Simplicity of Life by Ivy Tan

Be an Influential Magnet For Positive Change and Abundance in Life

Introduction. Singapore is resilient and was able to navigate the Asian economic crisis in 1997 and the sub-prime crisis in 2008 successfully. Many were worried over their livelihood. Ying was mistreated as a child as her parents favored boys. Ying was not treated well by her parents. Her parents divorced but no one wanted custody of Ying. It was her grandpa that took care of her. The court ruled that the mother would have custody of Ying but later, also had difficulty in raising her. Her mum treated her harshly. This lasted for a total of 8 years as Ying completed her primary school. Grandpa was the only one who cared for her. Ying’s mother was addicted to gambling. Ying did well in Primary 8 and could go on to secondary school. However, despite this, Ying’s mother was not proud of her achievements and hit her. Ying tried to cut herself unsuccessfully and finally decided to go home. She tried to kill herself again, but was yet unsuccessful. She was warded in hospital and Grandpa visited her. Once, she witnessed a guy who swallowed many panadols to kill himself. She reached out and requested for others to help him. Due to Ying’s help, the guy managed to live. Ying was amazed that she could save someone else’s life even though she was in trouble herself. She drew strength from her own journey to help others. This was the turning point in her life. Now, she is an inspirational speaker and an international professional facilitator.

Part 1: You

Discovering life. Everyone is a gift to this world. What’s holding you back from achieving your goals and self-actualization? We all have to go through the different phases of life, including ageing. We all have to be brave and face death head on. On your death bed, looking back at your life, would you have been satisfied with your achievements? What legacy have you left behind in your life? How would you spend your time? The bulk of time would have been used for your loved ones, sleep and work. This leaves you little time for self-actualization.

Part 2: You Can. This chapter is about the 3Ps, Passion, Purpose and Potential. These are integral parts of your life that mustn’t be neglected. Having a purpose will help sustain your drive along a difficult journey. This could be like wanting to find a stable job etc. However, purpose doesn’t suddenly appear from nowhere. It usually comes from your curiosity and desire for knowledge. Working with others who are passionate will also motivate you to work harder. Remember that it is important to have a purpose as it will shut the naysayers up. Having passion can help support or nourish your Purpose. Some leaders apply operant conditioning, which is similar to the ‘carrot and stick’ model. An example of classical conditioning is when one is forced to provide frequent updates. There are 5 levels to Maslows’ Hierarchy of Needs: Physiological, Safety, Belonging, Esteem and Self-Actualization. Passionate is not in-born and has to be cultivated. With purpose and passion, can you achieve your potential? Your attitude and behavior will have a great impact over your learning and development.

Part 3: You Can Do. Everyone experiences their feelings differently. For humans, our emotions affect our attitudes and behaviors. The words of others can trigger an emotion in you, leading you to take a course of action. One should not aim to change your emotions, because that wouldn’t be your authentic self. It is much easier to control your choices as compared to your thoughts/ emotions. Do not enter self-denial and let your choices affect the subsequent tone of voice/ choice of words. One should take a breather and think about their choices logically. We tend to only tell the truth towards those whom we can trust. It is hence important to stay logical and tell the truth. Always remember that you have the power to choose. The first C in Choice is Consider. Resist jumping into conclusions. Try to approach life with less expectations as that would lead to less disappointments. One event in a day is completely unrelated to another in a day and you should not link the two. The second letter is H, which is for Hold. This refers to choosing a proactive attitude instead of a reactive one. This also means exploring options and choices. The third letter is O, which is for Observe. Make Sense with SENSES (Seek, Examine, Note, Study, Evaluate, Steer). Learn to observe the pattern and practice a logical questioning technique to get to the root of the issue.

How To Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big Kind of the Story of My Life By Scott Adams (Part 1)

Introduction. This book is about a guy who failed his way to success. It wasn’t entirely due to luck. The author pursued a strategy of managing opportunities. Make luck easier to find you. This book is not about dispensing advice. ‘Money distorts truth like a hippo in a thong.’ Advice is not one size fits all anyway. This book is about personal experiences. Learn to narrow your choices. People can’t filter fact from fiction well. Develop a system to sort truth from fiction. The six filters for truth are: 1) Personal experience; 2) Experience of people you know; 3) Experts; 4) Scientific studies; 5) Common sense; 6) Pattern recognition. Consistency is your best bet. Many people do not have smart friends to help them out. He created Dilbert. Profit is a good benchmark for success in a business. Use pattern recognition and trial and observation to succeed.

