Tolerant of others, strict on yourself.

“In others, look for virtue.  In yourself, look for vice” – Ben Franklin

Look for the good in others, and look for areas you can get better in your own life.

If you do this, you will have many friends who are happy to see you, and you will be humble.  And after years of trying to fix or neutralize your flaws and improve your strengths, you’ll be pretty damn good.

It’s easy to see how living this the other way around can get you in trouble. 

If you “Looked for the flaws in others and the virtue in yourself”.  That’s not going to work out too well.  People will hate you as you think you are better than them (you aren’t) and you won’t be trying to get better.

In looking for virtue in others and vice in yourself, what you are doing is holding yourself to a higher standard than everybody else.

Meeting a higher standard than others is a good way to become better than average.

Don’t you think?

To be a success, self-discipline is necessary

You know what the right thing to do is to move yourself toward your goals, to be a good citizen and neighbor, to be healthy, and to advance your career.  But who is making you do those things?

As a grown adult – nobody.  You want to drive your life/health/career/relationships into the ground? Go ahead.  Nobody is there to tell you to eat your vegetables and take the garbage out.  

Only you can do that.

Some of us do the right thing when we feel motivated.  But motivation comes and goes.  Most days we do NOT feel motivated.  We want to do things that are pleasurable and that take the least energy.  

This is where self-discipline comes in.  Self-discipline is doing the things you know you should do, even when you don’t want to.

It’s called SELF-Discipline because only you can do it.  From the inner…comes your outer results.

You can look at someone’s life and tell the amount of self-control and self-discipline they have in various areas of their life.  You can tell what they value and a lot about their character.

“If you do not have the ability to discipline yourself, the seeds of greatness are not within you.”  W. Clement Stone 

Can you do the right thing day after day even when you don’t feel like it?

What are you good at?

When people are not good at anything, they do not feel good about themselves.

For example, we can be average at work, and not great at some things, but when we step on the basketball court, we are good, and we know it.  Guess what we find ourselves doing a lot? Playing basketball.  And we get even better.

When we are good at things, we feel good about ourselves.

What are you good at?

That is probably the source of a good deal of our self-esteem.

We all have the talent and capacity to be good at something. 

Find it.

Heal ourselves, heal everything around us

This is something I found true.

If I am troubled, I live in a troubled world.

If I am unclear, the world is too.

If I am hurting, sick, heartbroken, angry, or bitter, the world will reflect my ailments and be ugly or cruel or cloudy.

When I get well, the world does too.

As we heal ourselves, we heal each other.

As we heal each other, we heal the world.

After all, nobody talks to me more than I do.

I am my world.  You are yours.

When you heal, your world does.

When you come together, your world does too.

You go first.

Fear and faith

Both fear and faith ask you to believe in something you can’t see. 

You choose.

This is an important choice.  It could mean everything, and probably will.

Fear or faith?

You can’t change the people around you

You can’t change the people around you, but you can change the people around you.

If the people around you are holding you back, bringing you down, and not supporting your moving forward, change the people around you.

Your reference group, the people you associate with, has a LOT to do with where you end up.

Who are the five people you spend the most time with or listen to the most?

Hate hurts you

If you hate someone, then you are defeated by him. – Confucious

You know it’s true.  Hate is hurting you more than the other guy.  It’s eating you up inside, costing you valuable energy.

It’s draining your happiness.  

Let it go.

Stop tuning into voices that say you are right, reinforcing your hate.

Let it go – for your own sake.

Evolving beyond your friends

Most of us have friends who are about like us.  Same interests, same vocabulary, same habits, and same level of success.

We like people who are like us.  

The problem is they keep reinforcing a life that we already know the results of when we live it.  If we want more and better, we have to learn new things, talk in different ways, and take different actions.  We will have to give up (some or all) of the old activities in favor of something new that yields better results.

Many of our friends won’t like that.

They don’t like it when you evolve beyond their own comfort zone.  They don’t like it when you do what they are unwilling to do but know they should.  They don’t like it when you are doing better than them and making them look bad.  

There are exceptions.  A real friend who truly cares about you will want you to do better even if you leave them behind.

If you have friends who want to hold you down for their sake, you don’t have to tell them you are right and they are wrong, or say goodbye.  You don’t have to say anything at all.  Just stop hanging around them (so much).

You have a life to build.  Move forward.

And don’t worry, you’ll make plenty of new friends on the way up.

Believe and achieve.

You have to believe good things are possible for them to energize you.

If I told you that you could be one of the top people in your field with all the things that come with it, if you want that and believe it, you will pursue it.  You will do the things necessary to get there.  Your belief will push you through setbacks and obstacles.

If you do not believe me, and/or you do not want it, there is no hope for you.

“Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” – Napoleon Hill

Do you have a big goal and BELIEVE it is possible for you?

Master yourself first

“In reading the lives of great men, I found the first victory they won was over themselves.” – Harry S. Truman

If you cannot control your lower impulses, control your attention, think before acting, delay gratification, and do what is right instead of what is easy and what feels good, then you will always have trouble of your own making.

You are your enemy/obstruction/problem, or your best friend and instrument of progress and good.  

Your choice.

Nothing will advance your success and fulfillment more than self-mastery.

Imagination

“Logic will get you from point A to point B, but Imagination will take you anywhere.” -Albert Einstein

Think.  Dream.  It’s the origin of innovation, creation, and adventure. 

Why not? 

Imagine – go nuts.

Being good, and doing good.

Being good is a start.  First do no harm and do not be a burden.

But DOING good – that is something different and better.

“What greater bliss than to look back on days spent in usefulness, in doing good to those around us.” – Dorthea Dix

What good needs doing?  

You’re up.

Long term goals guide the short term ones

If all your goals are short-term, you won’t accomplish anything big.

What do you want to be long-term?  Who do you want to be?  Where?  Think in decades.

Then create short-term goals that are part of the long-term ones – steps to getting there.

Meaningful satisfaction is not built overnight.  A decade-driven strategy lets you build purposefully – one intentional action at a time.

Did you fall for that?

Happy April 2!

Consistency is important.  It makes little things have a big effect long-term.

If you smoke one cigarette, you will not die.  If you smoke a pack a day, you will die from it one way or another.

If you read one book, you will not be rich from it.  But if you read one of the right books every two weeks for 20 years, you will surely be very successful.

This month marks the 17th anniversary of Think Daily!

Besides reading Think Daily each morning, what do you do consistently?

Energy Management

We talk about time management, and we talk about diet and physical fitness.  If we add those three things together we get energy management. 

We all have the same amount of time.  What we really want is to feel good and have enough energy throughout our day to do what we want.

We don’t want to wake up tired.  We don’t want to run out of gas at 4pm.

If we feel good, we can take on anything.

Life is good when we feel good.

Lately I have been optimizing for energy management – not how much weight I lift, how far I run, or how much of ________ I can endure.

I want to feel good and have energy each day.

Part of having energy, besides eating well, exercise and good sleep is identifying the people, activities and places that energize you and prioritizing them.  Having a goal that turns you on generates energy.  

How much energy do you feel these days? 

What can you do to have more energy and feel good each day?

Earners are learners

If you want to earn more, you have to learn more.

I developed a habit of reading or listening to voices of value, and it meant everything to my career.

The things I learned had a very long shelf life – I could use them for decades or forever.

Do you learn everyday?  

From who?

Take Full Responsibility

The very top people took full responsibility for their life outcomes.  They knew that if they blamed others, they would give their power away to them. 

They looked at what they were doing to cause the results they were getting, and if they didn’t like it, they controlled the controllables and changed what they were doing, not doing, who and where they were hanging around, and what they were learning and paying attention to in order to change the results they were getting.

They didn’t wait for anyone to “let them”.  They just didn’t let anyone stop them.

Your life and your situation – take full responsibility.

Protect your attention

Human attention is the most heavily hunted, mined and traded resource on the planet.  

If you are on social media a lot, you are the one being bought and sold.

I see people who spend nearly all their time looking at their phone, and when the phone goes away, they are lost.  They have nothing of their own.  They don’t know what to do.  They have no goals of their own to work towards.  They have become a product of the machine, and lost some percentage of themselves in the process.

When I go on YouTube, I can feel myself getting sucked in.  I can be there for hour after senseless hour.  What I want is mixed in with what I don’t.  It takes a lot of self-control to resist.

Can you sit alone for two hours by yourself, no device, with a pad or journal and some pens and work towards your better future?

Can you walk outside without a device and engage with the world without it?

It’s a start.

Protect your attention.

What brings you joy and happiness?

Let me give you an unexpected flip on the question from author Michael Singer –

“If you can feel joy and happiness all the time, who cares what happens on the outside?”

Nothing can bring you joy and happiness for long.  Only you can do that.

Lying creates stress

Lying creates stress. 

You have to worry about getting caught. 

You have to remember the story you made up and all the versions you told to different people.  

You have to lie again to keep it going.

Your subconscious eats at you (hopefully) because it is not who you are, or want to be.

This all creates stress.  That is how a lie detector works – it does not sense a lie, it senses stress.

You don’t need to lie.  Just tell the truth and stop worrying about your ego and how you look. 

Most people don’t think about you much at all anyway.  You being human will be no surprise to anyone, and you being honest will be refreshing and appreciated.

Don’t lie. 

It’s not worth the trouble or the long-term expense.