Breaking The Habit Of Being Yourself Quotes

A memory without the emotional charge is called wisdom.

Can you accept the notion that once you change your internal state, you don’t need the external world to provide you with a reason to feel joy, gratitude, appreciation, or any other elevated emotion?

6 Ways To Give Your Mind A Break: 1. Stop stressing 2. Stop worrying 3. Give rest to the problems weighing you down 4. Lighten up 5. Forgive yourself 6. Forgive others

We should never wait for science to give us permission to do the uncommon; if we do, then we are turning science into another religion.

If you want a new outcome, you will have to break the habit of being yourself, and reinvent a new self.

To be empowered—to be free, to be unlimited, to be creative, to be genius, to be divine—that is who you are…. Once you feel this way, memorize this feeling; remember this feeling. This is who you really are….

Warning: when feelings become the means of thinking, or if we cannot think greater than how we feel, we can never change. To change is to think greater than how we feel. To change is to act greater than the familiar feelings of the memorized self.

Meditating is also a means for you to move beyond your analytical mind so that you can access your subconscious mind. That’s crucial, since the subconscious is where all your bad habits and behaviors that you want to change reside.

The point is, true happiness has nothing to do with pleasure, because the reliance on feeling good from such intensely stimulating things only moves us further from real joy.

The quantum field responds not to what we want; it responds to who we are being.

Decide the type of person you want to be. Prove it to yourself with small wins.

Think of it this way: the input remains the same, so the output has to remain the same. How, then, can you ever create anything new?

When our behaviors match our intentions, when our actions are equal to our thoughts, when our minds and our bodies are working together, when our words and our deeds are aligned … there is an immense power behind any individual.

So if we want to change some aspect of our reality, we have to think, feel, and act in new ways; we have to “be” different in terms of our responses to experiences. We have to “become” someone else. We have to create a new state of mind … we need to observe a new outcome with that new mind.

Change as a Choice, Instead of a Reaction

The latest research supports the notion that we have a natural ability to change the brain and body by thought alone, so that it looks biologically like some future event has already happened. Because you can make thought more real than anything else, you can change who you are from brain cell to gene, given the right understanding.

By Itself, Conscious Positive Thinking Cannot Overcome Subconscious Negative Feelings

To sum up the meditative process, you have to break the habit of being yourself and reinvent a new self; lose your mind and create a new one; prune synaptic connections and nurture new ones; unmemorize past emotions and recondition the body to a new mind and emotions; and let go of the past and create a new future.

When you think from your past memories, you can only create past experiences.

Meditation opens the door between the conscious and subconscious minds. We meditate to enter the operating system of the subconscious, where all of those unwanted habits and behaviors reside, and change them to more productive modes to support us in our lives.

A new state of being creates a new personality … a new personality produces a new personal reality. How will you know whether this meditative practice has activated your three brains to produce the intended effect? Simple: you will feel different as a result of investing in the process.

Reason this: When you think from your past memories, you can only create past experiences. As all of the “knowns” in your life cause your brain to think and feel in familiar ways, thus creating knowable outcomes, you continually reaffirm your life as you know it. And since your brain is equal to your environment, then each morning, your senses plug you into the same reality and initiate the same stream of consciousness.

Since the neuroscientific definition of mind is the brain in action, you repeatedly reproduce the same level of mind by “re-minding” yourself who you think you are in reference to the outer world.

Psychologists tell us that by the time we’re in our mid-30s, our identity or personality will be completely formed. This means that for those of us over 35, we have memorized a select set of behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, emotional reactions, habits, skills, associative memories, conditioned responses, and perceptions that are now subconsciously programmed within us. Those programs are running us, because the body has become the mind. This means that we will think the same thoughts, feel the same feelings, react in identical ways, behave in the same manner, believe the same dogmas, and perceive reality the same ways. About 95 percent of who we are by midlife1 is a series of subconscious programs that have become automatic—driving a car, brushing our teeth, overeating when we’re stressed, worrying about our future, judging our friends, complaining about our lives, blaming our parents, not believing in ourselves, and insisting on being chronically unhappy, just to name a few.