Goals are for losers’; ‘Your mind isn’t magic. It’s a moist computer program.’; ‘The most important metric to track is your personal energy’; ‘Every skill you acquire doubles your odds of success.’; ‘Happiness is health plus freedom.’; ‘Luck can be managed, sort of.’; ‘Conquer shyness by being a huge phony (in a good way)’; ‘Fitness is the lever that moves the world.’; ‘Simplicity transforms ordinary into amazing. – Scott Adams

The Time I was Crazy. In 2005, the doctors diagnosed him with being crazy. He was behaving crazy. He had lost ability to chat with humans. His grandpa was also a little crazy in the past. He had to stutter in his speech. It was a social nightmare to say the least. Loneliness was debilitating and affects your body the same way aging does. Humans need to be heard. His quality of life was dropping because of loneliness. The author was slated to give a talk to thousands despite his ailment.

Sometimes, the only real difference between crazy people and artists is that artists write down what they imagine seeing. -Scott Adams

The Day of the Talk. He couldn’t conduct small talk well. He soaked in the energy from the crowd. He has created a unique relationship with failure. You can always learn from failing. He has a long history of profiting from failure. He failed to succeed in the corporate environment. He nailed the speech and later sought to cure his problems of speaking normally off-stage as well.

Experts say public speaking is one of the most terrifying things a person can do. – Scott Adams

I invite failure. I survive it. I appreciate it. And then I mug the shit out of it. – Scott Adams

Passion Is Bullshit. Successful people tell you to follow your passion. You should never make a loan to someone who is following his passion. For example, to a sports enthusiast. You want to offer a loan to the boring guy, without passion but generate profits. You want the grinder. Successful people want to offer advice and be humble. Therefore, most of the time, they offer passion as a reason. Passion gives people hope and feels more accessible. It seems like the people’s talent. This is bullshit. Passion is a by-product of knowing you will be good at something. Sometimes, talent plays a larger role than passion. Most success stem from desire, luck, hard work, determination and appetite for risk. Energy is good. Passion is bullshit.

It’s easy to passionate about things that are working out, and that distorts our impression of the importance of passion. – Scott Adams

The business ventures that didn’t work out – and that would be most of them – slowly drained my passion as they failed. The few that worked became more exciting as they succeeded. – Scott Adams

In hindsight, it looks as if the projects I was most passionate about were also the ones that worked. But objectively, my passion level moved with my success. Success caused passion more than passion caused success. – Scott Adams

We humans tend to enjoy doing things we are good at, while not enjoying things we suck at. We’re also fairly good at predicting what we might be good at before we try. – Scott Adams

Some of my many failures in summary form. You want to be steeped to your eyebrows in failure. Failure is where success likes to hide in plain sight. Success takes effort. It keeps lazy people out of the game. Ramp up your energy levels. Failure is a tool, not an outcome. Failure is a resource that can be managed. Success is accessible, even if you fail 95% of the time. Some of his failures are listed below. Velcro Rosin Bag Invention. Partake in things which you have a natural advantage. The author also partook in learning computer programming. He took 1 year to work at it. The technology in the modern world was advancing too fast and he couldn’t keep up. He wrote a computer program to track the ‘psychic’ ability of users. All his computer ideas failed. He was working at a bank. He worked at Crocker National Bank for 8 years till he reached lower management. He learnt a great deal of banking, finance, technology etc. After that, he worked at Pacific bell for another 8 years. He wrote a program for file transfers as well. He started a crackpot idea website too. Google bought Youtube for $1.65 billion and the shareholders made a fortune. He tried to create something like YouTube, it didn’t work out. Timing is often the biggest component of success. Scott created a technology to make home deliveries more practical. The author bought Webvan stock, which eventually went bust. There is no such thing as useful information that comes from company’s management. He started earning royalties from Dilbert but didn’t have time to research. The money he placed with investment managers lost money as well. The author also tried to start a restaurant and create nutritious foods.

