Today, I’m celebrating eight years of blogging.
Eight years.
In case you missed the previous post (and the free download with my best blog posts, you can find it here.)
Anyway. I want to share with you the lessons I’ve learned during my blogging journey. One for each month I spent blogging.
And, yeah, that’s me in the picture.
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I don’t usually post my personal views on current events or popular topics, because I:
That being said, I thought I should address a few things that I’ve noticed in the past couple of weeks.
Number one… the sheer amount of misinformation.
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The truth does not change based on your ability to accept it.
I do my best to live life in a way that I am aware of what I do, while also trying not to chase things that are outside of my control.
Here are some of those truths that help me stay in control of my life.
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Alexander the Great. Even though he lived on this Earth for only 33 years, some 2,300 years ago, we have yet to forget his name and legendary battles.
During his short life, nothing stopped him. Nothing. Huge armies with elephants, impregnable fortresses, vast distances over mountains and rivers and deserts, hunger, thirst, the sea itself, the uttermost extremes of physical hardship and war. His body was littered with scars; everywhere that is, except his back. That’s because the world’s greatest commander never retreated, and he never lost a battle.
Most of his portraits, sculptures, and coins reflect a kind of upward gaze as if he were staring into the very heavens, yearning for something unreachable.
He dedicated his life to the struggle against insurmountable odds. And he became great because he surmounted them all.
Continue readingDefined as a person’s sense of self-esteem, the ego has become a sort of villain in the personal development community, mostly by Ryan Holiday trying to sensationalize a rather complicated and often nuanced philosophy called stoicism.
Life’s fun sometimes. Apparently there’s a 1 in 400 trillion chance of you being born.
It makes sense that there are a lot of paradoxical truths in life that seem to be impossible. But if we take the time to think about them, to dive a bit deeper, they make a lot of sense.
Below are 20 truths about life that I have to always keep in mind if I want to make sense of the world around me.
We’re all self-made, but only the successful ever admit it.
After all, why ever admit that you don’t like what you see in the mirror if you do not plan on changing?
But what if I were to tell you that the root cause of unhappiness and failure are not external factors, but our inner reactions to those factors.
After all, what is required of one in order to be successful?
“If anyone can refute me — show me I’m making a mistake or looking at things from the wrong perspective — I’ll gladly change. It’s the truth I’m after, and the truth never harmed anyone. What harms us is to persist in self-deceit and ignorance.” — Marcus Aurelius
How often do you change your mind? How often do you change your beliefs? What about your principles? Or your self-image?
How often do you admit that you were wrong?
How often do you force yourself to see things from the opposite of your usual perspective?
We think we are made of skin and flesh and muscle and bones, but that’s not true. We are made of stories, of hope, of dust and stardust, and it is in our nature to always tell stories.
Yes, you might not be a writer, you might not be a blogger, but you are telling yourself the story of who you are, and why you are who you are, and maybe, just maybe, the story of why someone like you has to be.
“Thinking is difficult, that’s why most people judge.”
― C.G. Jung
When people judge, label, or belittle you, they do so from a place of insecurity. They do so out of sheer mental laziness. They do so because they are trying to make you become who they want you to be: not much.
I know this because I have also tried to force people to be something less than who they were because it was the easiest thing to do.
Want to know what I like most about words?
Just how powerful they are. How they can either make or break you. How they can inspire, motivate, or place you in a negative feedback loop forever.
The words we tell ourselves often become our destiny.
Words give us the opportunity to tell ourselves a story that is empowering, to build a mindset that enables us to create happiness, rather than pursue it mindlessly.
Yet, we often fail to do so. We use words that do not motivate us, quite the contrary.
That’s why I am writing this article. That’s why I am going to share with you the five most motivational words in the English language.
Continue readingWhat is the one skill that will guarantee success and fulfillment in life?
It’s not the ability to walk in a room with your head held high. Also known as self-confidence.
It’s not the inner fortitude to work 16 hours a day. Also known as the ability to hustle.
It’s not being able to do everything that needs to be done, no questions asked. Also known as conscientiousness.
It’s not even the ability to want to succeed more than anyone else around you, which is also known as ambition.
The greatest skill you could ever acquire is…
2 AM finds you in bed, on your phone. It’s a senseless succession of mind-numbing cat videos, memes, and vlogs. Finger gymnastics. It’s the hour of the heartbroken, the inability to fall asleep after a day of breaking your heart over and over again.
Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of developing some awful habits that ensured unhappiness, poverty, and sickness.
I just didn’t know any better.
Once I knew better, I did better. I took better care of my mind, my body, and my emotional well-being.
And I’ve discovered this neat trick: happiness is mostly about eliminating the daily habits that break your heart; letting go of certain patterns of action and beliefs that are making us miserable.
Here are seven daily habits that sabotage your happiness and how to get rid of them once and for all.
Continue readingWe often think of success as part magic, part luck, and part knowing the right people.
We often think success comes down to how the planets align, how certain external factors shape us. Maybe it’s the economy, or the government. Maybe it’s our friends.
The truth is that luck is something we only notice in other people.
The truth is, if you want to be successful in any area of your life, you must follow this simple rule: the more you want it, the more you have to do to have it.
We tend to obsess about strategies and plans, but the truth is that we must take massive action in order to reach our goals.
The truth is, the more you work, the luckier you get.
Yet we often tend to ignore this rule of life because it provokes mental discomfort. If you don’t earn a million dollars per year, you have one of two options:
Either of these two options are heartbreaking, so you often think that you’re just not lucky enough.
After all, luck can’t be controlled, so there’s no way someone could hold that against you. The truth is that even if it were a valid excuse, still no one cares. The only thing that matters is that you do the work and have results. That’s it.
The more you work, the luckier you get. The more action you take, the easier it is to build momentum and keep going.
You become an unstoppable force in life, in love, in business, in writing by placing on foot in front of the other. Some days, you won’t feel like it. Some days, you’d much rather hit your head against a wall. But you’ve got to do it.
The more you work, the luckier you get.
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