How foolish we are to keep repeating the negative memories from the past in our minds, while rarely thinking of the good times, nor being thankful for what we have. Be good to yourself and repeat and focus on the positive.

All someone has to do in order to be hypnotized or to hypnotize him- or herself is to move down from high- or mid-range Beta waves into a more relaxed Alpha or Theta state. Thus, meditation and self-hypnosis are similar.

When you meditate and connect to something greater, you can create and then memorize such coherence between your thoughts and feelings that nothing in your outer reality—no thing, no person, no condition at any place or time—could move you from that level of energy.

That’s why I called my last book Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself, because that’s the greatest habit we have to break—thinking, feeling, and behaving in the same way that reinforces the unconscious programs that reflect our personalities and our personal realities.

When compassion becomes unconditionally ordinary and familiar for you, you have progressed from knowledge to experience to wisdom.

your familiar memories related to your known world “re-mind” you to reproduce the same experiences.

It is a simple two-step process: Decide the type of person you want to be. Prove it to yourself with small wins.

If you’re putting the bulk of your energy toward some issue in your external environment, there will be little left for your body’s internal environment.

You will learn that the true purpose of meditation is to get beyond the analytical mind and enter into the subconscious mind so you can make real and permanent changes. If you get up from meditation as the same person who sat down, nothing has happened to you on any level. When you meditate and connect to something greater, you can create and then memorize such coherence between your thoughts and feelings that nothing in your outer reality—no thing, no person, no condition at any place or time—could move you from that level of energy. Now you are mastering your environment, your body, and time.

The Solid Ground We Stand On … Isn’t

Your outer world is a reflection of your inner reality.

When you know that you know “how” to do something, you’re on your way to mastering it.

Thought Alone Can Trigger the Human Stress Response— and Keep It Going

Change Your Mind, Change Your Life

When one holds a dream independent of the environment, that’s greatness. Coming up, we’ll see that overcoming the environment is inextricably linked with overcoming the body and time. In Gandhi’s case, he was not swayed by what was happening in his outer world (environment), he didn’t worry about how he felt and what would happen to him (body), and he didn’t care how long it would take to realize the dream of freedom (time). He simply knew that all of these elements would sooner or later bend to his intentions.

Ultimately, your habits matter because they help you become the type of person you wish to be. They are the channel through which you develop your deepest beliefs about yourself. Quite literally, you become your habits.

Doing the right thing is easy. After all, when your behavior and your identity are fully aligned, you are no longer pursuing behavior change. You are simply acting like the type of person you already believe yourself to be.

We should never wait for science to give us permission to do the uncommon; if we do, then we are turning science into another religion. We should be brave enough to contemplate our lives, do what we thought was “outside the box,” and do it repeatedly. When we do that, we are on our way to a greater level of personal power.

your thoughts have consequences so great that they create your reality.

For instance, when a lion was chasing your ancestors, the stress response was doing what it was designed to do—protect them from their outer environment. That’s adaptive. But if, for days on end, you fret about your promotion, overfocus on your presentation to upper management, or worry about your mother being in the hospital, these situations create the same chemicals as though you were being chased by a lion.

If knowledge is for the mind, and experience is for the body, then when you apply knowledge and create a new experience, you teach the body what the mind has intellectually learned. Knowledge without experience is merely philosophy; experience without knowledge is ignorance. There’s a progression that has to take place. You have to take knowledge and live it—embrace it emotionally.

We don’t need to win the race, the lottery, or the promotion before we experience the emotions of those events. Remember, we can create an emotion by thought alone. We can experience joy or gratitude ahead of the environment to such an extent that the body begins to believe that it is already “in” that event. As a result, we can signal our genes to make new proteins to change our bodies to be ahead of the present environment.

