Ultimate Power

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Ultimate Power

The Power Moves

© 2018 Lucio Buffalmano – for The Power Moves

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author or publisher (except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages and/or show brief video clips in a review).

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T ABLE

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C ONTENTS

Foundations of The Mind The 7 Building Blocks of Ultimate Mental Power ................................................ 4 1. You Can Change - It’s not pep talk: it’s science..................................................................................... 4 2. Growth Mindset - The fountain of eternal growth ............................................................................... 5 3. Antifragile Ego - The source of eternal, unassailable confidence ............................................................ 8 4. Locus of Control – How to get at the helm of your life ..................................................................... 13 5. Finding Your Passion – How to live a passionate life .......................................................................... 14 6. You Only Need to Do your Best – The art of outcome independence ................................................... 17 7. A World of Opportunity - The art of optimism................................................................................... 18 How to Change The Science of Change & The Practical Steps ................................................................... 20 Finding & Leveraging Your Life Purpose ..................................................................................................... 35 Achieving Confidence.................................................................................................................................. 39 The Science of Achievement – Part I .......................................................................................................... 45 The Science of Achievement – Part II ........................................................ 60Error! Bookmark not defined. Fueling Your Mental Power ........................................................................................................................ 69 Literally, What to Eat .................................................................................................................................. 69 Increase Mental Power ............................................................................................................................... 73 The Last 5% ................................................................................................................................................. 73 The End ....................................................................................................................................................... 78 Resources .................................................................................................................................................... 79

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The 7 Building Blocks of Ultimate Mental Power First things first. John Maxwell in The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth calls “the law of the ladder” the idea that everything rests on the foundations of who you are. I like that idea a lot, there’s much truth in it. This section will outline the basic building blocks that form the psychology of an empowered human mind. These are the foundations upon which all else builds. Note: To get the most out of it don’t skim through list and nod, or maybe tell yourself “oh, I knew this”. You must internalize this stuff and believe it in your core. It might take a while. I am still working on this stuff after years and I know I’ll keep working on it years down the road. You should have the same approach. This is not a goal that you reach and be done with. This is a constant daily deposit you make to the power of your mind. Let’s start:

1. You Can Change - It’s not pep talk: it’s science There’s no point in embarking in self-development unless you believe you can change. Now this might sound obvious as everyone these days talks about change. So much so that “learning and improving” have become popular buzzwords. As with most buzzwords though most people are only paying lip service to the idea. You must believe instead in your core that you are malleable and no matter where you are, no matter how you suck, no matter how far back you’re starting…. You can always change and improve. Most of us know already that we can change and improve... In some areas. But we don’t apply that same concept to all areas of our lives. pg. 4

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The firs task then is that you must believe you can change anything. It’s not prep talk. It’s just simply true. • • •

Wherever your current station in life, you can move ahead However you feel, you can change it Whoever you are, you can change it and improve it

That’s the message that most self-help literature, in different format and styles, espouses in mass. More on the practical steps of changing later on. Scientific literature on changing There is strong scientific support and evidence coming from science and research that the brain is malleable and that is stay malleable for our lives (two book titles as examples: The Brain That Change Itself; Phantoms in The Brain).

2. Growth Mindset - The fountain of eternal growth Carol Dweck in her research outlines two different approaches people have to skills and talent: • •

Fixed mindset Growth mindset

Fixed Mindset people believe their qualities are set at birth and carved in stone. You are who you are, and there isn’t much you can do about it. People with a fixed mindset shy away from challenges because losing means “they’re bad” and that would hurt their ego. Remember: these guys believe in innate talent, not in learning, so the outcome defines who they are. Of course then they often shy away from challenges as the stakes are super high: their identity and self of worth are on the line! You are naturally outcome dependent when your ego, self esteem and reputation are at stake. When fixed mindset people fail, they make a lot of excuses both to themselves and to the world to “cover up” their lack. Growth Mindset people believe their can learn and grow. They seek learning and growth opportunities because failing does not define them. To the contrary, failing is the only way they can improve. Have you ever read all that glorification of failure in self-help literature? When you 100% embrace a growth mindset you won’t need to remind yourself all that stuff because it becomes who you are. Don’t get me wrong now: failure can still be painful, of course, but the key is that it does not define you. Failure does not make you a failure with a growth mindset. pg. 5

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People with a growth mindset are naturally grittier and determined because struggling doesn’t mean you’re being bad, it means you’re getting good. Dear readers, I can’t stress this enough. The self-help literature in large part misses this train, but this is the most important building block of your development, of your success and even of your inner personal strength and mental health. When you see people making excuses for their failures or and quitting, you will know it’s because they haven’t developed a growth mindset. With a growth mindset your whole life will change for the better. To develop a growth mindset, read and learn about it, repeat it yourself every day, use neuro association changing (more on it later) build your self-esteem around being a learner (more on it later) and stay away from fixed mindset people. Note: growth/fixed mindset are on a continuous scale and you can have a growth or fixed mindset depending the field you’re in. Your goal is to move as much as possible towards the growth side in as many realms as possible. Other Advantages of Growth Mindset Vulnerability: it’s easier being vulnerable with a growth mindset because you don’t need external validation. Confidence: once you believe that, given enough time, you can become great anything, you are naturally more confident and self-reliant. More resources: • • •

Summary of Growth Mindset by Carol Dweck Mindset by Carold Dweck on Amazon How to develop a growth mindset

Extreme Growth Mindset I would recommend you adopt an extreme version of growth mindset. Such as, that you can do anything you have seen any other human being doing. Why couldn’t you have been that guy hopping on the moon in 1969? Sure, that’s in the past, but you could have done it too. …. The only thing, the only thing stopping you from becoming a billionaire, winning a world tournament of anything, being the first man on mars or simply being the best mom/dad ever… Are skills. pg. 6

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Repeat it to yourself over and over: the only thing standing between you and anything you want to accomplish is time and a skillset. When you internalize that, your questions change. It’s not anymore “can I do it”. It’s:

What do I need to learn to execute it Growth Mindset VS Motivation An important note here: it can be easy to confuse growth mindset with the style of the motivational self-help guru screaming on a stage that “yes you can”. There is nothing wrong with motivation, but it’s not real growth mindset as motivation quickly fades away. A growth mindset is an internal, deeper change that lasts for ever. Motivation indeed often comes with a short-term bias of “let’s go do it”. Growth mindset comes with the knowledge that to become whatever you want to become, it’s likely that you’ll have to fully dedicate yourself to it. Likely for years. And possibly for decades. But when you internalize the growth mindset, an awesome switch within you happens. Your confidence grows. Your self-esteem grows. And you stop envying top performers! Envy indeed is a fixed mindset feeling happening when top performance makes us feel inferior. But as a person with a growth mindset you admire top performers for their hard work and dedication. And still, at the same time, you stop thinking of them as if they were gifted aliens. Suddenly you realize there are no aliens. Just people who trained longer, harder and better than you did. And with the same kind of discipline and training in a field of your liking and which suits your characteristics, you can achieve similar results. It’s freeing, really. And I can tell you from first hand experience: I used to be jealous. And now I’m on my way to almost getting rid of jealousy 100% from my life. And it’s beautiful. And now onto to the other big building block of awesomeness:

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3. Antifragile Ego - The source of eternal, unassailable confidence The antifragile is an idea I have come to cultivate for a while and further developed thanks to a guy called Tom Bylieu, an amazing fella and currently my favorite author in the self-help industry. Antifragile as defined by Nassim Taleb in the same name book doesn’t mean strong and it’s not even a synonym of strong. Strong is still defined by its breaking point, while antifragile means that the more you attack it, the stronger it gets. You want to build an identity which is antifragile and you want to derive your self-esteem from it. What do I mean by that? Let’s get there step by step. 1. Fragile Ego: The Default State Most of us take pride (meaning: derive their self-esteem) around two typical identities and one event. The first identity is being good at something (meaning: their ego/identity is “I’m good at X”); the second is “being good in general” (meaning: “I’m a great fella”). The even is usually achieving a certain goal (meaning: getting that job, making X money, sleeping with that person etc. etc.). Chances are you feel good when someone tells you’ve done a terrific job, or when you won a competition. And if you’ve done it many times in the field, then you start defining yourself as “being good at X”. Now don’t get me wrong: there is nothing bad with feeling good after a win. The problem starts when that win, that compliment, or that belief that we’re good at X comes to define us -such as, when it becomes part of our identity- and when we start building our self-esteem around it. Why is it bad? Well, think about it in light of the growth VS fixed mindset. Being good at X becomes a bit like adopting a fixed mindset. You start becoming defensive about your defining qualities, because failing at them would mean showing, to you and to others, that you are not good after all. That means that you get worried about failing. That means you stop experimenting, and trying and learning and growing. That means you slowly start building your own mental straight jacket. Not good. And what if something happens and you’re not good anymore? Or if you have to switch field, or a bunch of new and more skilled people enter the scene? Identity crisis! The solution?

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2. The Antifragile Ego When you build your ego around antifragile qualities you shield yourself from plateauing and from ever becoming defensive of the status quo. Here are some examples of antifragile identities: •

I’m an eternal learner

•

I go for it and do my best no matter the situation

•

Winning is great, but the real art, poetry and beauty is in the struggle

•

My worst moments are my best learning experiences (and fuel to achieve more)

•

I love reality, even when it’s not good. Especially when it’s not good

•

I’m a gritty mofo and I never stop

See what’s the beauty of these? The more difficulties you throw at them, the more chances you have to validate yourself. Your pride grows when you move forward. These identities you pick for yourself are aligned with eternal self-development (and greatly increase the likelihood of your success). Real Life Example 1: Now the theory can be a bit complex if it’s the first time you hear about this topic. No worries, here it is how it translates in real life. Both are real examples from my life: Some months ago, I started martial classes. I was the smallest and of course I was a newbie. The first lessons I’d go back home beat and beaten (pun intended); I also don’t speak the local language and most people there don’t speak English, meaning I was isolated and I had troubles understanding the instructor. When there was training with a partner, I would be the last one to be picked. And that was on the lucky days the number of participants was even. On odds days I wasn’t picked at all. It was painful having to join groups of two knowing that they weren’t really happy to have me there. I wouldn’t have lasted there with a default ego or with a fixed mindset. I have seen plenty of guys who were just like me and who never came back after their first or second lesson. pg. 9

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But here is how I picked an antifragile ego instead. I would tell myself: 1. I am proud of being the guy who sucks and still shows up anyway. 2. Every time I show up in this difficult environment I am tempering my character and growing my personal power 3. I am proud every time I show up as I can prove to myself my strength of character Going to training was still not easy, but every time I showed up I was proud of myself and it felt good. Sometimes I’d listen to the instructor without understanding much of what he said. But instead of fearing to muck it up during the exercise I’d smiled to myself thinking “I showed up”. And the pride, self-esteem and ego boost I got after each training was -and still is- huge. I could tell myself I was indeed a tough mofo, even -and especially!- if I was beaten up or picked last. And that did get me over the hump. I would still rather write and read than go to training because of personal passions and dispositions (more on it later). But now martial art training has become a normal part of my life. All thanks to the antifragile ego. Analysis: See how that change of ego and the connected self-esteem changed everything? • •

“I’m the guy who sucks”: no shame for me being bad! “But shows up anyway”: my ego is all in the struggle and showing up, which naturally pushed me towards what I wanted!

There’s no glory in being good. The glory is in the struggle Real Life Example 2: I am a member of Toastmasters, a public speaking network. On the day of my first speech I visited to the bathroom 4 or 5 times. No, I’m not irregular. I just was terrified. My performance was good-ish (for a first speech!). But that didn’t matter. Because if I had failed, I would have been proud simply for having done it. Especially if I had miserably failed I would have told myself I was proud and I would have rewarded myself emotionally for it. And I’d have gone back for more (exactly what I did when I blacked out a few speeches later). Compare it to Luke, another Toastmasters member who had his first speech a few weeks later. He was obviously nervous, a bit shaking and sometimes forgetting his words. When he was done I went to congratulate him for having taken the plunge. I really meant it. But pg. 10

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he wasn’t happy. He had the face of a beaten dog. Luke was making excuses and felt embarrassed for his “failure”. Can you see how he was being the victim of a fragile ego there? “Being good” is how that guy fed his ego. And “not being good” and showing nervousness was failure for him. You know what happened after? Luke never came back. It pains me to think of the story Luke now tells to himself. “I am shit at public speaking. I embarrassed myself”. And that way, he scarred himself for life when it comes to public speaking (and lowered his confidence and self esteem for ever). This is a real tragedy to me. All my sympathies to people still mired in that fixed mindset trap, but let that be a warning story for you: don’t be that guy. Take pride not on doing things perfectly, but in having the courage of doing them even when they’re far from perfect. Real Life Example 3: I feared water and could not swim. I was also embarrassed by it and went through my life for a long time with a big unease around beach holidays -even just talking about beach holiday, just in case someone would ask-. I was also embarrassed to learn: showing up to a kids’ pool in armbands as an older man… Brrr! And even underperform a 5 years old by learning slower -and what if I couldn’t learn at all?But thanks God by then I had learned the process. I rewarded myself for showing up and I rewarded myself for learning new things no matter how stupid I’d look in the process. As a matter of fact, the more stupid I’d look, the more I could reward myself! Going to the pool was so incredibly, positively exciting. Coming out of it was even better: I was overjoyed and couldn’t wait to go back. Result? Life changing. I used to have nightmares of floods and high water sometimes.I still have them sometimes. What has changed is how they affect me. While before I was always a victim hoping for the best but paralyzed by fear, now I look for solutions. Analysis: Based on the above examples, could you consider applying these techniques to some of your longest standing fears? Tackling that new challenge or fear can be an exhilarating, life changing experience. It will reset your mind to what’s possible and what you can do. Really empowering to the core. pg. 11

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3. Align Antifragile Ego with Your Goals Same as in the examples above, make sure that you align your new ego with whatever will move you towards your goal. Then make aligning your identity with your actions your obsession. Feel great when you follow through and punish yourself emotionally -ie. feel bad- when you don’t. And you’ll naturally move towards your goals. Here are some example: •

I’m the type of gal who always moves towards her goal

•

I ruthlessly prioritize to get where I need to be

•

I’ll eat ramen for the rest of my life if need to be as long as I can keep pursuing my dream

4. Self Esteem benefits When our behaviors are in sync with our values and what we build our self-esteem around, we feel great. You could call it “framework happiness”, such as that you don’t need anything else outside of your own control to make yourself feel great. Further Reading: •

Antifragile ego (how to develop one)

Keep Control & Stay King of Your Castle As you build your own ego, make it a point to choose identities and rewards that you can control. Give others as little access and control as possible on your self-esteem and reward system. You will know you’re getting there when people praising you will feel nice but it won’t be a major source of pleasure and recognition for you. Enemies of Antifragile Ego The antifragile ego is easier to stick to when you are a beginner. But you must stay vigilant as you get better. For example, at the time of writing (2018) I am now the president of that Toastmasters club of example 2. Now I get compliments for “being good”. I guess you can see the risk already? The risk of course is that you switch back to a fixed mindset and you revert your ego to “being good”. Since I am aware of all these psychological inner working, I can catch myself slipping down that fragile road. And that’s what you must start doing as well. pg. 12

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The lesson here is that the better you get, the more watchful you need to be to keep a growth mindset and an antifragile ego.

