Benjamin P. Hardy Quotes

The reason the hedonic treadmill exists is because people aren’t taught how to be happy.

By faith, you can move mountains, put a man on the moon, make millions, and heal impossible maladies. To exercise this level of faith, fashion a vision of what you want.

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.

As management author and legend Peter Drucker said, “There is nothing quite so useless, as doing with great efficiency, something that should not be done at all.

This brings up a highly nuanced and crucial distinction: you can want something and be 100% committed to that thing without needing it. This is the counterintuitive reality: by no longer needing what you want, you are actually far more enabled to get it.

You can expect the future to take a definite form or you can treat it as hazily uncertain. If you treat your future as something definite, it makes sense to understand it in advance and to work to shape it. But if you expect an indefinite future ruled by randomness, you will give up trying to master it.11

This entire approach to learning and growth is experiential, not theoretical. Rather than having all the answers, you want just enough information to move forward. The fastest way to get relevant information is through failure and real-world experience. Your environment for success can’t be a classroom or a therapy couch. It has to be in the trenches of experience. Environmental design for powerful learning involves experience in real-world situations. These situations are inherently challenging, the stakes are high, and the consequences immediate. Additionally, your training is practical, not theoretical, and you’re getting feedback and coaching from mentors and experts. This is the most challenging and painful way to learn, and thus it is also the most effective.

Make your Future Self vivid and detailed by writing a letter from your Future Self to your current self. Choose whatever time frame you want.

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

The past is nothing more than the meaning you ascribe to it. Traumatic experiences can be changed. They are not fixed. Motivation is often broken into one of two categories: approach or avoid.

Shipping is about finishing. Done is better than perfect. To quote Leonardo da Vinci, “Art is never finished, only abandoned.

Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now! It seems to me that there is nothing which would stimulate a man’s sense of responsibleness more than this maxim, which invites him to imagine first that the present is past and, second, that the past may yet be changed and amended.55

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.

It’s almost too easy. You can be the bee who goes out looking for the flowers, or you can be the flower and have the bees come to you. When you ask directly and clearly for exactly what you want, what you want will come to you.

If you want to become your desired Future Self, play at their level as quickly as possible. Commit at the level of your Future Self. Adapt at the level of your Future Self. Your current self is clearly not there yet, and will therefore need serious training, humility, and feedback.