Everything you want out of life is in that huge, bubbling vat of failure. The trick is to get the good stuff out. – Scott Adams

If success were easy, everyone would do it. It takes effort. That fact works to your advantage because it keeps lazy people out of the game. – Scott Adams

What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. – Friedrich Nietzsche

I want failures to make me stronger, of course, but I also want to become smarter, more talented, better networked, healthier, and more energized. – Scott Adams

Good ideas have no value because the world already has too many of them. The market rewards execution, not ideas. From that point on, I concentrated on ideas I could execute. I was already failing towards success, but I didn’t yet know it. – Scott Adams

And since timing is often hard to get right unless you are psychic, it makes sense to try different things until you get the timing right by luck. – Scott Adams

I have to say the richness of the whole restaurant experience was totally worth the money. I was in a position to afford the losses without altering my lifestyle, so I don’t regret any of it. – Scott Adams

My Absolute Favorite Spectacular Failure. Most failures involve bad luck, ignorance, and sometimes ordinary stupidity. He went for an interview in a snowstorm and didn’t bring a jacket. He didn’t wear a suit and tie as well. His engine died on his way home. He got out of the car and started running. However, the air was extremely chilling and he lost feelings in this hands. His legs were failing as well. The author detested snow at that moment. A travelling shoe salesman saw him and saved him. He eventually sold the car and flew to California. He left NY for California.

Thank you, failure. I no longer fear death when I go outdoors. – Scott Adams

Goals vs Systems. Scott was 21 years old when he flew to California. He wore his suit on the flight. He spoke to a CEO of a company that made screws. One should have a system instead of a goal. Keep looking for better options. At long as you are not learning, you should think about moving. This businessman didn’t care about loyalty. Appearance matters a lot. The people who use systems tend to fair better. Devise a system to succeed. A system is something you do on a more regular basis. Systems have no deadlines. Most successful people follow systems but not goals. Try to improve your odds of getting lucky. Warren Buffett has a system that works. The system is to buy undervalued companies and hold them forever, until something major changes. A spectacular system beats passion every time.

Every time he got a new job, he immediately started looking for a better one. For him, job seeking was not something one did when necessary. It was an ongoing process. This makes perfect sense if you do the math. Chances are the best job for you won’t become available at precisely the time you declare yourself ready. Your best bets, he explained, was to always be looking for the better deal. – Scott Adams

In the exercise realm, running a marathon in under 4 hours is a goal, but exercising daily is a system. In business, making a million dollars is a goal, but being a serial entrepreneur is a system. – Scott Adams

My System. When he was six, he chanced upon the Peanuts comics. He spent hours working on them. However, he never became good at it. However, he never gave up. He got rejected by the Famous Artists School for Young People because he was too young at that time. His dad persuaded him to pursue a career in the postal service. His mum decided that he should be a lawyer. However, he had to fund his college education. He pursued economics as it would be a good prelaw degree. Scott accepted Hartwick College in New York. He received a partial scholarship for Hartwick College. He contracted mononucleosis. He was sick, however, he wanted to work hard and so his grades improved along the way. Scott did not follow his dad’s instructions to work for the Postal Service. Scott decided to create and run a company. He landed himself at a big bank and took as many classes as possible to learn about a business. All this while, he started to pick up business acumen. Create something that has value. His competitively edge was creativity. This was a solution that allows luck to find you. Create something that the public wants and reproduce it. Being system-oriented allows you to be more resistant to giving up.

In time I started to understand something called the odds. Some things were, by their very nature, likely, and some were not. – Scott Adams

I learned by observation that people who pursued extraordinarily unlikely goals were overly optimistic at best, delusional at worst, and just plain stupid most of the time. – Scott Adams

I was the kind of person who needed a job that made other people happy, ideally with a side benefit of making me rich and famous too. And for that I needed a system. – Scott Adams

I wanted the product to be something that was easy to reproduce in unlimited quantities. I didn’t want to sell my time, at least not directly, because that model has an upward limit. – Scott Adams

I wanted to create, invent, write, or otherwise concoct something widely desired that would be easy to reproduce. – Scott Adams

The world offers so many alternatives that you need a quick filter to eliminate some options and pay attention to others. Whatever your plan, focus is always important. – Scott Adams