You’re an eternal learner. Only that can keep you awesome. The Multi-universe Theory Here’s a quick fix help that I love to keep you grounded even as you improve and experience some major wins: the theory of the parallel universes. In brief this theory says that instead of one outcome happening from a thousand different possibilities, all outcome happen in different universes. When you win, remind yourself that chance helped you too and there are plenty universes with the exact same you and the exact same event where you did not win. And when you lose, what are you sad about? It was always a possibility and it doesn’t mean you’re bad. After all, there are countless universes where you did win. As we will see, your task is not necessarily to win, but simply maximize universes where you experience a victory (ie: increasing the chances of winning, which basically means “you only need to do your best”). Note: if you read a popular book such as The Charisma Myth the author Olivia Fox Cabane says that it’s best to focus on self-compassion rather than self-esteem because self-esteem is dependent on others. That is not true with an antifragile ego, because it breaks the link between self-esteem and external recognition.

4. Locus of Control – How to get at the helm of your life The locus of control is the degree to which people believe that they have -or don’t have- control over their life. The locus of control determines whether you feel like the man at the helm of your life or like a castaway in a rudderless life boat. These are the two types of locus of control: • •

Internal locus of control External locus of control

Internal locus of control means that you believe you are in control of your life. External locus of control means you believe life events determine the course of your life and you don’t have control over them. pg. 13

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Brian Tracey says that people with an external locus of control feel helpless, are sadder, get angry easier, and are more prone to depression. On the other hand, people with an internal locus of control are confident, energetic and optimistic. They even tend to be healthier. Locus of Control at Work I particularly liked another idea from Brian Tracy that links well to internal locus of control. Top performers, he says, never see themselves as employee. They either see themselves as owner and responsible to get the job done across the whole value chain, or they see themselves as self-employed. They accept 100% responsibility and see whatever happens in the company as affecting themselves. He says that all opportunities will open once you start taking full responsibility for your organization. An internal locus of control also means you will make less excuses. As a matter of fact, you can help yourself to develop an internal locus of control by refusing to make excuses. Extreme Locus of Control Some authors espouse the idea that “everything is your fault”, which is an extreme version of locus of control. Tom Bylieu for example says that if a meteorite were to hit earth and kill his wife, he’d accept responsibility for that. Now that’s extreme internal locus of control :). But the reason you go that far is not to feel bad if something wrong happens. You do it so you can stay in the driver seat no matter what. You might think it suck to take the blame for everything going wrong, but it doesn’t really. You feel equally bad when things go wrong, and you blame someone else. Maybe you feel worst as a matter of fact. Extreme ownership instead is empowering, because the key is:

“it’s my fault…. And I can change it Anything else, is victim mentality.

5. Finding Your Passion – How to live a passionate life

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Now the big one here. “how do I find my passion” is one of the biggest FAQ in the world. And its own popularity might make it seem like a trivial, child-like question. But it’s not. Finding your passion is an important question to answer. Not just for your happiness and level of fulfillment in life, but also, more practically, for your actual success. Gretchen Rubin indeed says that enthusiasm is more important to mastery than innate ability. It’s because the single most important element in developing an expertise is your willingness to practice which makes sense, as we will see-. Let’s see a few different approaches to find your passion in the literature then: 1. Just Work at It Cal Newport, author of So Good They Can’t Ignore You says that few of us have a burning desire that will lead us steadfastly towards what we love. Even many wild successes out there that we believe followed their passion didn’t actually follow their passion. Steve Jobs for example went into tech and computer looking for money but what he was interested in was Zen life. Newport turns the table on passion and he says that it’s not passion that leads to mastery, but it’s mastery that leads to passion. As we get better at a craft, as we stick with it and learn the ins and out and know the industry and the people as see our reputation and abilities grow, that’s when our passion also starts taking over. He links his approach to Drive by Daniel Pink. Drive says that work satisfaction comes from autonomy, competence and relatedness (feeling close to colleagues and teammates). And they, says Newport, are all consequences of getting good at something (you don’t need a boss when you get good, competence grows with mastery, and relatedness grows when you stay longer in a field). Basically, in the nurture VS culture debate, Newport would take the “nurture”. And it makes a lot of sense, in many ways. But I think this approach is limited. I believe we do have some areas that we like more than others and we should heed those initial predispositions. Let’s dig deeper from other authors then. 2. Robert Greene: You Know It and Feel It Robert Greene stands more on the innate side of the equation and provides two approaches to find your passion: pg. 15

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Rediscover your passion as a child Whatever it is you feel viscerally about while you do it

Look at Your Child Passions When I first read Mastery by Robert Greene I disagreed with him. I didn’t think he was right saying you can discover your passion going back to your childhood. As a kid I wanted to be a paleontologist. Today I don’t want. And I have rarely met anyone who is happy doing their dream job as a kid. So I concluded, maybe Greene is wrong this time. But now I think I had misunderstood. It’s not so much what you said you wanted to do as a kid. But what you actually did. Today I am passionate about what I do: writing, reading and analyzing social interactions. And it was all pretty much in my childhood. I loved writing and my primary school teacher saw a writing future for me -albeit he said journalist-. I devoured comics as soon as I could read and then moved to books. And as an introvert with no innate social skills I was fascinated by anything which could codify people interactions -I still remember how excited I was about a body language article on a magazine called Focus-. Hence, I believe it’s very worth it that you look at both what you often did and what you really loved doing as a child. Nature + Nurture: Growing Your Passionate Seeds However, the approach I think makes the most sense is that of Angela Duckworth in Grit. Basically Duckworth combines the nature and nurture to make it a unified approach. She says that too many people believe that finding your passion is a bit like getting hit by a bolt from the sky. Which leads them down the wrong path. They don’t stick to what they like because they have overblown, wrong assumptions about what it’s like to “find your passion”. Which is similar to what happens in the romantic aspect of life. Some dream of a knight on white horse, but the reality is that there’s no perfect mate and that love most often grows instead of hitting you through a Cupid’s arrow. Your passion is similar: you grow it.

You don’t find your passion. You develop it.

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Steps to find Your passion When you find something that you like, stick with it, even if you just see just small interest. Your brain will always crave novelty, but as we’ve said interest and passion grow over time and they can start small. If you stick with it and your interest grows, you might be onto something. 1. Try different things which seem interesting to you Angela Duckworth says that in her interviews most people found their passion exploring many different interests they had. Do the same. There’s an element of randomness which can make predicting not so straightforward. So don’t be afraid of just trying things. 2. Pick one which is particularly interesting for you Avoid whatever you hated or didn’t give you any good vibe. Pick one that piqued your interest instead. 3. Proactively develop that interest Strive to go get better, deepen your knowledge, ask questions and look for answers. 4. Deepen it over a lifetime Keep going. Passion is all about mastery: it will grow over a lifetime as you strive towards the top. This It was the same path that I have read Amoruso undertake in #Girlboss. She says: once you find your passion for what you love, become an expert at it.

6. You Only Need to Do your Best – The art of outcome independence You only need to do your best. Not the impossible, but nothing less than your best. I loved that quote and mindset, coming straight from Ryan Holiday’s masterpiece The Obstacle is the Way. This is a crucial mindset because it allows you to both maximize your potential and to take the pressure off the results at the same time. Here’s wat Holiday writes: pg. 17

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You will do your best no matter what. Not the impossible, just your damn best. You will look at all possibilities with a never give up mentality. Piece by piece, you can be slowed down but not stopped. You’re an unstoppable force indeed. And you appreciate the struggle, in itself, as a welcome occasion for you to prove yourself. If your best doesn’t lead you to win, that’s fine. Ryan Holidays says that’s another opportunity for you. The opportunity to learn and practice new virtues, even if that is only acceptance or humility. When to do your best? Every time. Everything you do matters, says Ryan. Whether that’s making smoothies or bar-tending as you save up money. Only entitled assholes think they’re too good for their current station in life, says Ryan. The Swing Outweighs the Shot This is the same mindset that Ray Dalio refers to as “paying more attention to the swing than to the shot”. The shot is the result, is there can be many variables that go into it which you can’t control. The swing is your action. Your focus should always be mostly on your own actions, the part you can control (and improve!). As a matter of fact, I recommend you start developing your ego and self-esteem around your ability to focus on the swing. How to develop this mindset Reward yourself with pride every time you do what you’re supposed to do. And emotionally punish yourself when you don’t, even if you end up lucking onto a win. Don’t be proud for that win and don’t celebrate it. Reward yourself for focusing on the swing more than on the shot. The more you keep rewarding yourself for the swing, the more automated it will become. These days, whenever the day is nearing to an end and I know I’ve done my best that day, I’m brimming with joy which lasts until the day after. Even when I didn’t “win” anything.

7. A World of Opportunity - The art of optimism Peter Diamandis, author of Bold is someone who puts lots of emphasis the importance of looking at the world with an opportunity mindset. Indeed there are two different ways people can look at the world and events around them: pg. 18

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Looking for (and focusing on) threats Looking for (and focusing on) opportunities

Instinctively, I’ve often mostly focused on threats. I’ll show you what it means. In primary school we studied or talked about current issues facing the world. For example: desertification, oil depletion, population increase etc (funny how most “issues” always seemed to be on the negative BTW!). And while most of those issues flew by all the other kids, they hit me more deeply. I used to think: • • •

God deserts are advancing at X square meters every year… That means the whole world will soon be a desert! Peak oil is coming soon.. Will I even be able to drive my dream motorcycle? Overpopulation… Soon our resources will be over, the next wars will be about water… We’re screwed!

See where I’m going? Everything was seen in terms of dangers and threats. And while that’s a good mindset for a risk manager maybe, it’s not a good mindset for most anything else. Certain not for a happy life and most certainly not for an empowered mind. Because most people with a threat mindset don’t focus on fixing those issues. They focus on defensiveness. People looking for opportunities, they instead look at problems and think how to turn them around. And often while also handsomely profiting on the way to fixing it. Every time you look at the world with your threats goggles on, do this instead: • •

Think of creative ways to solve it Think of something positive about it (example: no more oil no more pollution, awesome; global warming mean less harsh winters; etc.)

There are no threats in this world, only realities to which we can adapt, react or… Actively change and exploit.

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H OW

TO

C HANGE

The Science of Change & The Practical Steps Self-development, by its very nature is about improving and changing into something better. This chapter deals with the art (and science) of changing.

Neuro Associative Conditioning This is a big one in Tony Robbins teaching which I have then seen replicated across different authors. Neuro associations are patterns of emotions and behaviors that you fall into “naturally”. Some of them are positive, but some of them are negative and you might want to change them. Tony Robbins presents the system in slightly different ways depending on which product of his you consume. But overall, the system he recommends has the following steps: 1. Use pain and pleasure as leverage The idea is that we move towards pleasure and escape pain. Pain and pleasure are the major drivers of behavior for Robbins. To remove a negative neuro association, think and write down how much it’s costing you to increase pain. What it has cost you for years, what it’s costing you now and what it will cost you in 5 years, 10 years, 20 years. How much life and joy will you miss? Make the pain so strong that you hate it in your guts, that you need to break free. Then do the same for pleasure: how will your life be better once you change? For your and for the people around you? Make the pleasure so intense that you want to move forward. 2. Interrupt the limiting pattern The idea is that the more we repeat something, the more we execute it in auto-pilot (which is true in neurological terms, read The Brain that Changes Itself for example). So every time you catch yourself reinforcing the negative neuro association through thinking or action, you immediately have to stop it. Robbins uses the metaphors of scratching a record: the more you scratch it, the less it will be able to play. Interrupting the pattern is like scratching that record. pg. 20

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The more outrageous your pattern interruption, the better (for example the woman who catches herself eating too much could stand up and say “I’m a pig”, and then stop eating). 3. Create a new empowering alternative and link pleasure to it It’s important to create an alternative to the neuro association you want to change. For example, if you wanted to stop smoking, you can replace it with running. If you wanted to stop thinking money is bad, you replace it with money is awesome. A pleasurable activity will “stick” more easily. Not necessarily pleasure in the activity itself though: it could be, for example, the pleasure of doing something despite the pain and difficulties (the pleasure of sticking to your identity we mention in the Antifragile Ego for example). 4. Condition Repeat it time and time again until it becomes second nature (more on forming habits later). Self-Sabotage We don’t have a clear conscious awareness of all our neuro associations. Some of them are indeed unconscious. They might have been instilled by our parents or by society, but since we absorbed them without any textbook, we never consciously realized we internalized them. For example, you might link in your mind that money is bad because your parents thought so, but you might not be fully aware that today you’re unconsciously repelled by money. But if today your goal is to launch a profitable company, that neuro association might lead you to selfsabotage. It’s not always easy to tell, but you are self-sabotaging yourself if you keep falling back on hold habits as soon as you make progress. Or if you find extravagant ways to undermine your own success just as things were starting to go great. Tony Robbins says that to find out if you’re self-sabotaging, list down all that you think and feel about a certain topic. Then check each item and make sure that they are all consistent and pulling you in the direction you want to go. If not, address them with the method above. My experience changing neuro association The method of changing neuro associations sounds great per se. But I haven’t had runaway successes with it. Repeated (and sometimes grueling) action against the habits and associations I wanted to conquer pg. 21

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helped more. And meditation also helped me more. But it might be different for you: try it and lemme know how it goes.

