third, we have to believe, ‘I can change it’.”
• “Each time we experience a significant amount of pain or pleasure, our brains search for the cause and record it in our nervous systems to enable us to make better decisions about what to do in the future”.
• “Any time you experience significant amounts of pain or pleasure, your brain immediately searches for the cause. It uses the following three criteria. 1. Your brain looks for something that appears to be unique. 2. Your brain looks for something that seems to be happening simultaneously. 3. Your brain looks for consistency”.
• “So often we blame the wrong cause, and thereby close ourselves off from possible solutions”.
• “The difference between acting badly or brilliantly is not based on your ability, but on the state of your mind and/or body in any given moment”.
• “Emotion is created by motion”.
• “Focus on where you want to go, not on what you fear”.
• “Our ability to change the way we feel depends upon our ability to change our submodalities”.
• “You’ve got to be in a determined state in order to succeed”.
• “I began to realize that thinking itself is nothing but the process of asking and answering questions”.
• “Quality questions create a quality life”.
• “A genuine quality of life comes from consistent, quality questions”.
• “Questions accomplish three specific things: 1. Questions immediately change what we’re focusing on and therefore how we feel. 2. Questions change what we delete. 3. Questions change the resources available to us”.
• “You and I can change how we feel in an instant, just by changing our focus”.
• “One of the ways that I’ve discovered to increase the quality of my life is to model the habitual questions of people I really respect”.
• “The words you habitually choose also affect how you communicate with yourself and therefore what you experience”.
• “People with an impoverished vocabulary live an impoverished emotional life; people with rich vocabularies have a multi-hued palette of colors with which to paint their experience, not only for others, but for themselves as well”.
• “Simply by changing your habitual vocabulary—the words you consistently use to describe the emotions of your life—you can instantaneously change how you think, how you feel, and how you live”.
• “If we want to change our lives and shape our destiny, we need to consciously select the words we’re going to use, and we need to constantly strive to expand our level of choice”.
• “Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible—the foundation for all success in life”.
• “All goal setting must be immediately followed by both the development of a plan, and massive and consistent action toward its fulfillment”.
• “It’s not just getting a goal that matters, but the quality of life you experience along the way”.
• “Remember, our goal is not to ignore the problems of life, but to put ourselves in better mental and emotional states where we can not only come up with solutions but act upon them”.
• “We must remember that all decision-making comes down to values clarification”.
• “The only way for us to have long-term happiness is to live by our highest ideals, to consistently act in accordance with what we believe our life is truly about”.
• “Many people know what they want to have, but have no idea of who they want to be”.
• “Remember that your values—whatever they are—are the compass that is guiding you to your ultimate destiny”.
• “Anytime you have difficulty making an important decision, you can be sure that it’s the result of being unclear about your values”.
• “To value something means to place importance upon it; anything that you hold dear can be called a ‘value’.”
• “So often people are too busy pursuing means values that they don’t achieve their true desire: their ends values”.
• “The hierarchy of your values is controlling the way you make decisions in each moment”.
• “We must remember, then, that any time we make a decision about what to do, our brain first evaluates whether that action can possibly lead to either pleasurable or painful states”.
• “Most of us have created numerous ways to feel bad, and only a few ways to truly feel good”.
• “How do we know if a rule empowers or disempowers us? There are three primary criteria: 1. It’s a disempowering rule if it’s impossible to meet. 2. A rule is disempowering if something that you can’t control determines whether your rule has been met or not. 3. A rule is disempowering if it gives you only a few ways to feel good and lots of ways to feel bad”.
• “Once we design our values, we must decide what evidence we need to have before we give ourselves pleasure. We need to design rules that will move us in the direction of our values, that will clearly be achievable, using criteria we can control personally so that we’re ringing the bell instead of waiting for the outside world to do it”.
• “If you ever feel angry or upset with someone, remember, it’s your rules that are upsetting you, not their behavior”.
