Mine 2 Shine

Passion and Purpose  "The final step in the sages' method is one that is equally applicable as you advance along the path of your life." "My cup is still empty," I said respectfully. "Enjoy the process. The Sages of Sivana often spoke of this philosophy. They truly believed that a day without laughter or a day without love was a day without life." "I'm not sure I follow you." "All I'm saying is make sure that you have fun while you are advancing along the path of your goals and purpose. Never forget the importance of living with unbridled exhilaration. Never neglect to see the exquisite beauty in all living things. Today and this very moment that you and I are sharing is a gift. Remain spirited, joyful and curious. Stay focused on your lifework and on giving selfless service to others. The Universe will take care of everything else. This is one of nature's truest laws." "And never regret what has happened in t...

  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...

  “A SIMPLE WAY TO MAKE A GOOD IMPRESSION.” At a dinner party in New York, one of the guests, a woman who had inherited money, was eager to make a pleasing impression on everyone. She had squandered a modest fortune on sables, diamonds and pearls. But she hadn’t done anything whatever about her face. It radiated sourness and selfishness. She didn’t realize what everyone knows: namely, that the expression one wears on one’s face is far more important than the clothes one wears on one’s back. Charles Schwab told me his smile had been worth a million dollars. And he was probably understating the truth. For Schwab’s personality, his charm, his ability to make people like him, were almost wholly responsible for his extraordinary success; and one of the most delightful factors in his personality was his captivating smile. Actions speak louder than words, and a smile says, “I like you. You make me happy. I am glad to see you.” That is why dogs make such a hit. They are so glad to se...

The Power of Compounding   The big takeaway from ice ages is that you don ’ t need tremendous force to create tremendous results. If something compounds — if a little growth serves as the fuel for future growth — a small starting base can lead to results so extraordinary they seem to defy logic. It can be so logic defying that you underestimate what ’ s possible, where growth comes from, and what it can lead to. And so it is with money. More than 2,000 books are dedicated to how Warren Buffett built his fortune. Many of them are wonderful. But few pay enough attention to the simplest fact: Buffett ’ s fortune isn ’ t due to just being a good investor, but being a good investor since he was literally a child. As I write this Warren Buffett ’ s net worth is $84.5 billion. Of that, $84.2 billion was accumulated after his 50th birthday. $81.5 billion came after he qualified for Social Security, in his mid-60s. Warren Buffett is a phenomenal investor. But you miss a key point if...

  The basic principles of Morita therapy   1. Accept your feelings . If we have obsessive thoughts, we should not try to control them or get rid of them. If we do, they become more intense. Regarding human emotions, the Zen master would say, “If we try to get rid of one wave with another, we end up with an infinite sea.” We don’t create our feelings; they simply come to us, and we have to accept them. The trick is welcoming them. Morita likened emotions to the weather: We can’t predict or control them; we can only observe them. To this point, he often quoted the Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh, who would say, “Hello, solitude. How are you today? Come, sit with me, and I will care for you.”   2. Do what you should be doing . We shouldn’t focus on eliminating symptoms, because recovery will come on its own. We should focus instead on the present moment, and if we are suffering, on accepting that suffering. Above all, we should avoid intellectualizing the situation. ...

  Researchers have applied diverse methods to examine the connection between thinking and self-control. Some have addressed it by asking the correlation question: If people were ranked by their self-control and by their cognitive aptitude, would individuals have similar positions in the two rankings? In one of the most famous experiments in the history of psychology, Walter Mischel and his students exposed four-year-old children to a cruel dilemma. They were given a choice between a small reward (one Oreo), which they could have at any time, or a larger reward (two cookies) for which they had to wait 15 minutes under difficult conditions. They were to remain alone in a room, facing a desk with two objects: a single cookie and a bell that the child could ring at any time to call in the experimenter and receiven oand recei the one cookie. As the experiment was described: “There were no toys, books, pictures, or other potentially distracting items in the room. The experimenter lef...