Benjamin P. Hardy Quotes

But ideas can create culture, and culture is perhaps the most powerful force shaping human identity and decision-making.

It’s easier to hold to your principles 100 percent of the time than it is to hold to them 98 percent of the time.” — Clayton

You can change your patterns. You can change your roles, but you can only do that by altering your environment — whether that means having frank conversations to reestablish boundaries and expectations, or whether that means physically separating yourself from certain individuals or places. If you remain stuck in the same roles and patterns, it doesn’t matter how much willpower you exert; your efforts will continue to be confined within the limiting context of your role. You’ll remain hostage to a context that you mistakenly believe to be fixed identity. But you absolutely can change your roles, even abruptly and dramatically. People mistakenly believe they must be fully qualified to take on a particular role. But this is false. You actually become qualified through the role itself. For example, when Lauren and I became foster parents, we didn’t have any parenting experience. Sure, I read several books on the topic, many with smart ideas and innovative solutions to try. But theory and experience are two radically different things. I imagine all first-time parents go through a similar trajectory — you learn through doing.

Graham Stephen is a YouTuber with millions of subscribers who talks about finance. At the beginning of every video, he finds clever ways to ask his audience to like his video and subscribe to his channel. Sometimes, he spends 30–60 seconds asking for likes and subscribes. He’s gotten so entertaining that his fans aren’t put off, but laugh with him.

If we maintain the open-mindedness of children, we challenge fixed ideas and established structures, including our own. We listen to people in other denominations and religions. We don’t find demons in those with whom we disagree. We don’t cozy up to people who mouth our jargon. If we are open, we rarely resort to either-or: either creation or evolution, liberty or law, sacred or secular, Beethoven or Madonna. We focus on both-and, fully aware that God’s truth cannot be imprisoned in a small definition.” — Brennan Manning

An experience only becomes valuable and useful once you’ve transformed it into a GAIN.

To succeed as a rate-buster is not simply to start but to endure.

Personality is not stable but changes regardless of whether you're purposeful about that change or not.

By continuously learning, you’ll be enabled to do what your former self couldn’t do. You’ll be able to create what your former self couldn’t create. You’ll be able to have what your former self couldn’t have.

Momentary pleasure and true happiness are two very different experiences. As scientist and spiritual leader James Talmage wrote, “Happiness leaves no bad after-taste, it is followed by no depressing reaction; it brings no regret, entails no remorse. True happiness is lived over and over again in memory, always with a renewal of the original good; a moment of pleasure may leave a barbed sting, [as] an ever-present source of anguish.” Ancient philosophies such as stoicism and spiritual beliefs such as Buddhism and Christianity fundamentally oppose a hedonistic approach to life. Embracing challenges, pain, and difficulty are among the primary paths to meaning and growth according to these perspectives. Rather than a hedonistic worldview, ancient philosophy and most spiritual perspectives embrace a eudemonic worldview, which advocates seeking a virtuous and meaningful life of growth and contribution.

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way.

Nobody achieves the impossible without thinking they can.

What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.” — Viktor Frankl1

The more you put your Future Self in debt in terms of health, learning, finances, and time, the more painful and costly will be the eventual toll. There will be a lot of interest to pay if you continually accrue debt. Everything you do can be categorized as either a cost to or an investment in your Future Self. Costing your Future Self means you’re more focused on present or short-term rewards over long-term consequences. Costing your Future Self means you’re consuming far more than you’re creating. Every little action adds up. A cost makes you less healthy in some way, whether mentally, emotionally, spiritually, relationally, or physically. If repeated, costs make you fatter, lazier, hazier, and less connected. A cost is something that comes to control you, rather than you controlling it.

Pearson’s Law states, “When performance is measured, performance improves. When performance is measured and reported, the rate of improvement accelerates.