Simply put, most of us are addicted to the problems and conditions of our lives that produce stress. No matter whether we’re in a bad job or a bad relationship, we hold our troubles close to us because they help reinforce who we are as a somebody; they feed our addictions to low-frequency emotions.

God never said that you will live an average or unfulfilled life. You and the people who programmed your mind ‘assumed’ your worth, ability and deservingness. You have the same brains and ability like the most successful ones have. Only the circumstances are different and I can assure you that your circumstances are not the worst.

One solution is to avoid making any single aspect of your identity an overwhelming portion of who you are. In the words of investor Paul Graham, “keep your identity small.” The more you let a single belief define you, the less capable you are of adapting when life challenges you. If you tie everything up in being the point guard or the partner at the firm or whatever else, then the loss of that facet of your life will wreck you. If you’re a vegan and then develop a health condition that forces you to change your diet, you’ll have an identity crisis on your hands. When you cling too tightly to one identity, you become brittle. Lose that one thing and you lose yourself.

You will not be able to solve anything outside until you own how the situation affects you inside. Problems are generally not what they appear to be. When you get clear enough, you will realize that the real problem is that there is something inside of you that can have a problem with almost anything. The first step is to deal with that part of you. This involves a change from “outer solution consciousness” to “inner solution consciousness.” You have to break the habit of thinking that the solution to your problems is to rearrange things outside. The only permanent solution to your problems is to go inside and let go of the part of you that seems to have so many problems with reality.

your thoughts have consequences so great that they create your reality

The observer effect in quantum physics states that where you direct your attention is where you place your energy. As a consequence, you affect the material world.

How can I think, feel, and behave differently to produce the effect/result that I want?

If you praise others you are considered a nice person, but if you praise yourself you are arrogant or nonreligious! What a society, eh? No wonder your self-esteem is low.

An intentional thought needs an energizer, a catalyst—and that energy is an elevated emotion.

Knowledge without experience is merely philosophy; experience without knowledge is ignorance.

Eres lo que eres, eres donde estás y eres quien eres por lo que piensas acerca de ti.

When your outward expression of self is equal to your inner self, you are headed to a new destiny.

We remember who we are based primarily on what we know and the things we do.

We may also train the body to be the mind in order to live in a predictable future, based on the memory of the known past—and thus we miss the precious “now” moment again.

Always Matter, Never Mind? Always Mind, Never Matter?

To Change, Be Greater Than Your Environment, Your Body, and Time

Familiar Memories “Re-mind” Us to Reproduce the Same Experiences

To Change Your Life, Change Your Beliefs about the Nature of Reality

Ninguna persona, cosa ni experiencia deben alterar en ningún momento ni lugar tu coherencia química interior. Puedes pensar, actuar y sentir de distinta manera siempre que lo desees.

Whether we’re addicted to cigarettes, chocolate, alcohol, shopping, gambling, or biting our nails, the moment we cease the habitual action, chaos rages between the body and the mind.

INTERVIEWER Why don’t you write tragedy? BARTHELME I’m fated to deal in mixtures, slumgullions, which preclude tragedy, which require a pure line. It’s a habit of mind, a perversity. Tom Hess used to tell a story, maybe from Lewis Carroll, I don’t remember, about an enraged mob storming the palace shouting “More taxes! Less bread!” As soon as I hear a proposition I immediately consider its opposite. A double-minded man—makes for mixtures. INTERVIEWER Apparently the Yiddish theater, to which Kafka was very addicted, includes as a typical bit of comedy two clowns, more or less identical, who appear even in sad scenes—the parting of two lovers, for instance—and behave comically as the audience is weeping. This shows up especially in The Castle. BARTHELME The assistants. INTERVIEWER And the audience doesn’t know what to do. BARTHELME The confusing signals, the impurity of the signal, gives you verisimilitude. As when you attend a funeral and notice, against your will, that it’s being poorly done. [...] I think of the line from the German writer Heimito von Doderer: “At first you break windows. Then you become a window yourself.