My Corporate Career Fizzled. He walked into Crocker National Banker and wanted to be a bank teller. His plan was to start from the bottom. However, he did perform well at it. Scott has a do-it-wrong-then-fix-it personality. Due to his inability to keep track of people’s transactions, he was unfit for the job. He could either get fired or promoted. He wrote a letter of suggestions on how to improve the bank. He asked to join the management training program instead, like a management associate program. Luckily, Scott was granted an interview with the senior vice president. The suggestions gave an idea of his potential. In total, Scott spent 8 years in the bank. He took on multiple jobs in the bank. There was a headcount freeze at the top and he couldn’t get promoted. It was not due to his incompetence. Pacific Bell hired him. An acquirer took over his previous bank and hired many people. 60% of the time, Scott was trying to look busy. Scott declared the workplace a hazard as there were many smokers. It was at this time that Scott completed his MBA. Similar to the previous bank, the company were not promoting white males anymore. Scott worked at Pacific Bell for 8 years as well. His affirmation was ‘I, Scott Adam, will be a famous cartoonist.’ He practiced art every morning before heading to work.

Deciding VS Wanting. After you decide, take action. Wishing starts in the mind and generally stays there. If you decide to be successful, you need to pay the price. Sacrifice sometime in your life to pursue your aim. Successful people pursue success. They need a system.

If you want success, figure out the price, then pay it. – Anonymous

The Selfishness Illusion. There are 3 kinds of people when it comes to generosity. They are selfish, stupid or to cause a burden on others. Your best option is to be selfish. Successful people don’t burden the world. Don’t be the petty selfish kind. Rather, be the important kind of selfish. Spend time on fitness, eating right, pursuing your career and spend time with family and friends. If you ignore your health, you become stupid. We have been told that it is better to give than receive. The problem with this is that it is short term and may harm yourself in the long run. Humans are easily influenced by those we talk to. This is known as peer pressure, modelling or imitating. Generous people should take care of themselves first. Being selfish means you take a long term view of things. Once your needs are taken care of, will you look towards the world. Success changes you to be less selfish.

If you pursue your selfish objectives, and you do it well, someday your focus will turn outward. It’s an extraordinary feeling. I hope you can experience it. – Scott Adams

The Energy Metric. There is an opportunity cost whenever you choose to do something as you will have to forgo something else. To achieve more, maximize your personal energy by eating right, exercising, avoid excessive stress, getting enough sleep etc. The quality of your work will improve etc. Find something exciting to wake up to and look forward to. How you behave and your mood affects those around you. Learn to be a very positive person and stay happy. It will affect the social lives of those around you. Have calm, focused energy. Scott exercised on most weekday evenings and had the side projects which could set him free. Blogging exercises Scott and charges him up. Everyone has their own activities which can be an energy booster. Shopping is exhausting to him. Capitalism inspires people to work hard and to take risks. Match mental state to activity. For example, if you are creative in the mornings, then start writing things. At 6am, I’m a creator, by 2pm, he is a copier. The creative juices usually flow in the easy mornings or late evenings. In the evening, he does the mechanical tasks etc. It is a match of energy level with a mindless task. If you don’t have a flexible schedule, try to plan your time to do something outside of work. He woke up at 4am to start his comics. Simplifiers vs Optimizers. The simplifier will look for the easy way to do something, although it may not be the best. The optimizer will look for the best solution, even if it is more complex. His wife is an optimizer. He is a simplifier. If you have detailed plans, you are more likely to fail. Optimizing can be stressful and exhausting. If a task requires communication, simplifying it would be the better option. If it an individual task, you might go for the optimizer mode, provided you can control the variables involved. For Dilbert, Scott used little art in the background. Dilbert was meant to be simple in design. One way is to simplify first, and then try to optimize later. Simplification frees up time, which is a valuable resource. Scott is an entrepreneur, author and cartoonist in a normal 40 hour work week. Maximize your personal energy. Sitting position. Sit with good posture with both feet on the floor. Your brain will tell you that it is time to get into serious work. Don’t work in the same position as when you relax. Do not use the bed for work. The way you sit makes a difference to your productivity. Tidiness is an important factor as well. Some people don’t mind chaos and mess. Some people work better when it is neat and clean. The author feels more energy after tidying up actually. A big obstacle is not knowing what your career plans require. Flash research is research under a minute in google. Sometimes, people have already asked similar questions before. Don’t be an asshole. You know an asshole when you see one. It includes selfishness, arrogance, mean-spiritedness etc. Examples include bragging, dominating conversation, cheating, lying, honesty. Asshole behavior is an addiction. Some people like doing it. Make taking care of yourself your number 1 priority. Economics is your second biggest priority, especially your job and investments. If you can’t get this right, you will be a burden to your family. When these 2 are taken care of, your friends, family and lovers are next. The next ring is your community, country and the world.The problem is that life is not so easy. Your priorities will overlap and conflict. Right choices should charge you up and make you more motivated. It will feel right. If it feels unhealthy and draining, it’s probably wrong. Meaningful work can be energizing.