Act Quickly Mel Robins in The 5 Second Rule explains that our mind will always come up with excuses not to make us move forward and take risks. Her recipe to conquer fear and get doing is simple: start whatever it is you need to do before your mind has even time to make excuses. When you catch yourself second guessing, count down from 5 to 0 and then get going. Counting will move you from your reptilian brain that only sees threats and will activate the prefrontal cortex. Then make the countdown your new habit.

Only Swap the Middle Charles Duhigg in The Power of Habit says that the easiest way to change a habit is to change as little as possible. Such as, you keep the cue -what makes you start the habit- and you keep the ending -the reward you get- but only change what happens in the middle. For example, imagine that your cue is getting sugar craving, your habit is eating a piece of chocolate and your reward is feeling happy for the sugar. You will not try to suppress the craving, which is too hard if it all possible. But you will heed that cue by eating something else. Something healthier. And then find a way to make yourself feel good, for example congratulating yourself on your newly found health habit. To stop eating too much for example Tony Robbins started pushing the dish away with still food on it while playing his favorite song. So that he would link pushing the dish away to a jingle he loved.

Changing Who You Are Identity drives behavior, hence changing identity is a great way to changing our actions. In the previous example about eating chocolate, you would change your identity to “I am a healthy person and I keep healthy habits”. Tony Robbins says that our identity is simply the beliefs we use to describe ourselves. But since we can change our beliefs, we can also change our identity. And here are the steps: pg. 22

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1. Define your current identity 2. Decide who you want to be 3. Repeat to yourself who you are – “I’m the type of person that… “ 4. Act in accordance with the person you want to become. Change life and friends accordingly 5. Commit to your identity by letting everyone around you know about the new you (this leverage the power of social influence, as Cialdini also explains in Influence) Changing Who You Are with Behavior I’d like to stress further the important of changing behavior to change your own self-perception. Dr. Daryl Bem of Cornell University first came up with the the self-perception theory in 1972. It was a radical theory at the time. It said that we come to know who we are by watching our own behavior, and many experiments later confirmed the theory. That means that if you force yourself to act a certain way for a number of times, eventually you will come to see yourself in a different light. I’d like to stress here though that it’s important you also link pleasure to the new behavior as willpower by itself might not be sufficient.

Changing Values Your values will also influence your actions and how you feel about yourself (depending on whether or not you behave according to those values, for example) Tony Robbins propose you: 1. Take stock consciously of what your values are 2. Decide which values to keep and which to add 3. Put them in order of importance My Experience Changing Values My personal experience looking at my values is a great success story. When I reviewed and listed my values I realized that among the top ones, possibly at the very top, was freedom. Freedom was such a huge one for me that I deeply hated anything limiting it. I “have to go to office? Have to?” Fuck that, where’s my freedom. I “have to honor my word and go meet my girlfriend? Have to??” Perfect way to make me show up grumpy. When I realized what an handicap it was, and how rationally silly it was, I dropped the freedom-trap by pg. 23

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reminding myself that I AM free. I CAN do whatever I want. When I do something it’s because I choose what I’m doing. Almost immediately, I was overcome by a sense of liberation. From wanting to be free I became free. I am still a free-wheeling man and I still love freedom. But it’s not holding me back anymore because I consciously realized that I am always free.

Changing Beliefs You can change beliefs with the same technique of neuro associative conditioning. Or you can look for anything that runs against your beliefs. Your beliefs rest indeed on your experiences and reference points. But if you look for times that your experiences contradict your beliefs, then you will realize that your belief is not true. Alternatively, you can create different references with new actions and experiences. For example, I used to believe I wasn’t good with people and social settings. But now that I have lived in different countries, made friends from all sort of backgrounds, showed up in places full of strangers and made friends, I wouldn’t even be able to believe that even if I wanted. Shock Scramble Therapy Ed Mylett says that a quick way to re-set your mind is to look and do anything that runs against your beliefs in rapid succession. Your mind will be blown away about what you’ve just done and will never go back to what it was. This one of the reasons why Tony Robbins had people walk through charcoals. While most people thought it was impossible to do, they’d come out of the that fire walk elated and mentally open to what other beliefs they could smash through. Self-Talk Tom Bylieu uses self-talk to reinforce his own beliefs. For example, if he gets lucky he could tell himself that he got lucky. But that doesn’t provide him with any value. So instead he tells himself that opportunity meets preparation, so he praises his hard work and reinforces in his mind that he is a hard worker.

Changing the Past Tony Robbins says that we can change our memories by reliving them differently. It’s like playing a record (like we’ve seen earlier): if we scratch it enough times, it will simply stop existing in its original form. Relive what hurt you imagining the people in it burping while they rebuked you. Or imagine growing pg. 24

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huge and slapping them into outer space while feeling great about it. Or imagine it completely different. Do it enough times, says Robbins, and your original memory will be gone, replaced by the one you prefer.

Creating New Habits As we’ve previous quickly seen Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit, places a lot of emphasis on the importance of cues and rewards when building new habits. There are 3 key steps when it comes to creating a new habit: 1. Create a cue 2. Identify the reward 3. Find the craving that will encourage and drive the habit loop The key to building the new habit is to have your brain expect the reward. The reward can be the sense of accomplishment once the habit has been completed.

Cravings are what drives habits. Craving The craving is an important element one should not forget. Without craving you rely purely on willpower and memory and your make your life much harder. The craving-reward system is why checking Facebook and your mobile are so addictive and irresistible. If you can create a similar craving for a new healthier habit, you will make your life much easier. Simple Cues The more obvious you make the cues, the more difficult it will be for you to avoid or miss them. If you want to start the habit of running in the morning for example, Covey recommends leaving your running clothes on the floor next to your bed. Easy cue to get started ASAP. Reward Make that reward as powerful as you can. You can add something more tangible to the simple reward of having done it. For example, after running you might consider giving yourself a breakfast treat. Replacing Bad Habits with Good Ones Removing bad habits is harder than replacing bad ones with healthier ones. Tynan, author of Superhuman by Habit, says that good habits aren’t any more difficult to execute, it’s just harder to make them stick. pg. 25

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As Brian Tracey said:

Bad habits are easy to form and hard to live with; good habits are hard to form but easy to live with. James Clear, author of “Atomic Habits” says that to effectively change your habits you should focus on changing your identity first. But since identity and actions are interlinked, he then proposes very practical steps to changing habits and it looks like this: Step Cue Craving Response Reward

Good Habit Make it obvious Make it attractive Make it easy Make it great

Bad Habit Make it invisible Make it unattractive Make it difficult Make it terrible

Dropping a habit of too much sugar consumption then would mean to remove all cues of sugar around your house (ie.: no coca-colas, no candies to offer guests). Picking up a habit for exercising could mean laying out the gym clothes in full view in your room. Making the response to smoke difficult would be to live in a house where you can only smoke outside but living in a region where outside is freezing. And making the reward feel great for not smoking could mean enjoying a sumptuous dinner and a wine on weekends. Will Power Let’s face it: sometimes bad habits have an intrinsic stronger rewards than goe ones. That’s why they become habits for so many of us in the first place. Good habits cannot always count on such an intrinsic, natural pull. And that’s when willpower comes in handy. Willpower is particularly useful at the beginning, when you must make that habit stick -once the habit is automatic it actually preserves willpower-. And the good news is that you can increase your willpower. Laura Vanderkam, author of What the Most Successful People do Before Breakfast compares willpower to a muscle. Like a muscle, it can grow over time, but it can also fail after you’ve used it too much. pg. 26

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That’s why Vanderkam recommends you start your day with the most important habits, so that you will leverage your willpower when it is at its strongest. Restoring Willpower There are many things you can do to restore willpower. Some of them are: • • • • • •

Glucose restores it (but avoid sugar!) Prayer Meditation Social bonding Sleep Gratitude

Is Willpower Really Finite? Recently the research literature seemed to support the view of willpower like a muscle or an engine fuel: it ends when you use up a lot of it through a phenomenon called “ego depletion”. Ego depletion, championed by Roy Baumeister, has been reigning in psychology for the past two decades. It has been challenged recently though and there doesn’t yet seem to be a final answer (time of writing: 2018). My feeling is more yes than no, but I will suspend final judgement on this for now. I will tell you what you can do whenever you’re not sure though. I recommend that you simply choose to believe whatever moves you quicker towards your desired result. In the absence of final proof, you will believe that you can regenerate your willpower even after you’ve used it a thousand times across the day. Now that’s what bending reality to your will really means. Starting a Habit: Consistency In the early days of establishing a new habit consistency is key. Tynan says that skipping one day reduces your chances by 5%, but missing it twice in a row reduces your chances by 40%. Skip it three times, and you’re starting over again. But this time, with lower self-esteem and less confidence you can do it as you’ve built a negative reference. What do you do then when it’s really hard for you to execute your new habit in the first month? Well, it turns out that doing something, even if far from perfect, is a good plan B. Indeed not skipping it is more critical than making it perfect.

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Once a habit is truly natural and automatic to you, it’s less critical if you skip a day -but don’t use that as an excuse!-. Resolution chart In The Happiness Project, Gretchen’s yearlong plan to change her life to become happier, she found her “resolution chart” to be the most effective way of sticking to her goals. She says the biggest secret was to keep using and reading her resolution chart. With constant use her goals kept flashing through her mind constant. “lighten up”, “give proof of love”, “wake up 15 minutes earlier” were daily reminders that helped her follow through. And the more she followed through, the happier she was. She also says that a resolution is different than a goal. A resolution is ever ongoing, a constant challenge. And if you fail you always have tomorrow. It’s a good mindset and something you might also want to implement (I personally don’t because my goals are so clear today and my life so structured that I don’t really need to write anything down). How Long Does It Take? The million Dollar question: how long does it take for a new habit to become automatic? Research shows that on average it took 66 days for a new behavior to become 95 percent automatic (that’s why one of Tai Lopez program was called 66 steps). However, don’t let average (or marketing!) fool you into the wrong belief. Average means little and the range was immense. On the low end, some people achieved automaticity in as few as 18 days. To some people, it took as long as 254 days. That means you’re going to have to stick with your new behavior for between 18 and 254 days. But here’s another caveat: people in that study were only adding one new behavior to their life. The behaviors in this guide are many, deep and life changing. As we’ve said in the beginning, this is a life project. But don’t worry though, the fact there is no end makes it even more beautiful: the journey in itself is the reward.

Small Habits Change the World: The Compound Effect & The Slight Edge When focusing on changing habits the mistake that most people do is to think that they need to revolutionize their lives quickly, all at once.

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And that’s not only a bad mindset but, often the receipt for failure. With that mindset bite more than they can chew and except huge changes in the short term. But it doesn’t work that way. What Jeff Olson says in The Slight Edge is that the difference between success and failure lies in the small daily habits. Darren Hardy in The Compound Effect explains that the small daily action compound over time to eventually give you the huge results. And the funny thing is that since they work with a compounding effect, success is often likely to hit very quickly. One day you were toiling your ass off, the other day you’re reaping the windfall. This is so true that I can’t stress this enough: the real formula to success is in the small, daily habits and decisions that we take on a day to day basis. The day to day then compounds in the long run. Non-successful people seek the big break, or the lottery ticket victory. The successful -and far happierpeople seek success in the self-discipline of the day to day actions. Note: finally, I want to warn you here of a very important aspect. You still need to measure your progress with actual metrics. Your own work is not a metric for outcomes and goals completion. This why I don’t like Gary Vaynerchuck: it leads people to think that “working hard” is all it matters, which becomes a badge of honor and a metrics in itself -and which is often unproductive anyway, read Deep Work later in this ebook-. If you want to achieve specific goals, work and your habits are not metrics. You need other KPIs.).

Motivation: A Compelling Future A great way to stay steadfast and to push yourself is to create a compelling vision for your future. A compelling future is the vision of something that excites you and that you naturally want to move towards to. Think of how great things will be when you will have built your business, will implement the healthier habits or when you will be able to do X. Then let that vision drive you. You can visualize to make that compelling future even more real and you can stop and think about it every time things get hard.