SPECT scans have also taught us that as a society, we need to have much more love and respect for the brain, and that allowing children to play contact sports, like football and hockey, is not a smart idea.

Under what circumstances are you typically grateful? You may answer, I’m grateful for my family, the nice home I have, my friends, and my job. What those things have in common is that they’re already in your life.

When we liberate the body emotionally, we close the gap. When we close the gap, we release the energy that was once used to produce it. With that energy, we now have the raw material we can use to create a new life.

Change as a Choice, Instead of a Reaction It seems that human nature is such that we balk at changing until things get really bad and we’re so uncomfortable that we can no longer go on with business as usual. This is as true for an individual as it is for a society. We wait for crisis, trauma, loss, disease, and tragedy before we get down to looking at who we are, what we are doing, how we are living, what we are feeling, and what we believe or know, in order to embrace true change. Often it takes a worst-case scenario for us to begin making changes that support our health, relationships, career, family, and future. My message is: Why wait?

Only when subjects held both heightened emotions and clear objectives in alignment were they able to produce the intended effect. An intentional thought needs an energizer, a catalyst—and that energy is an elevated emotion. Heart and mind working together. Feelings and thoughts unified into a state of being. If a state of being can wind and unwind strands of DNA in two minutes, what does this say about our ability to create reality?

You open your eyes and you know the person lying next to you is your spouse because of your past experiences together. You hear barking outside your door, and you know it’s your dog wanting to go out. There’s a pain in your back, and you remember it’s the same pain you felt yesterday. You associate your outer, familiar world with who you think you are, by remembering yourself in this dimension, this particular time and space. Our Routines: Plugging into Our Past Self What do most of us do each morning after we’ve been plugged into our reality by these sensory reminders of who we are, where we are, and so forth? Well, we remain plugged into this past self by following a highly routine, unconscious set of automatic behaviors. For example, you probably wake up on the same side of the bed, slip into your robe the same way as always, look into the mirror to remember who you are, and shower following an automatic routine. Then you groom yourself to look like everyone expects you to look, and brush your teeth in your usual memorized fashion. You drink coffee out of your favorite mug and eat your customary

For most of my young life, being an athlete was a major part of my identity. After my baseball career ended, I struggled to find myself. When you spend your whole life defining yourself in one way and that disappears, who are you now?

When you have thoughtfully rehearsed a future reality until your brain has physically changed to look like it has had the experience, and you have emotionally embraced a new intention so many times that your body is altered to reflect that it has had the experience, hang on … because this is the moment the event finds you! And it will arrive in a way that you least expect, which leaves no doubt that it came from your relationship to a greater consciousness—so that it inspires you to do it again and again.

I merely reminded her to not only set an intention every day with regard to what that summer would look like—what people she would see, what events would transpire, what places she would visit—but also to feel what it would be like to experience these things.

Not only can we change our brains just by thinking differently, but when we are truly focused and single-minded, the brain does not know the difference between the internal world of the mind and what we experience in the external environment. Our thoughts can become our experience.

You may want wealth, you may think “wealthy” thoughts, but if you feel poor, you aren’t going to attract financial abundance to yourself. Why not? Because thoughts are the language of the brain, and feelings are the language of the body. You’re thinking one way and feeling another way.

Our purpose in life is not to be good, to please God, to be beautiful, to be popular, or to be successful. Our purpose, rather, is to remove the masks and the façades that block the flow of this divine intelligence, [our Inner Being, the Source within us] and to express this greater mind through us.

specific link between our emotional states and our heart rhythms. When we have negative emotions (such as anger and fear), our heart rhythms become erratic and disorganized. In contrast, positive emotions (love and joy, for instance) produce highly ordered, coherent patterns that HeartMath researchers refer to as heart coherence.