Once all of my personal needs were met, my thoughts automatically turned to how I could make the world a better plan…It just happened on its own. – Scott Adams

Apparently humans are wired to take care of their own needs first, then family, tribe, country, and the world, roughly in that order. – Scott Adams

This book is another example of something that gets my energy up. I like to think that someone might read this collection of ideas and find a few thoughts that help. That possibility is tremendously motivating for me. – Scott Adams

Ideally, you want to manage your personal energy for the long term and the big picture. Having one more cocktail at midnight might be an energy boost at the time, but you pay for it double the next day. – Scott Adams

When you start asking questions, you often discover that there’s a simple solution, a Web site that handles it, or a professional who takes care of it for a reasonable fee. – Scott Adams

If you piss off your people around you, it may haunt you and be very distracting at the end. – Scott Adams

I would define an asshole as anyone who chooses to make the lives of others less pleasant for reasons that don’t appear productive or necessary. – Scott Adams

Your self-interest is best served by being a reasonable person whenever you can muster it. – Scott Adams

The next rings are your local community, your country, and the world, in that order. Don’t bother trying to fix the world until you get the inner circles of your priorities under control. – Scott Adams

If your boss routinely asks you to work overtime for no good reason other than to claw through piles of brain-deadening administrative work, you probably need to look for a new job. – Scott Adams

Quitter by Jon Acuff (Part 2)

Falling in Like With a Job You Don’t Love. In the past, I was obsessed over quitting my job. Later on, people encouraged me to quit because of my dreams. Quitting your day job is not fulfilling the American dream. People assume your dream is more lucrative. However, writing doesn’t pay well. Dreams rarely pay well at the start. Your dream needs time to incubate. It takes very long indeed. Without incubation time, it will die. Keeping at a day job allowed my dream to have incubation time. What you do in one area of your life will affect the other areas too. Your work attitude tends to follow you home too. Remember why you work. I work to support my family. When you chase your dreams, sometimes you become selfish in your ways. Look for parallels. Starbucks is going to teach you accounting, marketing etc. You can learn from any job you have. Learn to start small and work from there. Look for purpose. Ask how can your day job benefit your dream job and vice versa. How can your chase for your dream job positively affect your day job? People was my purpose. Every dream involves people. You can definitely find purpose in your day job. Do not ever steal from work. This means working on your personal goals while at work. You are supposed to do work in your job description. One way to overcome this is to work very hard in your weekday evenings on your dream so you won’t feel pressed for time. Another way is to take on more assignments at work. Your employers didn’t pay you to work on your dream during working hours. Be honest and diligent with your day job hours. Think of your job as your adversary, not your advocate is a screwed up way of thinking. Protect the way you look at your boss and your company. The next wrong way is to demand that your job meet the needs of your dream. You are not entitled to anything.