Change How You Feel I remember as a kid the first time I read Marcus Aurelius in one of those diaries with a quote on each page: pg. 29

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“Choose not to be harmed—and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed—and you haven’t been.” It immediately stood out among dozens of other quotes. It felt as if this genius quote was turning the table on life. And it was putting the power square within ourselves! I ran to tell my parents about it, but they barely noticed. And it took me a couple more decades to fully realize the power of that concept. Tony Robbins says that the ability to choose not to feel bad or down, and to choose how to feel at any given time has been his main driver to success. He calls it “the ability to manage your state” and proposes several methods for changing it: 1. Move differently There’s a connection between how you move your body and how you feel. And by changing one you can influence the other. When you want to feel confident and happier for example walk briskly, stand taller and smile. You will not be able to be sad anymore. -“motion creates emotions” 2. Change your focus You perceive what you focus on and you feel what you perceive. Instead of focusing on whatever negative happened in your life, focus on everything positive which happened to you. If nothing awesome happened to you, focus on how the negatives could turn into positives, or what positives you will eventually make happen. 3. Change your questions Our questions determine what we focus on and the answers we get. We often fall into a loop of bad questions, especially when something negative happened. Such as “why me”, “how could have I been so stupid”. And then you come up with a bunch of reasons why you’re stupid. Nonsense! Ask yourself “how is this the best thing that has ever happened to me” or “how can I leverage this” or “how can I turn this around into a positive”. This technique is also called reframing. Keep asking those questions over and over and eventually you’ll come up with uplifting answers. 4. Make a list Make a list of all the things that give you a certain positive feeling. Then when you want to feel a certain way, just do those activities or think about them. pg. 30

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5. Change your words The words we use to describe our states also have a major effect on our moods and feelings. Instead of telling yourself “I’m beside myself in anger” you can say “I’m getting a bit frustrated”. Happiness Happiness is a very specific emotions that so many of us seem to be after. I have noticed however that people into self-development seem to be less concerned about happiness as compared to achievement. That’s one of the reasons why I won’t go deep into happiness here, but as a very quick refresher: 1. Align values with action When our values are not aligned with our actions we suffer and our self-image tanks. It’s difficult being happy for a long time when we have a bad self-image. So change your values, your actions or both. 2. Align dreams with achievements If the life we have is not how we want it, we live in a perennial state of discontent. Change either your life blueprint, your life or both. 3. happiness cannot be pursued, it must ensue As Viktor Frankl explains in his masterpiece Man’s Search for Meaning happiness cannot be directly pursued, but it must ensue by something else, and ideally something life-encompassing. A life goal, the man you are becoming, the business you are building. Added bonus if it helps the people around. Gratitude Gratitude is another big one in the self-help literature. Brene Brown in The Gifts of Imperfection says that gratitude is not the feeling following a positive experience, as many think. Gratitude is something we practice and that will make our life happier. Gratitude gives us the power to choose joy and feel joyful whenever we want. I particularly like how Brene applies gratitude to the daily small joys of life. Practicing gratitude means feeling glad for a walk back home on a sunny day, sharing a meal with your partner or tucking your child to bed. Gratitude will give you a more positive outlook on life and is likely to also make you more effective. The Changing Mood Training I particularly loved an idea from Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. He proposes that everytime you are off from how you want to feel, then you should make it your exercise -or game, call it however you preferto get back to a more empowering and resourceful state. pg. 31

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I warmly invite you to take up this exercise as a daily priority. Over time you will realize that indeed you can master your state better and better, quicker and quicker. It’s life-changing.

Facing Fears Virtually every single author in self-development stresses the importance of doing what we fear and stepping out of our comfort zone. Tim Ferris, author of the The 4 Hour Workweek uses a similar method to the one recommended by Dale Carnegie in How to Stop Worrying and Start Living. These are the steps: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Determine the worst-case scenario Accept it as “not the end of the world” Think how you can prevent, turn around or mitigate the worst-case scenario Think and take stock of the upside

Chances are the upsides are much bigger and more likely to happen than the downsides. And chances are that the you can cap the downside while keeping the upside. Mark Divine, author of The Way of the Seal believes that we all tend to underestimate ourselves and that we are all capable of doing twenty times more what we think we are capable of doing. Here’s what he says (I paraphrase for brevity): ”Comfort imprisons us through the fear of suffering. We shy from what can hurt us, not understanding how much this pattern debilitates us and keeps us from experiencing life to the fullest. Define the comfort zone and get the heck out of it!" I leave you with a quote from Brian Tracy on facing fears:

Do what you’re afraid of every day and the death of fear is certain

Overcoming Fears Sometimes changing means not simply facing something that worries us, but something that we fear on a deep, visceral level. Call it, if you want, an anxiety disorder. How to deal with it then? Exposure therapy, such as doing and staying in near contact with what we fear has been proven to be an effective method. There are three ways to go about it: pg. 32

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1. Flooding Flooding is the technique where you deal with what you fear at the extreme end of it, all at once. For example, if you’re afraid of water, you’d jump into the deep end of the pool -or in the ocean-. Flooding has some advantages in the sense that when successful it can cure the fear at once, or powerfully reduce it very, very quickly. However flooding is NOT for every individual and should be used with caution if you’re tackling it alone without a good therapist or an experienced supervisor. The risk is that you will run away from the stimuli instead of facing and only worsen your fear. The risk is also that of “scarring you” and developing an even bigger fear. 2. Visualization From the safety of your room, you can visualize yourself doing and getting near whatever it is that you fear. You can do it while with meditation you put yourself in a calm state, showing your brain you can control it. Or you can visualize it while you put yourself in a confident state and then switching to what you fear from that powerful state. Tony Robbins says that overcoming fears is about taking resources from where they are abundant and moving them to where they’re needed. 3. Incremental Exposures A less risky way compared to flooding is that of starting small with repeated, incremental exposures. Such as, it’s best if you “dip your feet”, little by little. To keep the water analogy, if you’re afraid of water you don’t get dropped in the middle of the ocean to overcome your fear. You start in the baby pool, with water up your ankles. You repeat it as often as you can. Then two days later you go up your knees. Then five days later up your belly button. Once you are comfortable submerging your head, you can keep pushing your limits by attempting the first swim (with life vest and whatever gear you need). Step by step, you’ll learn to swim.

Step by step, however small but consistent, you’ll run rings around the world.

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L IFE P URPOSE Finding & Leveraging Your Life Purpose By life purpose I am referring to an overarching reason that drives most of our actions. Call it a purpose, a goal, a dream or whichever you prefer, but it’s something you deeply want, you believe in and which fulfils you deeply. Having a meaning for life is key to your level of success, dedication and fulfilment in life.

Get a WHY Simon Sinek in his wonderful book Start With WHY explains a WHY in this way (I paraphrase): WHY is what you stand for. The purpose behind it all, the reason why you get out of bed every morning doing what you do What you do and how you do it will change because they are the manifestations of your bigger goal. The WHY instead stays fixed for most of your life. Sinek says that the very successful companies, those with thousands of screaming fans, they all have a clear WHY. Purpose VS Passion This might be the right place to differentiate between the passion we talked about earlier and the purpose. The two often overlap naturally, but they’re not the same. You can be passionate about something and love doing it, but it’s not necessarily your purpose and your WHY. And you can have a WHY and strong purpose but not necessarily enjoying it. For example your purpose could be saving the world from pollution and plastic but you might hate all of the activities related to it and hate that it takes you away from your family. But you do it anyway simply because you feel it’s your duty to do it. Or you can love food (passion) without necessarily making anything connected to food your life purpose (WHY). However, as you look for your WHY, it’s best if you can also be passionate and in love with most of the activities related to it. pg. 35

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Choose Your WHY The literature does not provide clear directives on finding your WHY. But this is what I have found helpful for myself and the people I have coached: make your own list of what you like and are passionate about (passion and likes come before WHY). Then pick the top 3 passions. Then elect one of them which is either your biggest passion, or one that all other passions build towards. Example: I have multiple life passions, among which: learning and developing myself as much as I can, especially when it comes to social skills and self-empowerment; expand my comfort zone; reading & writing; explore and have fun. I picked my WHY as something that is not directly a passion of mine but which is connected to most of my passions: raise the world’s overall life joy and fulfilment by increasing people’s skills (and ridding the world of abuse with those same people’s skills). The passion for understanding and analyzing social dynamics, improving socially, reading and writing, they are all table legs for that WHY. Filter Actions Through Your WHY Once you are clear about what you stand for, you should filter everything you do and everything you say yes to through your WHY. If it doesn’t help you accomplish your WHY, you should probably say no. If it doesn’t move you forward towards you WHY, you probably shouldn’t do it. And if it doesn’t serve your mindset to achieve your WHY, you probably shouldn’t believe it.

Energy for Life: Sex Transmutation This is something I have never shared before but which has been a huge game changer for me. Sometimes you can have a passion or something you’d want to pursue. But you lack the full dedication and energy to put behind it. That’s how I often felt. There were many things I liked, but none I would start and pursue. In the end, it was because I subconsciously put something else first: women. Women and sexual conquest was one of my top priorities. That didn’t really do much good for my life and neither for many of the women I crossed paths with. Then I read Think and Grow Rich. Napoleon Hill explains that sex energy is the biggest driving force behind any accomplishment. But it must be transmuted from desire of sex into a different form of desire to drive action. Then, and pg. 36

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only then, it can be the driving force of a genius (note: these are Hill’s words, I’m not implying I’m a genius. As you can understand from this guide you shouldn’t put too much emphasis on IQ anyway). If this is your case, you might want to consider putting “socializing” and women on a (slightly) lower priority so you can channel that energy into your creative endeavors.

Overcoming the Fear of Your Dream Fear of our dream? What does that even mean? Give me one minute and we will explain. If you have an idea of what your WHY or life dream or life purpose is -however you want to call it-, chances are you might have not acted on it (yet). Why? Steven Pressfield in The War of Art and later Seth Godin in Linchpin explain that most people don’t pursue and act on what they really want because of an internal resistance we all have. The internal resistance is our lizard brain, one of the more ancient part of our brain that usually, unless you consciously fight it, overpowers our more evolved brain (neocortex). Our lizard brain stops us from pursuing anything “different” or “risky”. That’s because our lizard brain is not bothered by us living or not living a fulfilling life or living or not living up to our potential. Our lizard is only worried by one thing: keeping us alive and risk-free. Of course our lizard brain is not serving us well today’s society -and might have been doing a disservice in any society as a matter of fact-. To pursue your dream, you have to battle your own internal resistance. That’s why Pressfield book is called “War of Art”: you have to wage war within yourself to unlock your true potential. How do you do that? How do you beat the resistance? Here is how: •

Always refocus on your dreams instead of your fears

Whenever you’re afraid, think of your dream instead of your fears •

Fully commit yourself to your art (treat it like a full time job)

Commit yourself to what you want to really do. Even if you have a full time job, treat that full time job as giving you the money to pursue your real dream. Live and breath your WHY, always think of how to advance it and never stop pursuing it. •

Accept that doing art also entails waging war against the resistance pg. 37

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It’s not you! You’re not “strange” or “weak” for being afraid. Every artist is afraid of chasing their dreams. Accept is as the normal experience of doing something awesome. •

Embrace your fear: fear shows you the way

And here is the clincher: if you are afraid it’s a good news. It means that you are really going after what you really care for. Whenever you smell fear, like a shark smelling blood, that’s your sign you gotta move forward. •

Stay persistent and organized in the face of fear and resistance

Finally, as we talk in this guide as well, visualizing your dreams can backfire when you face issues and when you’re about your daily grind. Commit to your goals and dreams, but even more… Commit to your daily grind!

The Purpose of Life The goal of this guide is eminently practical. But there since we’re discussing about personal purpose, it might make sense to quickly brush on the purpose of life. Nobody as the answer to that question. Some author says it makes no sense to ask yourself that question while some others espouse religious values. I particularly like Victor Frankl here. He says the point is not you asking life what’s the purpose of it. It’s life asking you that question and you coming up with the answer. According to Frankl the main sources to find meaning in life are: 1. Give back to the world with your work or creation 2. Experiencing life or love 3. The attitude we take to situations and suffering outside our control The last point is particularly interesting. A survivor of concentration camps, Frankl says the people who survived found a meaning in their suffering or a reason to keep going. Some of them for example swore they’d live to make sure something like that would never happen, or clung to life thanks to their drive to publish or finish their creation.

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ACHIEVING CONFIDENCE Confidence! Almost everything you want to improve on in this world, there’s someone telling you that confidence is the key. I don’t fully agree -we’ll see more on it later-, but that doesn’t mean confidence is not important. It is. P.S.: I have taken a quick overview on the top results of Google searches for “get confident”. And I have to say all the pages I have checked are pure crap. So let’s see how to get this damn confidence.

The Indirect Way Confidence is similar for what we have previously seen for happiness. It’s unluckily you’ll get there making a beeline and “trying to get confidence”. Confidence will more naturally and more reliably happen when you get to it indirectly, as a result of other actions, many of which we’ve talked about already. Some examples: • • • • • • • •

Antifragile ego (first and foremost) Growth mindset (second) A clear purpose (when you don’t care about all the rest you’re naturally charismatic) Aligning ego, values and actions (strong self-esteem) Managing your state Asking yourself the right questions Building and maintaining positive habits Get great at something -anything really-

Here are a few more pointers I liked in the self-help literature:

Cut TV & Social Media Brene Brown in Daring Greatly talks about our culture as a culture of “never enough”. Everything it promotes is made out to look amazing, from the TV stars to our Facebook feeds where people race to look better and richer than what they really are.

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And they all make us feel as if our lives are not as good and we are not as good. That culture, my friend, is bankrupt. Everyone in that race is in a truly rat race. Until you have the strength to look at who’s (supposedly) “better off” than you are without taking even the smallest self-confidence hit, I invite you to fully cut out TV and social media. As a matter of fact, cut out TV forever and keep social media mostly to keep in touch.

Celebrate That You’re Not Special Lots of self-doubt is born out of the idea that we’re special. But sometimes the world doesn’t always see it that way. That friction between what we think we and the reality causes low self-esteem. Of course you will keep working towards getting what you want and deserve, but at the same it will help tremendously if you also drop the entitlement mindset. As Mark Manson says in The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck once you accept you’re normal, it’s liberating. And instead of focusing on proving to yourself and the world how special you are, you can get busy to actually becoming special. Yes, I don’t want you not to be special. I want you to become special, but the best and healthiest way to do that is by thinking you’re not special. And to stay with that mentality even when you will get all the rewards of this world.