As all of the “knowns” in your life cause your brain to think and feel in familiar ways, thus creating knowable outcomes, you continually reaffirm your life as you know it. And since your brain is equal to your environment, then each morning, your senses plug you into the same reality and initiate the same stream of consciousness.

examines how we either live in the anticipation of future events or repeatedly revisit past memories (or both) until the body begins to believe it is living in a time other than the present moment. The latest research supports the notion that we have a natural ability to change the brain and body by thought alone, so that it looks biologically like some future event has already happened. Because you can make thought more real than anything else, you can change who you are from brain cell to gene, given the right understanding. When you learn how to use your attention and access the present, you will enter through the door to the quantum field, where all potentials exist.

Is it possible that you’ve been living by a memorized emotion that has become so much a part of your identity, on a subconscious level, that now you cannot feel any other way than you’re accustomed to? If so, maybe your identity has become a matter of how you appear to the world on the outside, to distract you and change how you feel on the inside. In

Living in survival entails living in stress and functioning as a materialist, believing that the outer world is more real than the inner world. When you are under the gun of the fight-or-flight nervous system, being run by its cocktail of intoxicating chemicals, you are programmed to be concerned only about your body, the things or people in your environment, and your obsession with time. Your brain and body are out of balance. You are living a predictable life. However, when you are truly in the elegant state of creation, you are no body, no thing, no time—you forget about yourself. You become pure consciousness, free from the chains of the identity that needs the outer reality to remember who it thinks it is.

It seems that human nature is such that we balk at changing until things get really bad and we’re so uncomfortable that we can no longer go on with business as usual. This is as true for an individual as it is for a society. [...] My message is: Why wait? We can learn and change in a state of pain and suffering, or we can evolve in a state of joy and inspiration.

Always, in order to change, we have to come to a new understanding of self and the world so that we can embrace new knowledge and have new experiences. That is what reading this book will do for you. Your past shortfalls can be traced, at their root, to one major oversight: you haven’t committed yourself to living by the truth that your thoughts have consequences so great that they create your reality.

How can I think, feel, and behave differently to produce the effect/result that I want? Our mission, then, is to willfully move into the state of consciousness that allows us to connect to universal intelligence, make direct contact with the field of possibilities, and send out a clear signal that we truly expect to change and to see the results that we want—in the form of feedback—produced in our lives.

As we leave this chapter, choose a habit you want to form and begin putting these principles into practice. Be patient with yourself. It takes time to create habits, and you may not succeed every day. If you realize you have failed, don’t waste time being discouraged; just pick up where you left off and begin again. Be kind to yourself, because beating yourself up for every mistake is another bad habit that needs to be broken.

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 the Plateau of Latent Potential. Complaining about not achieving success despite working hard is like complaining about an ice cube not melting when you heated it from twenty-five to thirty-one degrees. Your work was not wasted; it is just being stored. All the action happens at thirty-two degrees.

What happens when that recently triggered mood lingers? You’ve been in a bit of a funk since that day, and now you look around the room during a staff meeting and all you think of is that this person’s tie is hideous, and the nasally tone of your boss is worse than nails on a chalkboard. At this point, you’re not just in a mood. You’re reflecting a temperament, a tendency toward the habitual expression of an emotion through certain behaviors. A temperament is an emotional reaction with a refractory period that lasts from weeks to months. Eventually, if you keep the refractory period of an emotion going for months and years, that tendency turns into a personality trait. At that point others will describe you as “bitter” or “resentful” or “angry” or “judgmental.” Our personality traits, then, are frequently based in our past emotions. Most of the time, personality (how we think, act, and feel) is anchored in the past. So to change our personalities, we have to change the emotions that we memorize. We have to move out of the past.