The truth is, we need to learn to fall in like with a job we don’t live because it’s actually the best way to set up your dream for success. – Jon Acuff

Bad employees make horrible dreamers. You can’t loaf on your day job all week and then expect to magically throw the switch on the weekend and hustle on your dream. The things you do on your day job tend to follow you home. – Jon Acuff

We get really focused on our own stuff and our own dreams and we lose sight of the many, many reasons it is critical that you do great work at your day job. – Jon Acuff

The romantic way too look at it is that my dream job bled over into my day job. The candid way to look at it is that I was stealing from work. When you do your dream on work time, that’s stealing from your employer. – Jon Acuff

Wait on the Main Stage. We have to get on the main stage. It can be very nervous to speak on the main stage. To many, speaking at a lab is a failure. However, we all need to speak on the side before moving to the main stage. Plans are important, however, do not plan too much. Plans always change and they are fluid. The problem are that plans are too vague and no detailed steps are necessary. It’s like soccer, you can’t plan for everything as every moment is different. There are too many variables in life. You will not be able to script every detail. You do not need a plan. You need passion to drive you forward. The second thing you need is practice. You must show up every day and make it a habit. Just keep practising and practising. The conditions of your dream will change all the time. We like to see the underdog defeat the best. It is like David and Goliath. When you are small, nobody likes and respects you. Developing our dream job is more about hard work rather than grand moments in life. Start small and go along the way. We all need the gift of invisibility at the start. It’s harder to take risks when many people are watching you. Anonymity is the best because you have nothing to lose. You are a free man. Cherish it while it is still around.

Focus on your passion first. Your passion will always fuel your plan. Rarely will a plan fuel a passion. It will contribute. It will shape it. It will most certainly help it. – Jon Acuff

There Will Be Hustle. I have never taken blogging seriously. Things worked out because I hustled. Our desire to complicate matters is because we are lazy and fearful. Hustle is not hard. Sometimes, you will have to do the things you don’t enjoy. Dreams start in the morning. When you wake up, this is the best time to hustle. You don’t have excuses in the morning. One tends to have less excuses in the morning. When you start on your dreams in the morning, it will leave you happier throughout the day. As you grow older, you waste less time. It will force you to prioritize. The clue is to do more of the things you love and less of the things you like. Chasing your dreams isn’t all rosy and shit. The more you practice, the better you become. There is a lot of practice involved. Put quantity before quality. You have to learn 3 things about people. They won’t pay for what they can get for free. You will have to differentiate the product before they will pay. You have to weigh the long-term benefits of doing something for free. If there is a bigger gain from you not charging at speaking events, then don’t charge. Free pays dividends towards expertise. Doing stuff for free improves your exposure. Competition can be a big motivator but it is not a good measurement tool. If you feel you are better than your competitor, then you will get complacent. If you realize how much your opponent is better than you, you will get discouraged. Try not to measure your dream against someone else’s dream. Blog stats could be one potential measure. Your message must stay true to yourself. The best measure is the amount of work you have put in. This is the factor which you can control. Measure the number of days which you woke up early.

I love the title Quitter but still think that a core element holding this entire book together is a need to hustle. To push harder than the other person. To dream further. To work longer and faster. – Jon Acuff

Hustle is not hard. If you write your blog every day, at the end of the year you will have more readers than when you started. If you get up early and work on your dream two hours more than somebody else, your dream will progress faster. – Jon Acuff

The reality is that when you get busy doing the things that matter to you, you actually have more time to do the things you love and less time to do the things you like. – Jon Acuff

Learn to Be Successful at Success. You do not become an overnight celebrity. Do not misinterpret what success looked like for a dream. Success is the Bermuda Triangle of dreams. There are challenges associated with success too. Another problem is that we get arrogant. Overconfidence is scary. Do not let success kill your dream. Learn to define what is ‘enough’. You can send future emails to yourself. Write yourself a letter in the future. Success will often tell you that it is never enough and that you should strive even more. Define your enough. It is important not to burn out. You must always invest in relationships or they will die. Burn your dream bright but do not burnout. Please understand that the land of later is a myth. Kids do not believe in later. There will always be trade-offs. It is important to spend time with your family and kids too. Don’t turn your platform into a prison. Learn to have multi-generation dreams. Build a legacy that is bigger than individuals’ lives and actions. If you have a dream, share it with others. Do not take on opportunities which are not linked to your dream. Avoid saying yes to the wrong things.