Accept Mundanity The life of a Rockstar seems awesome. Yet what most of these guys do is sitting around in some train, plane and car being shuffled around from city to city. Then rinse and repeat. Most Hollywood actors repeat the same scene over and over until the wee hours and could never really become free of their job by automating or delegating. I’m not discrediting those professions: they’re awesome. What I’m getting is that no matter who you think is living a special life, most of the times they’re actually doing repetitive, mundane tasks. When you accept that your life will be average and mundane at least a lot of the time, you will eliminate another common source of insecurity. The insecurity that someone is being awesome while you’re not.

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Manson explains that once you accept the mundanity of life, you will be relieving yourself of the pressure to succeed. And once this pressure has gone, you will boost your confidence, feel happier, more vibrant and more alive. And at that point, you can also start focusing on becoming successful from a place of non-neediness.

Incantations Many authors recommend that you repeat to yourself whatever it is you want to believe. Brian Tracey for example recommends you to repeat “I’m the best, I’m the best, I’m the best”. I did try some years ago and if you say it with conviction it did give me a boost of self-confidence indeed. However, I’m not a big fan of incantation and “boosts”. Boosts are flimsy and short-lived and in my opinion you want something more resilient. Without a solid core incantations leave you like a drug addict waiting for the next fix. People relying on incantations see the short-term “power” of pumping their music up and dancing around. Or they stand in front of a mirror yelling how great they are. Picture yourself people doing that, and you get how incantations are the self-help equivalent of the drug addict (or of the idiot). Bad for Low Self-Esteem From a more scientific point of view, incantations don’t work with people with lower self-esteem (Joseph et al., 2003) and can actually achieve the opposite effect. People with low self-esteem don’t have a high opinion of themselves and hence don’t believe in their own words of encouragement. And when they keep “incantating themselves” they might end up discounting everything else they think and say. Better Alternative: Questions and Answers A better alternative than repeating to yourself how good you are is instead to ask yourself questions and then forcing yourself to come up with answers and example of why, indeed, you’re not that bad at all 🙂 (Senay Et Al., 2010). For more info you can also checkout my article “self-help myths”.

Live by Your Ideal Self Brian Tracy adds that our happiness and self-esteem is heavily dependent on how closely we live to our values. Our self-esteem is to be found in the friction between our ideal self, such as the person we want to be, and the way you see yourself in the present time. pg. 41

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Tracy says that unsuccessful people have no values or sacrifice values for short term gains. But if instead you stay true to your values you will gain with tremendous confidence. Review your rules: to make sure you are meeting your values and goals, you might want to review your rules to meet those values. Your rules tell you if you are living by your values, standards and goals. For example, if you want to be successful, your rule might be “make 10 million dollars and have lower than 9% body fat”. And you’ll always be unsuccessful and unconfident with such super strict rules Change your rules to meet them a bit more often instead so that you can be happier and more confident.

(Avoid) List of Achievements Many authors, including the often cited here Tony Robbins, also recommend you keep a list of all your achievements to prop your confidence. I strongly disagree with that though. The practice does work, but it links in your brain that confidence equals what you have ve achieved. That’s not antifragile. That’s actually very fragile because it ties your confidence to achievements. But what if you fail tomorrow and you lose it all, then how could ever be confident again? It’s best to base your confidence on something antifragile instead as we’ve seen before. And then you can also use this technique but only with antifragile qualities. For example: • • •

all the times you’ve done your best all the times you’ve worked hard all the times you’ve gone for it against all the odds

Stand Up for Yourself Jordan Peterson, author of 12 Rules for Life links self-esteem and confidence to the ability of standing up for yourself, speaking the truth of what you think and, generally, not being taken advantage of. I fully fully agree with Peterson here. You can’t have self-confidence if anyone can walk on you at any time and disrespect you at will. Nothing is impossible, but I also struggle to see how anyone could have much self-confidence and selfesteem under a mental -and subsequently physical- helplessness. It’s indeed crucial to reach a high level of self-confidence that you know how to stand up for yourself and don’t allow anyone to disrespect you or take advantage of you. pg. 42

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Note: this does not include fraud or swindling. Being victim of undetectable fraud should not dent your self-esteem. How do you do it? If you’re not used to it, you need to push your comfort zone. The first time you push back and say no it will be hard. you have to learn to wallow in that discomfort taking pride in it. build into your mind a desire to train yourself to sit in that discomfort. Say no and hold eye contact until it becomes uncomfortable. That’s what’s making you grow brother (and sister). Also read: • •

to be good you need to be bad overcome social anxiety with martial arts

Fix Your Self-Explanatory Styles I knew about self-explanatory styles but since I didn’t suffer from “bad self-explanatory style” it didn’t hit me how crucial they actually are until I read “To Sell Is Human” by Daniel Pink. Here is a self-explanatory styles in a nutshell: When something bad happens to people with a negative self-explanatory style they blame themselves and see no solutions in sight. When something bad happens to people with a positive self-explanatory style they blame the conditions and believe the setback is either temporary or not the world. Explanatory styles work on 3 levels: • • •

Time (positive sees loss and rejection as temporary; negative sees them as permanent) Specificity (positive sees loss and rejection as specific; negative sees them as universal and as big general rejection to their whole work or personality) Personal/External (positive sees loss and rejection as a consequence of the circumstances; negative takes the blame on himself and sees loss or rejection as a loss for the self and a rejection of the self;

People with highly negative self-explanatory style have chronic low self-esteem, are more prone to bouts of depression and they give up more easily. People with positive self-explanatory styles are more upbeat, have higher confidence and are more tenacious.

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If you have a negative self-explanatory style fixing it is so crucial that for a minute I thought about putting self-explanatory styles as N.8 in the 7 foundations of the mind. If you have a positive self-explanatory style you can still choose to selectively enhance it depending on the situation. Just remember that the goal is not to “live in your own reality” and never take the blame. Use that pain when you must make changes or when you’re struggling. Just be careful that you don’t get dragged down with negative self-explanations that are uncalled for.

Do You Actually Need Confidence? It helps, certainly. And if you take all the steps in this guide confidence will become natural to you. It’s probably not the confidence most people think of though, which seems to me is often braggart and showy. The confidence you will acquire is more of a quiet confidence that you can tackle anything. You will see people who are far ahead than you are, but you won’t think of them as anything better than you do. Not in any confrontational way as in “I can be better than them”. More in a sense of “I respect that. And it’s within me to achieve the same”. This type of confidence is also more resilient to failure. While you won’t think of yourself as amazing after a win, you also won’t feel down the dumps after a loss. When No Confidence However, I also don’t believe in confidence as a cure all magic. Indeed, it’s best if you train yourself to act and do what you gotta do no matter how confident or nonconfident you feel. A baseline level of good confidence while looking at reality for what it is, is much better than blanket confidence. Some of my best wins in life came when I had zero confidence of succeeding. And the most shocking failures in my life came when I bragged out of unfounded confidence.

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T HE S CIENCE

OF

A CHIEVEMENT

We will divide this section of achievement in two sections: the mindsets and the practical tools and skills.

PART I - THE MINDSETS Now: how to achieve greatness? As someone said, the struggle is guaranteed, the success not. But there are many ways with which you can improve the odds. The mindsets deal with the emotions and beliefs that help us get the most out of ourselves. Let’s start with the key mindsets, feelings and emotions of getting the most out of yourself.

Grit (Passion + Perseverance) For many authors, grit is one of the most important mental element of success. And it’s not just me, of course. Angela Duckworth in her book Grit makes a compelling case for grit being a fundamental -and possibly the most important- element for success. In her “achievement equation” grit -through effort- appears twice: Talent x Effort = Skill Skill x Effort = Achievement She says that we all quit too early, too often. But to experience achievement we must wake up day after day and stay at it. Grit has two components: passion and perseverance. Angela Duckworth says that passion often gives us the idea of a quick infatuation, but in high achievers passion is about consistency over a long period of time. Think of it like this: if passion is love, grit is staying in love. Angela Duckworth says most people quit because they get bored, because they don’t think it’s worth it or because they can’t see themselves ever making it. pg. 45

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She then says there are four specific psychological assets that the grittiest people have and that serves to counter those poisonous beliefs. They are, in order: 1. Interest: Passion starts with enjoying what we do. You don’t have to enjoy every single part, but you enjoy it overall 2. Practice: You must devote yourself to improving in your focus area zeroing in on your weaknesses. “Whatever it takes I want to improve” is a common trait among gritty people 3. Purpose: The conviction that your work matters, that it’s connected to the well-being of others. Interest without purpose is hard to sustain 4. Hope: Hope encompasses all three stages and is what will keep you going when things are difficult and doubts arise. It’s not hope to get lucky, but the hope of the optimistic that finds explanations for failures which are temporary and specific VS the pessimists who sees failures as permanent and pervasive. And the beautiful thing? You can learn all four elements. You can learn to become interested, you can build the habits of practice and discipline, you can develop a purpose and you can become a hopeful person.

Achievement is waking up day after day in our stubborn pursuit Optimistic Self Talk Eric Barker, author of Barking Up the Wrong Tree says that optimistic self-talk increases the power of grit. Optimistic self-talk is, quite simply, being optimistic, and it lowers the bar to keep going. If you can tell yourself “it’s fine, I’ll show up tomorrow, do my best because that’s all I gotta do and I think it’ll work out”, then you will show up. Or at least, you’ll show up at a much higher rate than if you told yourself “it’s gonna be hell, I might not make it”. After the navy SEALs training school focused on teaching optimistic self-talk the recruits improved their pass through rate by 80%. What does it mean to you? Do make an effort to talk to yourself optimistically: it’s what makes you show up every day and endure.

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Satisfaction in Dissatisfaction Angela Duckworth says that one of the elements of highly successful people is being dissatisfied with their current station in life. But, that’s the key, they are satisfied being dissatisfied.

Need for Success you get what you need, not what you want. If you want to achieve greatness, it can be helpful if you make a need out of it. This is a concept many authors stressed, from Grant Cardone (Be Obsessed or Be Average) to Tony Robbins. I particularly liked Tom Bylieu’s take. Bylieu believes he will be successful because it’s such an impellent need for him. The ego is out of the way and he’s relentlessly looking for the right answer and for people who know more than he does to make it possible. That’s the spirit.

Reward Struggle I think a key nugget of information that might slip by since Angela Duckworth didn’t drill down on it is that the experience of working hard changes when the effort is rewarded (and not the result!). Therefore If you’re a parent it’s important that you reward your children for the effort. And if you’re an adult you reward yourself for your hard work as that will help you link pleasure -or at least a pleasurable follow up- to hard work. The association that working hard leads to reward can be learned -and should be learned-. Because when we don’t make that association, we tend to fall back to laziness. We human beings tend to preserve energy as much as possible when we don’t see the point of an action. And when we don’t make the association that working hard pays off then, guess what? We will not work hard.

Big Goals Big goals are part of the mindsets of success because they can spur you in emotional ways. Peter Diamandis in Bold says that big setting goals makes us more productive, and that bigger goals outperform smaller and medium ones. Many authors, including Tim Ferris, David Schwartz in The Magic of Thinking Big and Grant Cardone in 10x share the same concept.

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The magic of bigger goals is that they automatically help us shape that compelling future we talked about earlier.

The size of your success is proportional to the size of your dreams

Rage & Dark Side Tim Grover, former trainer of Michael Jordan, explains in Relentless the mindsets of the super achievers, whom he calls “cleaners”. The Cleaners are constantly itching and hungry for winning. When they win, they experience a brief, fleeting moment of satisfaction, but then it’s back again their need for winning. They all have a dark side, he says, a dark side that drives them and that they keep away from the limelight. And rage is also a part of that equation. For Tim Grover flow is rage simmering right beneath the surface. It’s always under control so you might fail to recognize, but what drives the cleaners is rage and the drive to prove themselves over and over. Also Tom Bylieu espouses this theory. He says that being motivated by beauty is not enough. You can still be ambitious, but you will not accomplish as much without also dipping into your rage. Darkness can give you energy right when you need it the most. For example, studies show that people who are put into an angry state can keep their hand in a bucket full of ice for longer than people who are not allowed to get angry. However, you can’t let rage control you or consume you. Tom believes that an 80/20 split is optimal. 80% driven by beauty and 20% when you need that higher gear. Using your dark side These authors recommend you don’t let the do-gooders influence you and don’t try to repress your dark side. Don’t force yourself to forget and forgive, to give the other cheek. But use that anger to fuel you! Same goes for disappointment, self-disgust. As long as you learn that’s a tool you’re using which does NOT define you, you can leverage it. I personally gladly keep within me -and written down too!- many situations that hurt me or pained me. And I think about them when I want that extra motivation. pg. 48

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You want to take it a step further? Here is a few things you can tell you: • • •

Thank you dad for having left me (as you push through that last set) Thank you mom for having told me I’d never amount to anything (as you push yourself to get back to work) Thank you X for having broke up/cheated/rejected me (as you work on your posture, go out to meet new and better prospects & revolutionize your life)

Holding Two Conflicting Thoughts This ties well to another important concept from Bylieu. He says that the most successful people can hold two conflicting thoughts at the same time. For example, you can believe that raging is wrong, but you can still keep using it when you think it will help you. Or you can use any technique or any mindset in which you don’t believe in.. As long as it’s helpful in the moment. And then you will drop it. This is a bit more advanced stuff, but it’s important to keep in mind that you can switch from two different thoughts and mindsets without having to feel like you’re inconsistent. So for example you can put whip yourself into action by using rage and hatred while still being overall a great human being. You simply do it to move yourself closer to where you want to end up.

Journey is the Reward The Journey is the reward is another big concept in the self-help literature. The idea is that you focus more on the journey that on the final victory. Once you can embrace the joy of the journey without worrying of the championship, focusing solely on becoming able of the championship performance, then you are more likely to win, learn and also more likely to have a good time along the way. My note here is that while you want to enjoy the journey, you also want to keep your eyes on the final goal. Don’t stake your identity on the final goal, but you need to keep an eye on it if you want to optimize for it and make the most out of reality’s feedbacks (more on it later).