It is not enough to “think positive,” because most of who we are might reside subconsciously. [We need] to enter into the operating system of the subconscious mind and make permanent changes where those programs exist. [,,,] [If] your past efforts to make any lasting change in your life—physical, emotional, or spiritual—have fallen short of the ideal of yourself that you imagined, why those efforts failed has more to do with your [often subconscious] beliefs about why your life is the way it is than with anything else,

To forget about the people we know, the problems we have, the things we own, and the places we go; to lose track of time; to go beyond the body and its need to feed its habituations; to give up the high from emotionally familiar experiences that reaffirm the identity; to detach from trying to predict a future condition or review a past memory; to lay down the selfish ego that is only concerned with its needs; to think or dream greater than how we feel, and crave the unknown—this is the beginning of freedom from our present lives.

We are all conditioned by the Newtonian notion that life is dominated by cause and effect. When something good happens to us, we express gratitude or joy. So we go through life waiting for someone or something outside ourselves to regulate our feelings. Instead, I’m asking you to take control and to invert the process. Rather than waiting for an occasion to cause you to feel a certain way, create the feeling ahead of any experience in the physical realm; convince your body emotionally that a “gratitude-generating” experience has already taken place.

This is what makes the subatomic world unique. It possesses not just physical qualities, but also energetic qualities. In truth, matter on a subatomic level exists as a momentary phenomenon. It’s so elusive that it constantly appears and disappears, appearing into three dimensions—in time and space—and disappearing into nothing—into the quantum field, in no space, no time— transforming from particle (matter) to wave (energy), and vice versa. But where do particles go when they vanish into thin air? [...] Quantum experiments demonstrated that electrons exist simultaneously in an infiniite array of possibilities or probabilities in an invisible field of energy. But only when an observer focuses attention on any location of any one electron does that electron appear. In other words, a particle cannot manifest in reality—that is, ordinary space-time as we know it—until we observe it. Quantum physics calls this phenomenon “collapse of the wave function” or the “observer effect.” We now know that the moment the observer looks for an electron, there is a specific point in time and space when all probabilities of the electron collapse into a physical event. With this discovery, mind and matter can no longer be considered separate; they are intrinsically related, because subjective mind produces measurable changes on the objective, physical world. [...] If your mind can influence the appearance of an electron, then theoretically it can influence the appearance of any possibility. [...] How would your life change if you learned to direct the observer effect and to collapse infinite waves of probability into the reality that you choose? Could you get better at observing the life you want?

I’ve been running every day for a month, so why can’t I see any change in my body?” Once this kind of thinking takes over, it’s easy to let good habits fall by the wayside. But in order to make a meaningful difference, habits need to persist long enough to break through this plateau—what I call the Plateau of Latent Potential. 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 the Plateau of Latent Potential. Complaining about not achieving success despite working hard is like complaining about an ice cube not melting when you heated it from twenty-five to thirty-one degrees. Your work was not wasted; it is just being stored. All the action happens at thirty-two degrees. When you finally break through the Plateau of Latent Potential, people will call it an overnight success. The outside world only sees the most dramatic event

SELF-RELIANCE Self-reliance is not only the belief that you can handle things and become successful; it is something more than that. It is having the courage to listen to your inner promptings for a hint of the kind of success you truly desire. It means taking your cue from yourself—not listening to something or someone outside yourself to get an idea of what you should be, do, or have. When we learn to read the “signs” correctly and follow our intuition, we can begin to trust ourselves and not follow the beat of someone else’s drum. RECOGNIZING AND BREAKING THE DEPENDENCY HABIT Dependency is slavery by mutual agreement. It is degrading for both the person who is dependent and the person who is being depended upon. Both parties are equally lacking in self-reliance, for such a relationship flourishes on mutual exploitation. The most unfortunate aspect of dependency is that when you think you are dependent on another individual—you are! You neglect to develop the necessary self-reliance to meet and solve your own problems. A sure sign of dependency is when you habitually look up to others as superior. The moment you begin to compare yourself