Quit Your Day Job. I left my day job. My boss expected it. How do you know you’re really ready to leave? Learn to fill up this scorecard. 1) You have worked hard on your dream for more than a month/ a few months. Please understand that not everyone needs to quit their day job. The author had 6 reasons for quitting his day job. They are 1) He had somewhere to land. Next, the opportunity fit our opportunity filter. The author tested the dream before he quit. It is important to practice what you want to do with your life. I had a support network. We could afford to move. God seemed cool with our dream. It is important to establish some important ground rules. Share the rules and others hold you accountable. Make a list of risks that might appear after you leave your day job. Friendships might take long to form. In addition, you might be required to travel more. Money could be an issue too. You might need to pay rent for a home. We really can’t have two different versions of ourselves ‘work me’ and ‘life me’. To some extent, your work defines you. You think your job just funds the rest of your life. This cheapens the value of work. Some people think work is never meant to be fulfilling. There will always be hard and difficult moments at work. However, you have to do things you don’t necessarily enjoy at times. However, work can be fun sometimes. A menial task has meaning too.

You can’t spend 40 hours a week doing something and think it won’t impact you. You can’t spend half of your waking hours somewhere and think it doesn’t affect you. You can’t make a perfectly clean break between your life inside and outside work. – Jon Acuff

You can fake that you love your job for months, maybe even years, convincing everyone you work with that you care about the company, the business or the job. But your apathy for a job always comes out eventually. – Jon Acuff

If you quit your job without understanding why you’re quitting, you’ll just jump from job to job to job. You’ll become a serial quitter like I was. The things you didn’t like at the job before will show up in your next job. And the next. The common denominator in every bad job you’ve quit is you. – Jon Acuff

Minimalism by Grace Scott

The Real Truth About Minimalism

Introduction. Minimalism is about living a less commercial and material life. It is about de-cluttering and then focusing on the aspects of your health like health, relationships, passion growth etc. It is becoming more popular in recent times, especially in areas like art and music. It is now a trendy philosophy. Gear yourself towards a nominal policy and lifestyle. Only keep the stuff which is necessary and this will lead to less stress and more time on your hands. Learn to prioritize. However, one needs to guard against one-upmanship, which is feeling guilty after having purchased an item or compare with others to see who has the least number of pairs of shoes. Will you be resentful towards those you consume a lot? This concept of minimalism is not for everyone. However, be wary of becoming obsessed in de-cluttering. Do realize that it is not completely possible to totally de-clutter.

You must keep the things you most value and remove everything else that distracts you from that value. Being a minimalist means you live intentionally. You know where you are going and are actively planning to go there. – Grace Scott

Thoughts are possessions too. To be a true minimalist, you must free yourself of chaotic and unimportant thoughts, and get rid of stressful emotions. – Grace Scott

As a minimalist you no longer worry about others, you have little emotional attachment to stuff or possessions. You are now a single entity moving toward your definition of happiness. – Grace Scott

Not just another ‘Minimalism’ Guide. Minimalism places experiences and well-being over material things. Avoid spending money on replacing or maintaining items. Minimalism frees you of stress in owning things. However, understand that minimalism is not anti-consumerism. Austereness is an art form which uses monochromatic pallets of primary colours and shapes. Is there a difference from simple living? Yes, simple living integrates uncomplicatedness in every area of your life. It also means contentment and caring for your environment. There are different types of minimalist. One is the creative and resourceful one. Another is the travelling one, the one who backpacks and live in tents. There are also those who are intentionally homeless. This group of people are unlikely to be happy. Some people go for the tiny house movement. There are those who are accidental minimalist, who became one because of force rather than choice. They might have lost a job etc. The professional one is someone who feels superior towards others who own more items. There are also urban, original minimalists. The small holdings minimalists farm the land to feed themselves in a sustainable manner. Small spaces can be well decorated as well. Dogmatic minimalists own 100 items of less and read many books. Do understand that being a minimalist does not make you a better person. It is not about throwing away objects, but also de-cluttering the mind. How do you define what is important in your life? Too many material items drain your bank account. Free you from time commitments which you are not interested in. Learn to reduce your goals and focus on the major ones only. Reduce your debt. Eliminate distractions from your electronic devices and avoid multi-tasking. Spend time to build face-to-face and not just virtual friendships. Understand that minimalist is a lifestyle choice and is not easy to achieve. Free yourself from the consumer culture. Choose thoughts that have meaning and value and get rid of those which cause stress and remorse. Think positively. Stay in the present and do not think excessively about the past, which you have no power to change. Write down your thoughts and talk to yourself. Have an action plan to address your worries. Distract yourself by going for a run etc.

