Category: Life Lessons

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There are 3 primary drivers of results in life:

  1. Your luck (randomness)
  2. Your strategy (choices)
  3. Your actions (habits)

Nice tweet from James Clear, the author of the book Atomic Habits.

There is a fourth driver of Results

4. how I respond to what happens

I am reading Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life at the moment. I love the depth and the conviction that comes across from Jordan’s writing (and his youtube videos).

One of the things that really stuck with me from the early chapters was Jordan’s sense that Heaven and Hell are here with us on earth… and that our response to the events of our life can allow them to truly become Hell.

He shared a story of an old man dying of cancer in a hospital. This is tragic. What makes it hell is what is happening between the adult children of the man in the hospital room as he lies dying. There is a bitterness between them and an anger about how the inheritance will be split. The response of these adult children is to make life worse for each other.

Life is Tragic. Humans can make it Hell.

Old man dying is a tragic part of life.

His children fighting over the inheritance is how to turn tragedy into hell.

There is no situation so bad that we cannot make it worse with our own reaction to it. Do we learn from the event, or do we allow it to push us into an emotional state where we make life worse for others because of our own feelings of hurt and anger and desire for revenge.

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The newspaper is full of other people’s problems. Do they bother you?

The world is full of people who don’t know what you expect from them. Does it bother you when they don’t do what you expect?

How can you have a good day when you give 8 billion people control over your state of mind?

It is an active choice to allow my state of mind to be affected by another’s action. I need to decide upon an ideal expected action. I need to compare their actual action to my imagined ideal. I need to allow myself to get angry, resentful, distressed and bothered about their failure to live up to my ideal.

I can change the whole world, or I can be very careful about how I set my expectations of other people.

Choose carefully what you allow to bother you.

Rule 6 “Set your house in perfect order before you criticise the world”

Jordan Peterson, 12 Rules for Life

If you allow everything to be a problem, you give yourself a powerful excuse to do nothing about the few things you can actually improve right now.

Further Resources on Becoming Intentional

As we are coming up to the end of 2019, here are a couple of resources to become more intentional about what matters to you in 2020:

Thanks to Dan Sullivan’s recent podcast for this idea… Why Irritation affects your success if you’re not paying attention to it.

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There are 3 reasons why a human being makes a change in their habits. If you want to effect a change in your life, or help another with a change that they say they want to make in their life – there are 3 levers that can increase the likelihood that change happens.

The 3 Reasons we Change

  1. Pain – When my perception of current pain is visceral, then I will make the effort required to change. Someone can be in great pain but be unaware of the degree to which they are suffering. If I help myself or other become fully aware of the current pain, change can begin.
  2. Vision – When I can see with extreme clarity where I want to get to, it is more likely that changes will happen. If I have a vague sense of where I want to go, nothing will change. As I make that vision clearer and clearer, more and more believable… change will begin to happen.
  3. Fear of Future Consequences – When I can see the future pain that is coming if I do not change, and I feel it viscerally as if it was a current pain, change can begin to happen. Often I know that there are future consequences, but I haven’t truly taken the time to visualise and feel how bad it will be.

If you want someone to change, including yourself, don’t tell them what to do. Help them feel the current pain, see clearly the vision or feel the future consequences. This is how we help change happen.

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This video is about 4 ways to bring more luck into your life.

We Make our own Luck. 

Why do some people lead happy successful lives whilst other face repeated failure and sadness? What enables some people to have successful careers whilst others find themselves stuck in jobs they hate? Can unlucky people do anything to improve their luck?

In the book The Luck Factor, Professor Richard Wiseman (good name for a professor!) shares his research into luck. He has spent over a decade investigating the beliefs and experiences of lucky and unlucky people.

If you think you’re unlucky, that bad luck may be the direct result of you believing you’re unlucky.

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The founder of Strategic Coach, and one of my favourite podcasters, Dan Sullivan plans to live to 156 years old. It will allow him to see 3 different centuries (19,20,21).

What will it take for him to live that long? He’ll need to eat well. He’ll need to stay physically and mentally fit. He’ll need medicine to come up with some new techniques to extend life…. but more than all of this, he will need a powerful motivation to remain alive.