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Risk Taking (While Capping Downsides) Brian Tracy says that life is of the risk takers, not the security takers. He says successful people base decisions on desires and dreams, underachievers on fear and worries. Tracy says that we are all afraid, but the question is how we deal with it. When you move towards what you’re afraid your fear diminishes, and your self-confidence increases. When on the other hand you let fear dominate you, you are feeding the dragon until fear control all your life. At the same time, I’d warn you that the mentality of risk taking as if you’re going out to take life’s scalp is not the type of mentality you want. Increasing risk for risk’s sake is silly. Don’t go betting your house on anything which has a black or red probability of winning for example: that’s stupid even if you end up winning. Your goal should always be to limit the risks on the downside while keeping all the upsides open, something Richard Branson talks about in Losing My Virginity. Huge Rewards = Huge Risks I would also like to add here not to necessarily be harsh on yourself. Results are not always in direct relation to skills and effort. Here’s what Nassim Taleb says in Fooled by Randomness: risk conscious hard work and discipline leads with high reliability to a comfortable life. Beyond that, it’s high randomness. And this is another situation where you might want to hold conflicting thoughts in your head. While you rationally do know that there’s a lot of randomness in life, you might still want to believe as well that you can control anything in life. And that, in time, you will get where you want to get.

Money is Consequence it’s very popular these days to recommend people they put their passion first and money will come as a consequence. So common indeed it’s almost annoying to hear the latest entries in the self-help industry talk about their will to “share the enlightenment” or some BS like that. However, there’s truth in that. As we’ve seen for happiness and consequence, sometimes the indirect route is more effective.. Peter Diamandis for example divides between missionary and mercenary (not they’re not sex positions :). pg. 50

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Missionary is someone who loves the product and the customers while the mercenary is money-driven. Long term, usually the missionary makes more money than the mercenary and builds better working environments.

Entrepreneur Mentality I particularly liked the book Disrupt You by Jay Samit when it comes to explaining the entrepreneur’s mentality. We don’t have space here to give you all the examples, but here’s how he defines entrepreneurship: It’s looking at opportunities in the obstacles you face, to respond to setbacks as if they were new beginning and, he says, it’s being the silver-lining business. And many entrepreneurs stress the importance of adventure and exploration to expand your horizons and broaden your references. Steve Jobs and Kevin Johnson, author of the Entrepreneur Mind are two such examples.

Approach Reality With Radical Open Mindedness You have probably heard about the law of attraction. The law of attraction says you build your own reality in your imagination and then let the universe deliver it for you. Some of the biggest espousers of the law of attraction even say you should not work on your dreams but just ask the universe. I fully disagree with that and I’m glad there’s Rai Dalio who explains how he achieved runaway success with the complete opposite mentality. In his fantastic book Principles: Life and Work he shares his principle of being in love with reality. He says that reality is your feedback loop. When you bounce your work and ideas against it you will see what works and you can quickly change course if it doesn’t work. If you avoid reality, you are not seeking success in the most effective way possible. It might seem obvious but it’s not. Many of us look at reality hoping to see a compliment, a reward, or to get a good feedback. Or we actually avoid reality when we’re afraid of what it might show us. Learning to love reality instead means to seek that feedback as raw as you can get it, as realistic as it can be, without getting hurt (radical open mindedness principle). And you want people around you to give it to you as raw as it can be (radical transparency principle) while you want to have people around who can also accept it as raw as it can be.

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Love reality. Even when it’s not what you want to hear. Even when it’s harsh and even when it’s painful. As a matter of fact, love reality especially in those situations. Feedback Through Action Tom Bylieu is also a huge proponent of action and feedback through action. He says that the most data rich stream of information is always through action. Decision and feedback through action. That’s the difference between those who will win and those who won’t, he says. Whether it’s win or loss is irrelevant, you gotta constantly move forward through that feedback from reality.

The only thing we need to fear is indecision

Realistic Optimism Now that we have introduce the concept of hyper-realism, I would like to add clarify that this does not mean you should give up optimism. Quite the opposite. A concept I very much like and that goes very well with the idea of “loving reality” is what Jim Collins introduces in Good to Great. Poor companies, he realized, sweep bad news under the carpet and try to lull themselves into the false belief that things are OK. Studying what makes great companies great he realized that they all tackled challenges head on. But even when things seemed to go all wrong, they still retained the unwavering faith that somehow they would make it. And that they would come out winning. Summary: get your feedback as raw as possible. Even and especially when it’s ugly and when it hurts. And take action in a spirit of optimism.

Learn from Failures Learning from failure is another huge staple in the self-help literature (example: Sometimes You Win Sometimes You Learn by John Maxwell). I particularly like Rai Dalio’s approach, again. He says that pain + reflection are our biggest growth opportunities. He believes that making mistakes is like getting a token. You get a token wisdom, and then it’s up to you to derive a principle that will make it unlikely you’ll do that same mistake again. pg. 52

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Look at Yourself as a Machine Ray Dalio recommends you look at yourself from above, as if you were looking at a machine operating through life. I don’t personally love the idea of a “machine”, but it’s a really good mindset to help you make more rational decisions and taking things less personally.

Sharpen the Saw (Only When You Need a Saw!) Always be closing is a big mantra in sales. Similarly, we could say that “always be learning” is the mantra of self development. Stephen Covey in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People calls “sharpening the saw” your continuous investment in your own self development.

Take Care of Your Greatest Asset: Yourself I have to make a note here though. Don’t read for reading’s sake. I agree with Tim Ferris here: try to focus instead of what will be useful for you right here and right now and cut all the rest. I can say this to you from the perspective of a guy who reads a lot. A lot of books, and that definitely includes self-help books, are bloated. And some of them are space fillers which you don’t really need to read in their full version (let’s keep this secret between you and I). What do you do then? • • •

First read a summary -then only if it’s good get the full versionOnly read books when you need them Stop reading if it doesn’t add (immediate) value

Promote Yourself This was a big one for me as I really dislike self-promoters. But I believe Harv Eker is right in Secrets of the Millionaire Mind when he says that the rich are not afraid of promoting themselves.

Overcome the “I Can’t Phase” Tom Bylieu says it’s normal that in the beginning you will feel dumb, clumsy, incompetent and the voices inside your head will tell you that you are never going to succeed. It’s because there can be a certain awkwardness when you’re learning a new skill (and especially so if you haven’t 100% espoused a growth mindset). But when Tom reverse engineered the success he’s had he realized it’s all about accepting that the voices in his head it’s a natural part of moving forward. pg. 53

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The voice will tell you won’t be able to do it and that you’ll embarrass himself. But as you push through and get better and better your goal will seem more and more attainable. Then you’ll reach a point when it will seem easy. And then you’ll look back and be happy you’ve done it.

Learn to React Quickly to Crisis We all think that during natural disaster our instincts will kick in to preserve our lives. Yet that’s often not true at all. The famous “fight or flight” response is actually wrong, the complete model is “freeze, fight or flight”. Most people pick “freeze” and react with a delayed, lethargic response even to disasters, and these people have a greater tendency to perish. But since disasters are rare, evolution didn’t make such a great job at only keeping the “fast responders” alive, I suppose. Anyway, why I am telling you this? Because it’s an important element of mental awareness that we must possess. When disaster strikes, we all have a tendency to waste way too much time. When the disaster is a slow-motion train wreck it’s even worse. Freeze becomes “dawdle” for days, weeks and months. After my last job ended and I had no interest in seeking further employment it took me 4 months, 4 freaking months to launch my website! And I’m a rather driven guy! At the far end of this tendency “dawdle” becomes “lie to yourself for a lifetime”, and that’s how people stay in jobs they don’t like for a lifetime. And this is not the exception, this is the rule! Being aware of this human tendency, you must develop in yourself the urge to take quick and massive action when needed. The first question should be “what must I do now” and then get going. And if you’re being the victim of a slow-motion train wreck, then you can increase the pressure on yourself or commit a stupid and reckless act just to put yourself in a situation where you need to change -ie.: in the example of a dead end job for a lifetime, scribble on a note “I quit” and hand it to your manager-. pg. 54

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This also ties to the “middle class curse”. Measuring the top 2% earners a study found out that 32% had started with a distinct advantage, 52% with a distinct disadvantage and only 16% were from “normal” backgrounds. That’s the idea of “casing yourself pain”: it both gives you the jolt to get going and it gives you heightened motivation. However, I’m personally not a big fan of these “induce yourself pain” techniques unless you really cannot move without. Don’t put yourself at a disadvantage unless you are sure that it’s going to help you move forward. In my case for example, I was living in the comfort of unemployment benefits. Inducing strong pain would have meant giving those checks up. But that wasn’t a rational option for me. But since the checks weren’t going to last forever what I did instead was calculating how soon I would have needed to seek employment again if I hadn’t moved my ass. And that got me going.

Fuck Patience! Gary Vaynerchuck says it takes decades to succeed and you should be patient. And he’s right. But if you stop at that, you’re having the wrong approach. I prefer Tom Bylieu’s approach, which says: 1. This is going take 10 years maybe, I know. 2. But every day I wake up with the idea of making it happen today And every day ask yourself why it hasn’t happened yet. And ask yourself what’s the next quantum leap forward you can take to make it happen tomorrow. A sentence that I use to put myself in this mindset is something I learned (and paraphrased) from the book The 50th Law:

There is a bullet with your name. If not now, sooner than you think. Make the most out of it ASAP P.S.: what Greene is referring there with the bullet analogy is of course death, and I often repeat it to myself to instill a sense of urgency.

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Think Win-Win & Give (??) The idea of giving first and only accepting win-win resolution is rather popular in the self-help literature. Ury and Fisher first started the trend with “Getting to Yes” and Covey popularized it with “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”. When Fisher said it first in the realm of negotiations and deals, it made huge sense and, as simple as it is “win-win” was revolutionary for the cultural climate of the times. Back in the days it was popular among businesspeople to see negotiations as a power struggles even though plenty of psychological research show that approaching negotiations with a less antagonistic view helps reaching better outcomes. So win-win is often (but not always) better than win-lose. Fine. But with time the original good idea of “thinking win-win" has been taken to extremes with popular books such The Go Giver and The Greatest Salesman in The World. Some of these books peddle the idea that the only way to win and succeed is not only to think win-win, but to give and give. I wish we’d live in a world where that worked. There would be no need of ThePowerMoves.com in such a world. But if you take a look around you, do you see a world where the only way of doing well is to give, care and be kind? Take a look at books such Secrets of Power Negotiating, which teaches (effective) power negotiation techniques to squeeze the last cent of value from already good deals and from otherwise unsuspecting people (of course the author prefaces it as a “win-win strategies” not to look predatory, but many examples in that same book are not win-win). Or let’s take a look at The Art of The Deal, where “art” often means threatening the opponent and bending (or leveraging) the law to destroy your opponent. The author of that book is the current president of the US, and he is a businessman who achieved success (or some sort of success) with an obvious cut-throat attitude. In short: any dispassionate person looking at the world today sees no confirmation of the theory that the only way to success, even long-term success, is being an honest man who only acts with a win-win approach. And of course that’s even more true for the advice that you should give and give without worrying of what you get back (good luck with that). Sadly the truth is that, sometimes, thinking win-lose and even win-destroy can actually give ruthless people an edge. pg. 56

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To me at this point the question is not so much on effectiveness because both strategies of win-win and win-destroy can work depending on the situation. To me it comes down on how you define success. Is it success reaching your goal with corpses strewn along the way in a path of hurt, spoil and blight? I hope you will choose a different path. A path which adds value to the people around and to the world. Not because it’s necessarily the best on every occasion. But because it's how you decided it will be for you. Because you decided you will be a force for good in this world. And, bonus to boot, it’s also probably the best approach for long-term leadership and to become the most effective, high-quality leader you can be. P.S.: Needless to say that does not mean being “too nice” and letting anyone take advantage of you. When people play win-lose with you it’s the time you can really start thinking how you can screw them up for good.

Hard Driver or Sensitive? Finally, I wanted to make a note here on the topic of hard driver, thick-skinned individuals who barge their ways into success and more sensitive, emotional and caring approaches to the workplace. It’s an important topic especially after the big hype that “emotional intelligence” has become following the work of Daniel Goleman (Emotional Intelligence) and Travis Bradberry (Emotional Intelligence 2.0), with the famous assertion that “EQ is 80% of success” and EQ trumps IQ. What happened is that some people took EQ to mean a nurturing side towards the people around instead of a hard-driving, results oriented approach. The leader of Simon Sinek’s Leaders Eat Last for example, a huge best-seller, does not even take care of results but takes care of the people who in turn care for the results. This makes little sense when we look at the data. Yes, EQ rises steadily as we go up in the management chain, but it drops at the very top! CEOs don’t have super high EQ. Tradberries says it’s because they “are not doing a good job”, but I think that’s a typical example of bending reality to fit your own model instead of looking at reality and learning from it. George Simon author of “In Sheep’s Clothing” instead says it’s because CEOs act "undeterred by adverse consequences or societal condemnation”, and I think Simon is more right. But of course, real success often lies in between. pg. 57

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EQ is important for your personal relationships and personal well-being, but the hard-driving “to hell feelings” approach seems be more helpful to climb corporate hierarchies. What should you model? Well, in this debate I like the approach of the Dan Rust, author of Workplace Poker -the best book I have read on office politics if you’re interested in the topic BTW-. He calls the hard-driving, “to hell feelings” type of individual “rhinoceros” and the more feelings-attuned personality “butterflies”. The rhinos accept no excuses, drives himself harder and drives others even harder. He focuses on results because, well… What else matters? Certainly not feelings. Rhinos brush aside their own feelings and, even more, other’s feelings -it’s much easier to brush aside other people’s feelings of course-. They feel no pain in rejections because that’s just what you do: keep persisting until you get the “yes”. The downside for 100% rhinos is that while they block the negative emotions, they also block the positive emotions that spring from people’s bonding and connections. They are also more likely to miss on the nuances of people’s feelings, emotions and social dynamics, often acting like bulls in the china shop. They might achieve the results but with lots of collateral damage -and if they don’t achieve the results, then just a lot of collateral damage-. The most extreme rhinos also often hide a weakness: they are actually afraid of emotions. And their act is just a mask. The butterfly instead is very attuned to emotions, people and social dynamics. He is also very attuned to his own feelings, which often -but not always- means that he gets hurt more easily. People and feelings matter more than results for butterflies. They connect well and they “see” feelings, social interactions and human networks. But they sometimes sacrifice results in the name of feelings and their tendencies of getting hurt also means they are afraid of rejections and don’t drive as hard a bargain. Dan Rust says that rhinos to butterfly is a continuum and the most successful people are more on the rhinos end of the spectrum albeit never going full rhino. Dan Rust say these people “don’t pretend to feel nothing but acknowledge their negative feelings when they fail or when they’re rejected. They’re honest with themselves that sometimes the fear of potential judgment or rejection holds them back.” They push themselves when they see fear and they keep good relationships with the people around.

