Benjamin P. Hardy Quotes

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

Most people have an avoidance orientation toward life. They aren’t acting according to their deepest desires. Instead, they’re playing it safe. They’re calculating their moves to ensure they don’t look stupid. They’re hedging their bets, creating several backup plans in case their dreams don’t quite work out. Ironically, they end up dedicating the majority to their backup plans, and that becomes their life.

As a species, we haven’t evolved to plan 20 years into the future. As a rule, our decision-making is myopic, shortsighted, and lacks imagination. We’re heavily incentivized to seek rewards in the present, which can greatly cost our long-term Future Selves.

[If you don't] think and strategize long term, [you'll be distracted by the short-term.]
You’ll be caught up by endless distractions throughout your day.
Your decisions will be myopic.
You’ll cost your Future Self greatly, putting them deeper in debt in all ways.

The difficulty lies in being able to break away from the pack and pursue other slipstreams or wormholes.

Psychologists call this unique human ability prospection; as people, everything we do is driven by our prospects of the future.27 Prospection is based on a teleological view of the world, which views all human action and behavior as driven by goals — whether short term or long term.

When you see yourself succeed, you develop more confidence in your ability to succeed at bigger and bigger things.

Personality — like passion, inspiration, motivation, and confidence — is a by-product of your decisions in life.

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

All goals or motivations fit within two categories: approach or avoid.29,30 The reason for doing anything is either to approach something you want to happen, or to avoid something you don’t want to happen. As a rule, 80 percent of people are primarily driven by fear or avoidance, while 20 percent of people are driven by approach and courage.

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.

As opposed to selling away our futures to have high quality stuff, we’d be better off reducing the quality of our stuff in order to improve the quantity and quality of our time.

Never ask advice of someone with whom you wouldn’t want to trade places.

You thrive on it. You intentionally create situations to jack-up the pressure even higher, challenging you to prove what you’re capable of. — Tim Grover

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. said, “A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.

The 80 Percent Rule: Done is better than perfect. Dan Sullivan explained, “Eighty percent gets results, while 100 percent is still thinking about it.