Thought Provoking Quotes: How To Read Your Life As A Novel

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BY Raquel

Renowned Chilean writer Isabel Allende once said, “You are the storyteller of your own life, and you can create your own legend or not.” If you will treat your life like a story, a novel or any piece of literature, how then do you write a good one?

Perhaps, it would be best to consult more of the world’s respected writers. Many of them have gifted us not just with award-winning books, plays and other works of art, but also with witty, inspiring and thought-provoking quotes.

Discovering Your Passion and What Drives You

Legendary novelist and poet Murasaki Shikibu, famous for her 3-part classic The Tale of Genji, wrote, “The art of the novel happens because the storyteller’s own experience of men and things, whether good or ill – not only what he has passed through himself, but even events which he has only witnessed...

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What is my Purpose in Life?

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BY Adam

This is not the typical personal development post because it deals with questions that are fundamental to achieving true and lasting happiness. Most people who claim to be plugging into their identity have not answered these most basic questions. They do not have clarity of purpose and without that, one can never achieve what I call, being fully alive.

It Always Starts with Your Thoughts

If you are going to do anything worthwhile in life, you must start by changing your thinking. You must answer some very basic questions about what I like to call ultimate questions.

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Don’t Take Things Too Seriously

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BY Brett

The rest of the world, including me, takes things way too seriously.

So what if you fail at implementing self-improvement advice? I’ve failed countless times in my fight to get organized and acquire laser-like focus.

So whut if you make a couple of speling errors or typos? It doesn’t change the person that you are and it’s not that big of a deal because people understand you 90% of the time when you make a mistake anyways. And this is coming from a person who’s a total grammar Nazi. Do typos bug me? Yeah. But do they matter, in the grand scheme of things? Not really.

For all the serious stuff we preach — like getting your life into order, figuring out how to live “well”, cultivating good habits — we hardly ever take a step back and laugh at ourselves, at the absurdity that we feel like we need to absorb all these self-improvement concepts in order to live a good life.

You don’t, guys. Life isn’t that serious. It’s a tragicomedy,...

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Outcome Attachment Kills Performance: Relax Instead

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BY Brett

Want to know a fantastic way to sabotage your performance?

Be dependent on success. Attach everything to the success of your performance. Say, “If I don’t come through here, I’m a failure. I suck. I’m not good at what I do.”

If you do that, watch yourself tense up. Watch your performance go downhill. Watch yourself get even more tense as you try to save yourself from failure.

More often than not, your tension will end up being your downfall. At the end of your performance, you’ll look at yourself and think, “Well, I lost. I failed. Now I’m not good at anything, and I’m just a failure,” and so on, until you end up shredding your self-concept into a million pieces and think of yourself as the most incompetent human being to ever walk the earth.

Attachment to the outcome – staking your self-esteem on your performance – did you in.

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Greatness Requires Consistency

BY Brett

I know, I know – I should be the last one to talk about consistency. I’m not the most consistent man on the planet, that’s for sure.

However, I’ve achieved a fair amount of success. And I know that, in order to be successful, consistently doing the right thing is the key. I’m consistent in my study habits. I’m consistent in how I work out. I’m consistent in how I do my work (an hour and a half of work, followed by a 15 minute break). I’m consistent in how I do just about everything – and, yet, somehow, I haven’t become consistent in my work on this site, even though I’ve been “working on it” for a long time.

Sidenote: even though I know what the right thing to do is, oftentimes, I don’t do it. That’s how hard implementing ANY advice is. So if you’re struggling with implementing self-improvement advice, don’t worry. You’re not alone.

You can’t take days off from practice. You can’t use excuses to get...

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The 7 Signs of Greatness

BY Brett

Everyone talks about people who are “great”. You hear people say, “Oh, well, Abe Lincoln was a great man,” or “Steve Jobs is a great CEO,” and so on down the line until you’re convinced that there’s something great about anyone in any leadership position.

But most of us – 99.9% of us – will never achieve any significant leadership position, like being the head of a government agency, a bank, or a multi-billion dollar corporation. And, almost always, when you hear people referred to as “great”, those people are almost always household names. You know, historical figures, inventors – people who’ve changed the course of human history in a significant way.

Those are the people referred to as “great”.

I think it’s wrong, though, to think that you, too, cannot be great. You can be every bit as great of a human being as they. The only difference is the scale of your achievements, which doesn’t really matter if we’re...

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How Much Do You Really Need?

BY Brett

You should ask yourself this on a daily basis — “How much do I really need?”

I’ll give you a hint: you don’t need much. You don’t need a fancy car, you don’t need that kick-ass apartment, you don’t need that new smartphone. You don’t need much, my friend.

Here’s what I think you need to live a fantastic life: good food, good shelter (while you don’t need an awesome place, at least get something that feels like home), fantastic relationships with people you love, work that fulfills you, and a good set of habits (like the habit of being a good, kind person).

That’s it. You don’t really need anything else.

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What Self-Trust Really Looks Like

BY Brett

“Gah! Why am I getting so distracted? Why can’t I just do what I say I’m going to do on my schedule!”

It was another day of frustration for me. For some reason, I’d lay out a manageable – but full – schedule of things to do, and, yet again, I had disappointed myself. Facebook had distracted me once again, resulting in me wasting another hour being awake, rather than going to bed. The result? I didn’t wake up on time, missed working out, and had to push it back for 3 hours later, pushing back all the work I had to do that day.

This is a common occurrence for me, but after my revelation following this incident, I think the days of me not following through on my schedule are over. I finally figured out what was going on.

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Free Superpowers! (Hint: You Already Have Them)

BY Brett

If you want the superpower of feeling good all the time, then you can have it.

Here, go on and take it. It’s yours, if you really want it. In fact, you’ve had it all along and you never realized it. You’ve just never decided to take the leap and tap into your own power, my friend. But trust me — it is there, and it will be there for you if you want it.

Of course, it comes with a price: in order to keep the superpower, you must, for 30 minutes a day, sit up straight (or lie down, whichever you prefer; all that matters is that your spine stay straight), and don’t think. If you make that 30-minute session a ritual, I guarantee that your superpower will be working all the time.

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Always Go First

BY Brett

In any situation – especially any social situation – go first. Always, always, always go first.

What does going first mean?

It means that, if you really want to go out to eat on a certain night, that you’re the first to suggest a place.

It means that, if you’re interested in a guy and you want to go out with him on a date, ask him. Even tell him how you feel about him (though, asking him out has the same effect).

It means that, if you want someone in a relationship to open up about deeper issues, you should open up first. Lead the way, and people will follow.

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