We spend most of our conscious waking day with our attention on the external environment and functioning in Beta [brain wave state]. [...] [Fast Beta-wave states are the realm of the conscious mind]. Slow brain-wave states are the realm of the subconscious. [...] [For example, slower] Alpha waves are created in the creative, imaginative state. [...] [When your brain is in high Beta it] isn’t in creative mode [nor meditative, nor inspiration mode, nor receptive more]; it’s fixated on survival. [...] The brain in high Beta can’t easily shift gears into the imaginary realm of Alpha [or deeper into the subconscious]. [...] If you’re constantly analyzing (I call this “being in analytical mind”), you are in Beta and you’re not able to enter into the subconscious mind. [...] [Meditation slows down the brain waves and takes you out of Beta state]. Meditation Takes Us from Beta into Alpha and Theta Brain-Wave States. [...] Meditation Takes Us Beyond Analytical Mind and into the Subconscious. [...]. [It] opens the door between the conscious and subconscious minds. We meditate to enter the operating system of the subconscious, where all of those unwanted habits and behaviors reside, and change them to more productive modes to support us in our lives.

If someone is not treating you with love and respect, it is a gift if they walk away from you. If that person doesn’t walk away, you will surely endure many years of suffering with him or her. Walking away may hurt for a while, but your heart will eventually heal. Then you can choose what you really want. You will find that you don’t need to trust others as much as you need to trust yourself to make the right choices. When you make it a strong habit not to take anything personally, you avoid many upsets in your life. Your anger, jealousy, and envy will disappear, and even your sadness will simply disappear if you don’t take things personally. If you can make this second agreement a habit, you will find that nothing can put you back into hell. There is a huge amount of freedom that comes to you when you take nothing personally. You become immune to black magicians, and no spell can affect you regardless of how strong it may be. The whole world can gossip about you, and if you don’t take it personally you are immune. Someone can intentionally send emotional poison, and if you don’t take it personally, you will not eat it. When you don’t take the emotional poison, it becomes even worse in the sender, but not in you. You can see how important this agreement is. Taking nothing personally helps you to break many habits and routines that trap you in the dream of hell and cause needless suffering. Just by practicing this second agreement you begin to break dozens of teeny, tiny agreements that cause you to suffer. And if you practice the first two agreements, you will break seventy-five percent of the teeny, tiny agreements that keep you trapped in hell. Write this agreement on paper, and put it on your refrigerator to remind you all the time: Don’t take anything personally. As you make a habit of not taking anything personally, you won’t need to place your trust in what others do or say. You will only need to trust yourself to make responsible choices. You are never responsible for the actions of others; you are only responsible for you. When you truly understand this, and refuse to take things personally, you can hardly be hurt by the careless comments or actions of others. If you keep this agreement, you can travel around the world with your heart completely open and no one can hurt you.

If you choose to push through this often painful process of personal evolution, you will naturally “ascend” to higher and higher levels. As you climb above the blizzard of things that surrounds you, you will realize that they seem bigger than they really are when you are seeing them up close; that most things in life are just “another one of those.” The higher you ascend, the more effective you become at working with reality to shape outcomes toward your goals. What once seemed impossibly complex becomes simple. a. Go to the pain rather than avoid it. If you don’t let up on yourself and instead become comfortable always operating with some level of pain, you will evolve at a faster pace. That’s just the way it is. Every time you confront something painful, you are at a potentially important juncture in your life—you have the opportunity to choose healthy and painful truth or unhealthy but comfortable delusion. The irony is that if you choose the healthy route, the pain will soon turn into pleasure. The pain is the signal! Like switching from not exercising to exercising, developing the habit of embracing the pain and learning from it will “get you to the other side.” By “getting to the other side,” I mean that you will become hooked on: • Identifying, accepting, and learning how to deal with your weaknesses, • Preferring that the people around you be honest with you rather than keep their negative thoughts about you to themselves, and • Being yourself rather than having to pretend to be strong where you are weak. b. Embrace tough love. In my own life, what I want to give to people, most importantly to people I love, is the power to deal with reality to get what they want. In pursuit of my goal to give them strength, I will often deny them what they “want” because that will give them the opportunity to struggle so that they can develop the strength to get what they want on their own. This can be difficult for people emotionally, even if they understand intellectually that having difficulties is the exercise they need to grow strong and that just giving them what they want will weaken them and ultimately lead to them needing more help.23 Of course most people would prefer not to have weaknesses. Our upbringings and our experiences in the world have conditioned us to be embarrassed by our weaknesses and hide them. But people are happiest when they can be themselves. If you can be open with your weaknesses it will make you freer and will help you deal with them better. I urge you to not be embarrassed about your problems, recognizing that everyone has them. Bringing them to the surface will help you break your bad habits and develop good ones, and you will acquire real strengths and justifiable optimism. This evolutionary process of productive adaptation and ascent—the process of seeking, obtaining, and pursuing more and more ambitious