What gives a powerful motivation to remain alive? In an interview with Peter Diamandis, Dan and Pete shared the perspective that if you have friends, money and purpose: you’ll have a pretty damn good reason to keep on living.

Here’s the original podcast episode: Living to 156 Years old

If you love podcasts, you’ll like my post The world’s best individual podcast episodes

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I was doing some mindless twitter surfing just after lunch today, and I stumbled upon a gold mine. I love the thread that followed this tweet:

and here’s some of the answers that really resonated with me…

If you don’t prioritise your life, someone else will.

When your child wants to have a talk, drop what you’re doing and listen to them.

Only take advice from someone you’re willing to switch places with.

Pay attention to what they do, not what they say.

Don’t complain about what you permit.

The best thing you can do is the right thing. The next best thing you can do is the wrong thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing.

Sometimes the best thing you can do is nothing

Run

Don’t ask why the addiction, instead… ask why the pain.

and… Be humble enough to do what you can until you have the strength to do what you want.

What’s the best advice you have ever received?

If you are interested in my answers, I have a couple of posts that are big lists of lessons that I have learnt from others: 17 Daily Personal Habits for a Fulfilling Life and The Complete Guide to Personal Habits: 158 Positive Reflections on Life

What is your answer? I’d love to hear it in the comments below 😉

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Overcoming challenges and obstacles is what makes life meaningful. I hope your dreams and visions are big enough to be difficult.

“Don’t wish it were easier, wish you were better”

Jim Rohn

This video is about superman. When superman was first developed as a comic book character, he was so strong and powerful that he overcame all obstacles easily. It was only when the authors made him weaker that the stories became interesting.

In our own lives, it is not the easy path that makes for a meaningful life – it is the hard path, and having to become a better, stronger, more resilient, more resourceful person that makes for a meaningful life.

If you liked this post on stories, you will also like What is a Story and 7 Steps to the Perfect story.

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David Brooks has career success, but in this TED talk he shares how he found himself empty. 5 years ago, his wife left, his kids had moved out… and he discovered he had nothing to do outside of work. He had mid-week friends, but he had no weekend friends.

Success in career is not success in life.

Individual happiness is transient and empty.

David’s 2 antidotes:

  • Commit to People. Achieving individual freedom is nice, but the our life needs committed connection to others… to not be free.
  • Chase Joy not Happiness. Joy comes when our ego dissolves in the pursuit of something bigger.

“Suffering breaks some people, and breaks some people open”

This post-divorce loneliness crisis led David to explore a deeper way of connecting to others. He began to lose his individual freedom in order to commit to other people.

Our society is in the midst of a social crisis: we’re trapped in a valley of isolation and fragmentation. How do we find our way out?

“Joy is not the expansion of self, it is the dissolution of self.”

Check out David’s full TED talk below:

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MIT Endicott House

I was in Boston to teach on the Entrepreneurs’ Organisation EMP (Entrepreneurial Masters Program) this week. MIT Endicott House is one of the most beautiful locations for leadership retreats and programs. I brought my drone to capture the scenery around the main buildings. You’ll see the drone shots right at the beginning of the video below.

Why Do We Need to Clarify our Purpose?

Dandapani in Barcelona, 2016

Dandapani was one of the speakers at the Entrepreneurs’ Organisation Masters Program event this week at MIT Endicott House, outside of Boston. Dandapani spent 10 years as a Hindu monk, meditating with his guru on the purpose of his life.

Dandapani spoke about the importance of consciously deciding what is important and what is not important in your life. Why?

Because life is finite.

More from Dandapani

Dandapani on Instagram (he takes great photos) https://www.instagram.com/dandapanillc

“How to Concentrate”, Dandapani at TEDx

3 Steps to Improve Your Concentration

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A short story from the mountains about how removing drag can be more effective than increasing power. Many times we could improve our life by cleaning up the things we do that actively damage ourselves: eating poorly, drinking too much, complaining, remaining angry, holding grudges, positioning myself as a victim.

What do you think? What’s your biggest “drag”?