• “The ‘must’ and the ‘must never’ rules are threshold rules; the ‘should’ and ‘should never’ rules are personal standard rules”.
• “Design your rules so that you’re in control, so that the outside world is not what determines whether you feel good or bad. Set it up so that it’s incredibly easy for you to feel good, and incredibly hard to feel bad”.
• “The larger the number and greater the quality of our references, the greater our potential level of choices. A larger number and greater quality of references enables us to more effectively evaluate what things mean and what we can do”.
• “Once again, it’s not our references, but our interpretations of them, the way we organize them—that clearly determine our beliefs”.
• “The key is to expand the references that are available within your life. Consciously seek out experiences that expand your sense of who you are and what you’re capable of, as well as organize your references in empowering ways”.
• “The way we use our references will determine how we feel, because whether something is good or bad is all based on what you’re comparing it to”.
• “You are not even limited to your own personal experiences as references. You can borrow the references of other people”.
• “Limited references create a limited life. If you want to expand your life, you must expand your references by pursuing ideas and experiences that wouldn’t be a part of your life if you didn’t consciously seek them out”.
• “We all will act consistently with our views of who we truly are, whether that view is accurate or not”.
• “As we develop new beliefs about who we are, our behavior will change to support the new identity”.
• “If you’ve repeatedly attempted to make a particular change in your life, only to continually fall short, invariably the challenge is that you were trying to create a behavioral or emotional shift that was inconsistent with your belief about who you are”.
The Ultimate Success Formula
1. Decide what you want
2. Take action
3. Notice what’s working or not
4. Change your approach until you achieve what you want
Notes From a Friend by Anthony Robbins
The Book In Three Sentences
1. “The past doesn’t equal the future. It’s in the moment of decision that your destiny is shaped”.
2. “Whatever you think about most you’ll experience”.
3. “The fastest way to change how you feel about anything is to change what you’re focusing on”.
The Five Big Ideas
1. “Almost all the changes we want to make fall into one of two categories: either we want to change the way we feel about things, or we want to change our actions”.
2. “You can change anything in your life today by changing your perceptions and changing your actions”.
3. “Your past does not equal the future”.
4. “The key to success is to decide what’s most important to you and then take massive action each day to make it better, even when it doesn’t look as if it’s working”.
5. “Ultimately, it’s our decisions, not the conditions of our lives that determine our destiny”.
Notes From a Friend Summary
• “Almost all the changes we want to make fall into one of two categories: either we want to change the way we feel about things, or we want to change our actions”.
• “The only thing that’s necessary to make this work for your right now is to begin to believe that it is possible to change. The past doesn’t matter. Whatever hasn’t worked in the past has nothing to do with what you’ll do today. What you do right now is what will shape your destiny”.
• “You can change anything in your life today by changing your perceptions and changing your actions”.
• “Often the reason that people say they can’t do something is that they’ve tried things in the past that haven’t worked”.
• “Your past does not equal the future”.
• “What matters is not yesterday but what you do right now”.
• “The key to success is to decide what’s most important to you and then take massive action each day to make it better, even when it doesn’t look as if it’s working”.
• “Personal power means being persistent in taking action: Every time you do something, you learn from it, and you find a way to do it better next time”.
• “No problem is permanent. No problem affects my entire life. This too shall pass if I continue to take massive, positive, constructive action”.
• “Massive, consistent action with pure persistence and a sense of flexibility in pursuing your goals will ultimately give you what you want, but you must abandon any sense that there is no solution”.
• “God’s delays are not God’s denials”.
• “Success is the result of good judgment. Good judgment is the result of experience. Experience is often the result of bad judgment”.
• “The power of decision is the power of change”.
• “Ultimately, it’s our decisions, not the conditions of our lives that determine our destiny”.
• “The only way to change your life is to make a real decision”.
• “You can choose what to believe about yourself, and these beliefs will determine the actions you take”.
• “The fastest way to change how you feel about anything is to change what you’re focusing on”.
