Benjamin P. Hardy Quotes

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “When you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.

Your identity is based on the vision you have for yourself. When you change your committed vision, your identity immediately changes, which in turn, immediately changes the flow of your thoughts and behaviors.

Know that whatever you want is already yours. Act as though everything you want can and will be yours.

In all instances, humans act as we do based on the future we see for ourselves. That may be a future we’re trying to avoid, or a future we’re trying to create. That future may be decades or seconds away.

Commitment to Future Self means investing in loss or failure here and now to accelerate progress.

Truth #4 is that the more measurable and detailed your Future Self, the faster you’ll progress toward your goals. Effective progress comes with a combination of measurable metrics, a vivid vision of your Future Self, and clear mile markers. Without these elements, people wander.

Like the quarter, you are always acting in a role. The roles you play aren’t your fixed and unchanging identity. Rather, you are acting a particular way based on the rules of the situation you are in. Like the chess pieces, your role is relative to what surrounds you. In some situations, you may play the role of a parent. In other situations, you may be a student, or a firefighter, or a friend, or, if you’re playing with my six-year-old, you may be a trampoline to jump on. A friend of mine, Blaine, works as a manager of an industrial hose warehouse. Blaine told his friend Brad that he was just a “hoser,” which disturbed Brad, who thought it belittled Blaine. Perhaps it would be better for Blaine to identify himself as a manager? Although it’s common for us to overattach ourselves and to identify with the jobs we have, in reality, we are just acting in roles, whether that be a writer, a manager, a police officer, a lawyer, or a teacher. These roles quickly change as we change our context.

Business strategist Charlie Jones stated, “You will be the same person in five years as you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read.” By proactively changing your inputs of information, experiences, and people, you become aware of what you previously didn’t know. You see what you previously didn’t notice. You seek what you previously didn’t want. You act in ways you previously didn’t behave.

Focus on growth, not on status.

The clearer you are on where you want to go, the less distracted you’ll be by endless options.

After you’ve optimized a task, the next step is to automate as much as possible. Use software or processes so you can get the task done without human involvement — just set it and forget it. Finally, for anything that’s left, outsource to a generalist or a specialist. It’s important to note that although outsourcing can do a lot for you, it comes after optimizing and automating.

In the book, If Life Is a Game, These Are the Rules, Cherie Carter-Scott presents 10 rules for life.64 You will receive a body. You will receive lessons — you are enrolled in a full-time informal school called “life.” There are no mistakes, only lessons. Lessons are repeated until they are learned. Learning lessons does not end — if you’re alive, that means there is still lessons to be learned. “There” is no better than “here.” Other people are merely mirrors of you — you cannot love or hate something about someone unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself. What you make of life is up to you — you have all the tools and resources you need, what you do with them is up to you. The answers to life’s questions lie within you — all you need to do is look, listen, and trust. You will forget all of this at birth.

Without a meaningful goal, attempting changes lacks meaning, requires unsustainable willpower, and ultimately leads to failure.

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.” Effectiveness

True learning is a permanent change in cognition and/or behavior. In other words, learning involves a permanent change in how you see and act in the world. The accumulation of information isn’t learning. Lots of people have heads full of information they don’t know what to do with. If you want to learn something quickly, you need to immerse yourself in that thing and immediately implement what you’re learning. The fastest way to learn Spanish, for instance, is by immersing yourself in a Spanish culture. Flash cards for fifteen minutes a day will eventually get you there. But you’ll make deeper connections with a few days fully immersed than you would in months of “dabbling.