10 Practical Strategies to Improve Your Critical Thinking Skills and Unleash Your Creativity In today's rapidly changing world, the ability to think critically and creatively has become more important than ever. Whether you're a student looking to excel academically, a professional striving for success in your career, or simply someone who wants to navigate life's challenges with confidence, developing strong critical thinking skills is crucial. In this blog post, we will explore ten practical strategies to help you improve your critical thinking abilities and unleash your creative potential. 1. Embrace open-mindedness: One of the cornerstones of critical thinking is being open to different viewpoints and perspectives. Cultivate a willingness to listen to others, consider alternative opinions, and challenge your own beliefs. This practice expands your thinking and encourages creative problem-solving. 2. Ask thought-provoking questions: Asking insightful questions is a powerful way to stimulate critical thinking. By questioning assumptions, seeking clarity, and exploring deeper meanings, you can uncover new insights and perspectives. Challenge yourself to ask thought-provoking questions regularly. 3. Practice active listening: Listening actively involves not just hearing, but also understanding, interpreting, and empathizing with the speaker. By honing your active listening skills, you can better grasp complex ideas, identify underlying assumptions, and engage in more meaningful discussions. 4. Seek diverse sources of information: Expand your knowledge base by seeking information from a wide range of sources. Engage with diverse perspectives, opinions, and ideas through books, articles, podcasts, and documentaries. This habit broadens your understanding and encourages critical thinking by exposing you to different viewpoints. 5. Develop analytical thinking skills: Analytical thinking involves breaking down complex problems into smaller components, examining relationships and patterns, and drawing logical conclusions. Enhance your analytical skills by practicing activities like puzzles, riddles, and brain teasers. This will sharpen your ability to analyze information and think critically. 6. Foster a growth mindset: A growth mindset is the belief that your abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work. Embracing this mindset encourages you to view challenges as opportunities for growth, rather than obstacles. By persisting through difficulties, you build resilience and enhance your critical thinking abilities. 7. Engage in collaborative problem-solving: Collaborating with others on problem-solving tasks can spark creativity and strengthen critical thinking skills. Seek out group projects, brainstorming sessions, or online forums where you can exchange ideas, challenge each other's thinking, and find innovative solutions together. 8. Practice reflective thinking: Taking time to reflect on your thoughts, actions, and experiences allows you to gain deeper insights and learn from past mistakes. Regularly engage in activities like journaling, meditation, or self-reflection exercises to develop your reflective thinking skills. This practice enhances your critical thinking abilities by promoting self-awareness and self-improvement. 9. Encourage creativity through experimentation: Creativity and critical thinking often go hand in hand. Give yourself permission to experiment and explore new ideas without fear of failure. Embrace a "what if" mindset and push the boundaries of your thinking. This willingness to take risks and think outside the box can lead to breakthroughs in critical thinking. 10. Continuously learn and adapt: Critical thinking is a skill that can be honed throughout your life. Commit to lifelong learning and seek opportunities to expand your knowledge and skills. Stay curious, be open to new experiences, and embrace change.