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I don’t think that’s wrong, but I think there is a much better alternative than simply choosing a spot on the continuum. The best option is to take the best of both worlds. Learn to see the emotions and the social dynamics like a butterfly and learn to brush the feelings aside or to leverage them with an antifragile ego- to push yourself and the people hard when you need to. In simple decisions and when you see that a topic matters a lot to someone around you, you might let them take the decision and build goodwill and strengthen the relationship. In times of crisis, when results are all that matter or when you really need to get it your way, it’s time to suspend your IQ and go full rhino. What you gotta do next is to “simply” develop your EQ while you also develop a thicker skin. Many articles on the website ThePowerMoves.com are aimed at increasing readers’ emotional intelligence, they’re all great resources to increase EQ. Of course, developing on both fronts is not an easy feat and it doesn’t come in the course of a day. But as someone said “nothing worthwhile comes easy or cheap”.

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PART II – MAXIMIZING OUTPUT So far we’ve talked about the mental side. This part will deal with the practical side: how to learn, train and work to achieve the most out of our potential.

Deep Practice Daniel Coyle in The Talent Code explains how deep practice helps top athletes train in the most effective way possible. Here are the keys: 1. Do It Often: Action The more often you repeat a certain action, the more myelin you build in your brain. Myelin strengthen the neural connection for the action or thoughts you need to repeat often, making it all the more natural for you. 2. Focus on Mistakes Deep practice involves quick cycles of repetition based on mistakes and quickly fixing them. You must teach that circuit how to fire correctly. Struggle is not an option, it’s a requirement. And that’s why passion and persistence are key to talent: wrapping lots of myelin requires lots of energy and repetition. If you don’t love what you’re doing, you won’t do it often enough. 3. Train at The Edge of Your Ability And avoid effortless and too difficult. The author says effortless is a terrible way to perform and so is working against insurmountable odds with no solution in sight. The sweet spot of deep practice is at the edge of your ability, where you can target the struggles that are near your ability level, make mistakes and correct them. Note: the sweet spot at the edge of your ability is also a key to find inner motivation, as explained by Daniel Pink in Drive. Daniel Coyle says that Deep Practice should feel to you as being a staggering baby learning to walk. It’s an uncomfortable sensation that most sensible persons would seek to avoid. Yet the longer you endure in this sensation the more myelin you build and the more skills you build. pg. 60

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4. Train With Full Attention Eric Andersson, the author of the original researches on what he calls “the science of expertise” differentiates between “naive practice” and “deliberate practice”. To practice without full attention is naïve practice and does not improve your skills (ie.: driving after you’ve been driving for years won’t improve your driving skills). Deliberate practice requires full presence and attention. Also notice that deep practice is a big enemy of a fixed mindset because you are operating around your mistakes over and over. More Deep Practice Details Here three more insights to get the most out of deep practice: 1. Chunk It Up Look at the task as a whole first. Listen to the whole song, watch the whole movement sequence. Then break it to chunks and do them slowly first. Going slowly allows you to attend to errors more effectively and reach a higher degree of precision whenever you fire signals. So your myelin grows over the correct portion of neurons more precisely and quicker. Master the pieces individually, then start linking them together in progressively bigger chunks. 2. Repeat It Daily You have to continuously keep working on your skill. Myelin is a living tissue, it breaks down and repairs, so daily practice matters. Repetition though is only as good as the quality of the practice. Coyle says that most top talent schools he visited practice no more than 3 hours a day. Three hours in a state of deep practice is not only enough, but it will often exhaust you. And if you can, do it by yourself. It’s hard to find people who want to keep up a tough training, 3. Make it Your Identity Students who performed best in music classes answered they were going to practice longer than students who weren’t sure. The students who performed best thought and felt like the art they were studying “was their thing”. They had acquired the identity of being musicians.

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Sometimes it can also be a social construct: the willingness to be like someone. So, if you had a musician in the family, it could feel to you like that’s part of your heritage, which will also come to shape your identity. 4. Leverage Teachers (But Be Ready to Become Independent) Andersson says that when you’re starting out any teacher will do as long as they can teach and give feedback (a good performer is not necessarily a good teacher). As you improve, you might need to change teacher. But ultimately, your goal is to build mental models with which you can recognize the mistakes and improvement areas by yourself and practice on your own. And here’s a great quote from Coyle that I leave you with:

To get good you must love being bad Deliberate Practice VS Flow Deliberate practice and flow are inherently different. Deliberate practice is a behavior and it’s more effortful and rarely as enjoyable as flow. It is planned and happens when you’re beyond your skill level. Your goal is to increase your skill and you are looking for problems to fix. Finally, deliberate practice is for preparation. Flow is a state instead and it can be more challenging to accurately plan. In flow you’re not analyzing what you’re doing but simply doing it and you’re effortless. All the feedback you get is often great and not based on mistakes because your skill level is enough for the challenge. Flow is for performance.

Focus on Strengths I put this right after the deep practice which is about focusing on weaknesses. What does it mean then, that you should focus on strength? Well, it means that you should focus more on improving what you’re good at rather than fixing what you’re bad at. Focusing on your weaknesses is something you do once you’ve already picked your favorite discipline and those weaknesses need to be addressed. Otherwise, from an overall skills point of view, you’re better off focusing on what you do good and getting someone else do for you -or with you- what you don’t do well.

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This is a concept widely espoused now in the literature and to which Tom Rath dedicates a whole book with Strengthsfinder 2.0. Note: David Goggins in Can’t Hurt Me says people should focus on weaknesses to “callous one’s mind”, which basically means to go through as much pain and difficulties as possible to learn self-discipline and to toughen ourselves up. I think that in many ways it’s a wonderful concept and as we have mentioned earlier fixing what we’re not good at gives us a strong boost of self-esteem and a sense of control over life. However, to maximize your output, at least workwise, you probably want to follow a path where you can play your strengths.

Deep Work Similar to the concept of Deep Practice is Deep Work, which also translates more easily to most people’s office job or mental endevours. It consists of eliminating all distractions and focusing 100% on the task at hand. Sounds quite easy and obvious, right? Yet most people don’t do it. I know that well for a fact, because even though I strive to be as effective as possible, I still find full focus difficult and one of my current main weaknesses -and that’s one of the reasons why you see a lot of small mistakes in my writing: not just because I’m a non native speaker, but also because I am still learning to focus 100% on the task at hand-. But I also know that it’s a skill that you can train and develop, and it’s a life changer. I strongly invite you to focus on deep work. Give yourself either a time limit within which you Immerse yourself in what you’re doing, or you give yourself an output limit (ie.: finish the chapter or reply to all customers’ inquiries). Don’t worry if the first times you will not manage and you will still get distracted: it’s normal. Don’t give up and keep at it. Also don’t worry if you don’t get the results you were hoping: it will take some time for you to enter into the “Deep Work Mode”. Similar for Deep Practice, most people can only take so many hours of Deep Work per day -Cal Newport says only 4 hours for masters and only in chunks of 60 to 90 minutes!-. Once you can’t manage your Deep Work anymore, it means you are not being effective and efficient, and you might as well stop and do something else -exercise, prepare a healthy meal or nurture your relationships-.

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The concept of Deep Work translates beautifully into my favorite learning of this December 2018 updates: the concept of Deep Life. The concept of Deep Life means that whatever you do, you put your full attention into it. Since we can only take as much Deep Work per day, once you’re done working you are done. No more checking emails, no more thinking about work and no more going back to the computer: you will be most “polluting your mind”, waste time and overall decrease the effectiveness -and quality!- of your life. If next after work is meal with a friend, then Deep Life means you fully enjoy your meal and your friend’s company. If it’s an evening with your spouse, it means you fully immerse yourself in romantic candle-light atmosphere. If it’s exercising, then you exercise for good. I am currently working making Deep Life my way of life and it’s fantastic.

Mastery Robert Greene in Mastery says you should go wide before doing deep. As long as they’re in the field of what interests you, do follow the circumstances (similar to Angela Duckworth, which reinforces the validity of that theory). Once you decided what to specialize on, Robert Greene makes the apprentice the key step towards mastery. He says: • • • • • •

Experimentation: this is your time to experiment and fail. Do it as much as possible Ego is not work: develop the key skill of detaching your ego from your work Learning over money: if you can learn for free as people will be more willing to share secrets Feel inferior: this is not the time to feel greater than your teacher, you’re there to learn from them Use mentor: resist the iconoclastic tendencies, accept someone is much farther than you are Hide your rebellious streak until you’re at the top

Drop Busy Busy is the keyword of the western civilization. Busy is good. Not busy is slacking. What if it were terribly wrong? Being busy has some benefits for us, including: pg. 64

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Sense of importance: we must be in demand

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Expectations: if you’re doing nothing, then why should your employer keep you?

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Excuse: whenever you don’t feel like doing something saying no is hard. Saying you’re busy is the easy way out

But when you focus on being busy, you’re focusing on doing busy work and not on being effective. Here are the alternatives:

Say no to Everything Not Essential McKeown in Essentialism recommends a criteria called the “90% rule” to deciding whether you should do something or not. The 90% rule suggests you rate the utility of an action on a scale of 0 to 10. If it’s less than 9 it’s an automatic no. Gary Kellar, author of The One Thing, challenges the readers with the following question: “What’s the one thing I can do, such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary?” It might even take some time investment to find the answer to that question, but you will then know that you found a key opportunity to work on.

One Chunk, One Accomplishment Finish what you start. If the activity is too long, then chunk it up and finish one chunk. Note: This is unless you realize mid-way that the activity doesn’t add value to you. In which case, drop it immediately. Batches String similar activities together so that the switching costs are smaller. For example, don’t check your email ten times a day. Check it once a day. Once. And answer all emails at once. Then that’s it. Next day for the emails. And now back to work.

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One Task, One Focus Multitasking is a myth. Switching between tasks takes time and a cognitive toll. Make sure you stay free of distractions. Some recommendations: • • • •

phone on mute no push notifications close the door no internet available

Automate Michael Gerber in The E-Myth stresses how important it is to build a business that will work without you. He says you must build processes that will keep going even when you’re removed from them. This is a concept you don’t necessarily need to apply to a business but you can apply to your whole life. Just keep in mind what Ferris says: 1. Automation to inefficient operations magnifies the inefficiency 2. Automation applied to efficient operations will magnify the efficiency Eliminate & Delegate Ruthlessly eliminate any task you don’t have to carry out. The tasks you need to carry out but can’t automate, delegate them. And don’t forget: 1. Eliminate before you delegate: never delegate something that can be eliminated 2. Never delegate something that can be automated Example: If I allowed myself to get angry and disappointed about it, I’d be so angry that I went shopping for groceries for so many years. Today I buy them online. I have the list of favorite that I keep buying again and again. I open the page, quickly click on what I need without searching for anything and get them delivered to my door. That’s an example automation applied to everyday life.

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Time Restriction: Parkinson’s Law On top of the well known Pareto Law Tim Ferris also recommends Parkinson’s Law. He says to allocate a shorter time than you would actually to finish a certain task. That will naturally force you to focus on the 80% of what’s most important on that task.

Goals Virtually all authors talking about success tell you must have goals. Angela Duckworth then goes into the relation between grit and goals. Grit means keeping the same end goal -which she calls a “life philosophy”- over a prolonged period of time. Importantly, gritty people have related lower level and mid level goals supporting their life philosophy. Imagine a pyramid, with the lower level goals all there in support of the top. On the other hand, people lacking in grit tend to have goals who don’t align. And some other people have a big final goal but without any supporting mid level and lower level goals. The author calls it “positive fantasizing”.

those without a goal end up working for those with a goal. Path VS Goal You goal is what you want to accomplish, the path is the way of getting there (the highest-level goal is your WHY and hopefully your passion). Never confuse the two. Abandon any path, at any time, if they don’t help you reach your final goal.

Punishments & Rewards But what I liked the most is again from Tom Bylieu. He recommends that you willing punish or reward yourself emotionally -meaning “feel bad or good”depending on whether or not you did what you needed to do. At the end of the day, if you didn’t do what you wanted to do, feel bad. At the end of a day if you’ve done what you were supposed to do, feel great. Tom says that you will start building emotional trigger that will push you to do what you need to do.

The Master Mind Napoleon Hill in in best seller Think and Grow Rich introduces a concept that has now become famous: the “Master Mind”. The “Master Mind” is the coordination of knowledge and effort, between two or more people for the attainment of a definite purpose. pg. 67

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A Master Mind will amplify the power of each mind to give birth to an entity which is more powerful than the sum of its component. In laymen’s terms that means: deal, talk and mingle with people at your same level or higher. Many self-help coaches also go beyond and recommend that you only have friends that will help you become the person you want to become and drop all the friends that hold you back. As Jim Rohn famously said, “you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with”.