• “The reality is whatever you focus on you move toward”.
• “Whatever you think about most you’ll experience”.
• “We all most realise that emotion is created by motion”.
• “When you choose a metaphor to describe your life or your situation, you choose the beliefs it supports, too”.
• “The harder you prepare, the luckier you seem to get”.
• “Before something happens in the world, it must first happen in your mind”.
The people who overcome the odds and turn their lives around make three powerful kinds of decisions every day:
1. What to focus on
2. What things mean
3. What to do
The Problem-Solving Questions
1. What is great about this problem?
2. What is not perfect yet?
3. What am I willing to do to make it the way I want it?
4. What am I willing to no longer do to make it the way I want it?
5. How can I enjoy the process while I do what is necessary to make it the way I want it?
Unlimited Power by Anthony Robbins
The Book in Three Sentences
Unlimited power is the ability to produce the results you desire most and create value for others in the process.
Action is what unites every great success.
Nothing has any meaning except the meaning we give it.
The Five Big Ideas
“How you feel is not the result of what is happening in your life—it is your interpretation of what is happening.”
“The way we communicate with others and the way we communicate with ourselves ultimately determine the quality of our lives.”
In order to achieve an extraordinary quality of life, you need to consistently put yourself in a state that supports you and your achievements.
When handled effectively, beliefs can be the most powerful forces for creating good in your life.
Ask yourself, “What would I attempt to do if I knew I could not fail?”
Unlimited Power Summary
• For Tony, unlimited power is the ability to produce the results you desire most and create value for others in the process.
• “Action is what unites every great success. Action is what produces results. Knowledge is only potential power until it comes into the hands of someone who knows how to get himself to take effective action. In fact, the literal definition of the word ‘power’ is ‘the ability to act.’”
• “How you feel is not the result of what is happening in your life—it is your interpretation of what is happening.”
• “You are the one who decides how to feel and act based upon the ways you choose to perceive your life. Nothing has any meaning except the meaning we give it.”
• Tony believes that there are seven fundamental character traits that they have all cultivated within themselves, seven characteristics that give them the fire to do whatever it takes to succeed.
Passion!
Belief!
Strategy!
Clarity of Values!
Bonding Power!
1. Mastery of Communication!
• “The way we communicate with others and the way we communicate with ourselves ultimately determine the quality of our lives.”
• “The difference between those who fail to achieve their goals in life and those who succeed is the difference between those who cannot put themselves in a supportive state and those who can consistently put themselves in a state that supports them in their achievements.”
• Beliefs are preformed, preorganized approaches to perception that filter our communication to ourselves in a consistent manner.
Where Beliefs Come From
Environment
Events, small or large
Knowledge
Experience
Visualization
The Seven Lies of Success
1. Belief #1: Everything happens for a reason and a purpose, and it serves us.
2. Belief #2: There is no such thing as failure. There are only results.
3. Belief #3: Whatever happens, take responsibility.
4. Belief #4: It’s not necessary to understand everything to be able to use everything.
5. Belief #5: People are your greatest resource.
6. Belief #6: Work is play.
7. Belief #7: There’s no abiding success without commitment.
• “Dr. Robert Schuller, who teaches the concept of possibility thinking, asks a great question: ‘What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?’”
• “Great leaders and achievers have in common is that they operate from the belief that they create their world. The phrase you’ll hear time and again is, ‘I am responsible. I’ll take care of it.’”
• “Nothing has any power over me other than that which I give it through my conscious thoughts.”—Anthony Robbins
• “Reframing in its simplest form is changing a negative statement into a positive one by changing the frame of reference used to perceive the experience.”
• “There are two major types of re-frames, or ways to alter our perception about something: context reframing and content reframing.”
• “Context reframing involves taking an experience that seems to be bad, upsetting, or undesirable and showing how the same behavior or experience is actually a great advantage in another context.”
• “Content reframing involves taking the exact same situation and changing what it means.”
