Mine 2 Shine

  When I was growing up, my father said something to me I will never forget, “Son, when you were born, you  cried while the world rejoiced. Live your life in such a way that when you die the world cries while you  rejoice.” We live in an age when we have forgotten what life is all about. We can easily put a person on the  Moon, but we have trouble walking across the street to meet a new neighbor. We can fire a missile across  the world with pinpoint accuracy, but we have trouble keeping a date with our children to go to the library. We have e-mail, fax machines and digital phones so that we can stay connected and yet we live in a time  where human beings have never been less connected. We have lost touch with our humanity. We have lost  touch with our purpose. We have lost sight of the things that matter the most.  And so, as you start this book, I respectfully ask you, Who will cry when you die? How many lives will  you touch while you hav...

  Believe in Yourself BELIEVE IN YOURSELF! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy. But with sound self-confidence you can succeed. A sense of inferiority and inadequacy interferes with the attainment of your hopes, but self-confidence leads to self-realization and successful achievement. Because of the importance of this mental attitude, this book will help you believe in yourself and release your inner powers. It is appalling to realize the number of pathetic people who are hampered and made miserable by the malady popularly called the inferiority complex. But you need not suffer from this trouble. When proper steps are taken, it can be overcome. You can develop creative faith in yourself — faith that is justified. After speaking to a convention of businessmen in a city auditorium, I was on the stage greeting people when a man approached me and with a peculiar intensity of manner asked, "...

IS SUCCESS ABOUT LEARNING—OR PROVING YOU’RE SMART? Benjamin Barber, an eminent political theorist, once said, “I don’t divide  the world into the weak and the strong, or the successes and the failures. . . . I divide the world into the learners and nonlearners. ” What on earth would make someone a nonlearner? Everyone is born  with an intense drive to learn. Infants stretch their skills daily. Not just  ordinary skills, but the most difficult tasks of a lifetime, like learning to  walk and talk. They never decide it’s too hard or not worth the effort. Babies don’t worry about making mistakes or humiliating themselves. They  walk, they fall, they get up. They just barge forward. What could put an end to this exuberant learning? The fixed mindset. As soon as children become able to evaluate themselves, some of them  become afraid of challenges. They become afraid of not being smart. I have  studied thousands of people from preschoolers on, and it’s breat...

  Part One - Fundamental Facts You Should Know About Worry Chapter 1 - Live in "Day-tight Compartments" In the spring of 1871, a young man picked up a book and read twenty-one words that had a profound effect on his future. A medical student at the Montreal General Hospital, he was worried about passing the final examination, worried about what to do, where to go, how to build up a practice, how to make a living. The twenty-one words that this young medical student read in 1871 helped him to become the most famous physician of his generation. He organised the world-famous Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He became Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford-the highest honour that can be bestowed upon any medical man in the British Empire. He was knighted by the King of England. When he died, two huge volumes containing 1,466 pages were required to tell the story of his life. His name was Sir William Osier. Here are the twenty-one words that he read in the spring of 1871-...

  Don’t take yourself so seriously. You’re just a monkey with a plan. Ten years ago, if you would have asked me how happy I was, I would have dismissed the question. I didn’t want to talk about it. On a scale of 1–10, I would have said 2/10 or 3/10. Maybe 4/10 on my best days. But I did not value being happy. Today, I am a 9/10. And yes, having money helps, but it’s actually a very small piece of it. Most of it comes from learning over the years my own happiness is the most important thing to me,and I’ve cultivated it with a lot of techniques. Maybe happiness is not something you inherit or even choose, but a highly personal skill that can be learned, like fitness or nutrition. Happiness is a very evolving thing, I think, like all the great questions. When you’re a little kid, you go to your mom and ask, “What happens when we die? Is there a Santa Claus? Is  there a God? Should I be happy? Who should I marry?” Those kinds of things. There are no glib answers because no...

  FREEING YOURSELF FROM YOUR MIND What exactly do you mean by "watching the thinker”? When someone goes to the doctor and says, “I hear a voice in my head," he or she will most likely be sent to a psychiatrist. The fact is that, in a very similar way, virtually everyone hears a voice, or several voices, in their head all the time: the involuntary thought processes that you don't realize you have the power to stop. Continuous monologues or dialogues. You have probably come across "mad" people in the street incessantly talking or muttering to themselves. Well, that's not much different from what you and all other "normal" people do, except that you don't do it out loud. The voice comments, speculates, judges, compares, complains, likes, dislikes, and so on. The voice isn't necessarily relevant to the situation you find yourself in at the time; it may be reviving the recent or distant past or rehearsing or imagining possible future situa...