Team Work (?) You can do it by yourself. Absolutely. That’s what The 4 Hour Workweek is all about. But with a team you can do more. And having social skills to build and maintain a synergetic team will give you much greater firepower. William H. McRaven in Make Your Bed also says you need teammates in life. And that starts from having a great spouse. The Importance of a Supportive Romantic Partner Thomas Stanley in The Millionaire Mind confirms through a survey that most millionaires consider their spouse a major influence in their success. And the science of attachment indeed explains that having a strong emotional support from our partners make us emotionally stronger and more confident. Don’t underestimate the power of a secure romantic attachment on your life.

More Tips With an antifragile ego you will need many common tips much less than most other people. But as you internalize all these principles, here are a few more common suggestions: • • •

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Start right away: when you make a goal, don’t wait and dawdle. Take some sort of action right away and that will help you build momentum Get early win: early win boost confidence Measure your growth: measuring how far your are from your final goal could dampen your enthusiasm. Put growth or some other positive KPI that can instill some confidence as you take stock of your situation Don’t measure amount of work: similar to what we said earlier but it bears repeating: do NOT measure your amount of work. It’s the most stupid example of “vanity metrics” ever.

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F UELING Y OUR M ENTAL P OWER Literally, What to Eat This section will quickly go through a few key tenets of a healthy lifestyle. I have been going through many nutrition books, researches and experts and I have rarely seen a more divided field. Keep in mind nutrition is also very a young science and many mistakes have been done in the recent past (ie.: too lenient on sugar and wrongly repressive on fats). Luckily, among major differences, there are also many common basics which are similar across most sources. The common basics most everyone agree with is what I will quickly go through here. Note: Before we start, a quite warning. Don’t take this section lightly. Improving your nutrition will improve your life.

Eat whole foods This is how Wikipedia defines Whole Foods: Whole foods are plant foods that are unprocessed and unrefined, or processed and refined as little as possible, before being consumed. Examples of whole foods include whole grains, tubers, legumes, fruits, vegetables. Eat plenty of those.

Avoid Sugar, Trans Fats, Processed Food For a long time we thought fat was the source of our health problems. Fats are not so bad, especially when they’re from healthy fats sources. Some examples are nuts, avocado and salmon (note: many sources these days say that even saturated fats are good for you, but there doesn’t seem to be a final proof on that). However, trans fats are the ones you should avoid. Most trans fats come from processed foods (that’s why the first paragraph is “eat whole foods”). Naturally occurring trans fats are mostly in dairy products, such as cheese.

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Sugar: the more you cut it out, the better. Sugar in naturally occurring foods, such as whole fruits, is not nearly as bad because of the fiber content (that’s why you can eat fruits).But any processed food with lots of sugar must go. Note: cutting down on added sugar has been a life changer for me. I have much more energy now throughout the day without drowsiness. Wheat: strongly cut all unrefined wheat and gluten sources (white bread, white pasta, tortillas. Especially tortillas which originally used trans fats). Many sources also include whole wheat on foods to cut, but most agree whole wheat is much better than refined wheat (me for example I switched all wheat consumption to whole wheat, including whole wheat pasta, whole wheat bread). Once you eat well constantly your body will increase its capacity to handle “bad days”. Which means you can also enjoy exceptions guilt-free every once in a while. And keep in mind the “in moderation rule”: eat well, without being a “label nazi”, which is a mistake of many health-nuts (who actually get it wrong). As a matter of fact, buy less food with labels overall. And ask yourself: does it come in packages, wrappers, and it has a long and undefined expiration date? Don’t buy it. Does it expire quickly, does it come without labels, and is it in its natural state? Eat more of it.

Go for Organic While organic has become a business and the industry has been lobbying hard to get laxer rules for the coveted “organic” label, it’s still better than non-organic. You don’t want to save money on the most basic element of your life.

Get All the Sleep You Need Skimping on sleep to get more done is not only ineffective, but it likely has the opposite effect. Get all the sleep you need instead and then maximize your effectiveness while awake: you’ll do more, in a better mood and in a healthier fashion. Consistency is the key to developing a healthy and sustainable sleep routine. You can do that by going to sleep at a similar time each day.

Exercise Often Physical activities – even simple like taking walks – are very healthy for your brain. Aerobic exercise, for example, activates the genes associated with living longer and it also helps regenerating our neurons.

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A group of researchers in 2011 studies two groups of elderly men and women. One group assigned to a walking program, and the other one to stretching. What happened after a year? The walkers had larger hippocampi and higher levels of BDNF (that’s the protein that protects neuron synapsis and helps grow new neuro-connections). The stretchers, on the other hand, lost brain volume to atrophy and struggled more on cognitive tests. When to Exercise As an owl in circadian rhythms I’m sorry to say that several researches point to benefits of early morning exercise compared to other times of the day (later times of the day are best for peak performance though). I personally do both morning and, often, evenings again. Easier stuff in the evening though, like posture exercises including planking and wall stands. Albeit almost everyone agrees on doing something, everyone’s got a different recipe on what you should do. However, here’s something everyone agrees to: something is better than nothing.

Water, Water, Water Drink one glass of water as soon as you wake up. The drowsiness in the early afternoon is often the result of dehydration during the night before. 100% natural, freshly squeezed juice can be ok, but they contain a lot of sugar so don’t exaggerate with them. Many doctors agree that wine in moderation has been proven to have health benefits. Hal Erold in The Miracle Morning recommends you drink one glass full of water as soon as you wake up. Drowsiness is often the result of night dehydration, which can carry on for most of the day. I started implementing this suggestion and love the results: absolutely recommended it!

Keep Same Habits As we’ve already seen habits of going to sleep at the same time are very helpful. Tim Ferris in the The 4 Hour Body even recommends to keep same food routine, such as alternating the same food over and over. And keep that exercise routine going with good discipline. As Jocko Willink and Leif Babin say in Extreme Ownership:

But, in fact, discipline is the pathway to freedom pg. 71

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Smaller tips: • •

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• • •

Sitting at the laptop we tend to breath shallow, make sure you breath deep (99u, Manage Your Day to Day) Highly efficient people take micro-break during the day to stay efficient (Brendon Burchard, High Performance Habits and confirmed by other books with supporting research) o Breaks are most efficient if you take your mind completely off from work o Walk in the park or anywhere you can see green or nature is ideal Sitting is bad for you (Kelly Starrett, Becoming a Supple Leopard). Takes lots of frequent breaks. One little tip that took my productivity to the next level is to alternate time of sitting at the desk with time typing while I lay on the bed with a laptop. If you live in countries with long winters and little sun do get vitamin D supplements (Own the Day Own Your Life and confirmed by personal research) Do take naps in the afternoon, research has proven they help you be more effective (between 10 to 30 minutes is ideal, longer you get drowsy and waste time to get back into full efficiency) If you want to achieve perfect efficiency of your body, you must learn your circadian types and plan your most taxing activities for when you’re most alert and awake (When, Daniel Pink)

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I NCREASING M ENTAL P OWER The Last 5% Body and mind are connected. As a matter of fact, everything in this guide is connected. This last section will add the last 5%.

Meditate We are past the era in which so many thought meditation was “woo-woo science”. Today a lot of research has been conducted on the health benefits of meditation and they all point to measurable improvements. Stevenson in Sleep Smarter says: Meditation literally changes the shape of your brain and it increases the size of your alpha waves when focusing.. Indeed studies show that meditation increases: • • • • •

Grit Happiness Focus (through decreased mind-wandering) Help alleviate addiction Calmness and “cold blood” in dealing with stressful stimuli

And it decreases: • • •

Depression Anxiety Pain

Over time, you grow less fearful and anxious and you increase your ability to focus and calm yourself down. Eckart Tolle in The Power of Now went from anxious man to spiritual teacher thanks to meditation (The Power of Now is a book I’ve just started, it’s very ethereal but I feel I can recommend it). And here’s what Michael A. Singer says about meditation in The Untethered Soul: pg. 73

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Stop trying to change the outside world: the shift you need to be happy and peaceful is within you

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We mostly think negatively: meditate and learn to let negative thoughts go without affecting you

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Pain is OK. Don’t fight it or you “bottle it up”. Feel the pain and slowly let it go

How Long & Often Should You Meditate? And here is the million dollar question :). As often as it makes sense for you, I would say. Do 30 minutes a day, if you can. But research shows that even 10 to 20 minutes of regular meditation confers huge benefits. Don’t skip this step. How to Meditate I recommend you approach it in two different ways and you do both: 1. Concentrate on your breath and try to think of nothing 2. Let your mind free to wander and “step back” from all emotions and events I find the second to particularly useful to learn more about yourself (self-awareness) and improve your control of thoughts and emotions. When you let your mind go you will sometimes revisit memories you thought were gone forever. And some other times some of the most painful memories will come up. That’s great. Relive them with calmness as you keep breathing in and out. Take a step back. You’re not in the memory anymore. You are an external observer now. Shake off the feelings that might be taking hold of you. Notice how it wasn’t so bad and embarrassing after all. Now take your lessons learned, or confirm your resolve to improve and change also thanks to that memory. The more you relive them while remaining calm, the more the past will have little negative effects on you. And the more you repeat this exercise, the more you learn to control your feelings and emotions. While I don’t necessarily recommend this practice to anyone who’s lived deeply traumatic events that haven’t dealt with yet, I sometimes go on purpose to revisit the most painful memories of my past. Dealing with painful memories without being affected is another major brick in your mental power infrastructure.

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Troubleshooting Self-mastery requires, in good part, self-awareness. Meditation will help you a lot there. And I would also encourage you to start reflecting consciously on these two areas: 1. The realities you’re afraid to even broach to yourself 2. The events in life that give you lots of pain and displeasure Not admitting to yourself your biggest lacks and fears saddle your soul and spirit. Admitting your issues, even without solving them, is a show of mental resilience which by itself will increase your selfconfidence, self-esteem and even your happiness. Learning what gives you the biggest pain in your life will also reveal a lot about yourself and where and how you tie your ego and self-esteem to. Example: I had a coaching customer who struggled to control his level of happiness and contentedness. One of his thorns was that, as a big football fan, he was too sad when his team lost. This is a common occurrence among fans. What usually happens is that fans develop a “we” connection with the team. They invest the team with their own ego and a win or loss of that team means a win or loss for themselves. This is an outcome dependence of the worst kind: not only you reward the shot more than the swing, but you also relinquish total control over what makes you feel good because it’s not even you who’s playing! Note: I’m not advocating you don’t support a team or don’t enjoy matches (quite the opposite). I do am advocating you don’t make it a personal win or defeat though. Do the same exercise: look at what is hurting you the most. Ask yourself why. Meditate on it and see yourself taking a step back from that. Then take your ego and self-esteem away from it.

Caring Less of What People Think If you follow all the steps in this guide, caring less about what people think is a shift that will naturally occur within you. I can tell you that from first-hand experience. I used to be relatively obsessed of what people thought of me. And this was not a lifetime ago but up until a couple years ago, really. And it’s not something I focused on. It happened naturally following all the steps in this guide. But if you need one more rational reason I like what Willian Irvine says in A Guide to The Good Life:

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”To win the admiration of other people, we will have to adopt their values. More precisely, we will have to live a life that is successful according to their notion of success." Basically, it says that if you are going after the admiration of others and their good feedback, you are relinquishing living life on your own terms. And you are relinquishing going after your goals and what’s meaningful to you. And we don’t want that, do we :). And Jen Sincero says in You’re a Badass: ”You are responsible for what you say and do. You're not responsible for whether or not people freak out about it. All that matters is what’s true for you, and if you can stay connected to that without straying, you will be a mighty superhero." Note: I want to make a note here as many get this one wrong. Caring less of what people think of you is not a confrontational “I’m being me, fuck the world”. That’s childish and most people embracing that attitude are not self reliant at all. What I mean but caring less of what people think is a grown up approach to external validation VS internal self reliance. For example, I care what people think and what they think of me. I care a lot. But it does not define me. It doesn’t hurt quite as much when people critize me and I don’t make nearly as many decisions based on what other people think. And, most importantly, I don’t need external validation for my happiness and self-esteem. And that, I believe, should be the goal.

Lowering Pressure: Practice Mindset Tom Bylieu says when there’s a lot of pressure on him he just reminds himself: this is just practice. I like that idea. If you have a growth mindset, that’s a natural consequence and in life you have very few “make it or break it moment”, if any. And even if you have… What’s wrong at looking at your whole life as a big practice? A big practice to see what you can learn and where you can get. As a matter of fact, I would recommend you look at life just like that: a big test to see where you can get. You got goals of course because you want to maximize your chances of succeeding. But there is nothing without which your life would not be a success in any case. It’s all a bit game in which to test yourself, and it’ll be fun in any way. Personally, I love to combine Tom’s practice mindset with Ryan Holiday’s message (I paraphrase): pg. 76

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You’re a rising tide. Nothing can stop you. It might not be the next minute, and maybe not even the next hour. But eventually you’ll get to where you want to be. Eventually you’ll get there. No rush and no pressure for when it will happen. Until then it’s all practice. It’s all practice until you will eventually realize that… Boy, the finish line is just behind you.

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The End You have just finished a condensed summary of the very best insights from the self-development literature. Reading this guide will take you a few hours. But applying these principles is the quest of a lifetime. But as we’ve seen, that journey is pleasurable in itself. If you have any feedback on this guide, please do let me know, I would be glad to hear them. I congratulate you for taking care of yourself and your life. It’s a noble effort that benefits not just you, but the people around and the whole world. 10% of your business is going to abuse victims and disaster relief. From me and also from them, a big thank you. I wish you from the bottom of my heart a happy and fulfilling life to you and the people around you. Yours truly, Lucio

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