Why is Minimalism so Popular? The core of it is detachment. The heart of it is not just disposing items. 1) Due to financial crisis, people cut back on spending; 2) environmental concerns; 3) People compare less with what their peers own; 4) Personal debt is increasing; 5) There is more to life than just possessions; 6) Technology is making the world a better place; 7) You can store a lot of information in computers; 8) Social media is making the movement popular; 9) Anti-consumerism mindset. Does your life lack meaning even though you are busy? Take the item that you love and break it down to its core purpose. Think about how life will be different without the item. Will you be happy or sad? Minimalist closets are pared down. Live a more intentional life. Head off to the mountains, go for a road trip. If you are a minimalist, there is no need to keep promoting the same lifestyle to others. Some things might have sentimental value to you. Money and possessions can only bring short term happiness. Most people tend to spend more once their income levels rise and they constantly buy new items. Those who spend on others also reveal a higher level of happiness. Know the 80/20 rule and focus your time on the 20%. 20% of lifestyle choices can bring 80% of happiness. Sometimes, having possessions might allow you to share them with others, thus bringing about happiness. Sometimes, happiness also involves planning. The trick is to use your possessions to have yourself happy. Keep them well and be grateful that you own them.

Do you have stuff that you rarely use? Unnecessary clutter sends negative impacts on your life. Box up your duplicates and unused stuff. Be simple. – Grace Scott

To some people, this is the ultimate happiness. The joy of finding a bargain or just something that makes you giddy is happiness. There is nothing wrong with this type of lifestyle. – Grace Scott

By focusing less on the material goods, there is more time to focus on the meaningful – experiences, travel, play time, and relaxation. – Grace Scott

You are unique because of your individual traits, skills, experiences, aptitudes, interests and attitudes. You are not the sum of your possessions, but those possessions can give you joy if you share them with others. – Jolibois

Minimalism is a Double-Edged Sword. Do you always need to keep up with the Jones? Seek experiences over possessions. Being a minimalist can ruin your business. Minimizing means being stingy in your business spending. It can be lethal to your relationships. Realize that you can’t really change someone and it is always smarter to change yourself first. Make it a team effort. Value relationships over a minimalist lifestyle. Our ancestors owned stuff and made tools too. De-cluttering doesn’t really protect the environment as it clutters the landfills. Not purchasing goods means the economy can’t grow. Where should you throw the things that you plan to dispose of? Understand that commercialism is not all bad. Materialism might even hone productivity .Obsession with things can make you hoard items. If you want to be a minimalist, think about how it will affect your family etc. Do not be a minimalist and have a miser attitude towards life. Avoid simply being a trend follower without understanding the trend. Minimalism can drive you crazy. It might mean that you do not plan for the future. You may also lack ambition because strive less in life. Sometimes, your objects can define you and giving them away means you lose a part of you. You may start competing with other minimalist. It also signals a lack of passion in life. You tend to cut corners in everything you do. Life may become boring if you are not careful.

Just remember that unless you totally rid your world of possessions, thoughts and emotions, you will never be a true minimalist. You will just be confused. – Grace Scott

Minimalism is not for Everyone. You must be committed to the lifestyle wholeheartedly. If you the collector type of person, minimalism is not for you. Your items might form a part of you too. If you like fashion, do not be a minimalist. The same applies to photographers, mechanics, children etc. Your spouse may not agree with your minimalist lifestyle too. For the family man, minimalism is not a wise choice. Ensure you spend enough on your children for their developmental needs. You should never be forced to throw away your belongings. Before you throw, make sure you think carefully as you don’t want to throw them away and regret later.

Minimalism vs Frugal Living. Being frugal is being careful with money. Frugal people might still have possessions. In such a lifestyle, luxury is rare and hedonism is unheard of. Avoid lavish and extravagance and cut down on waste. Being thrifty is definitely important. Avoid buying a very expensive phone and also paying for cable subscription

Living a smarter life is not necessarily becoming a minimalist or adopting a frugal lifestyle, it is keeping the things you love, purchasing the things you need, and living a sensible life. – Grace Scott

Minimalism and Your Diet. Have a minimal diet and eat clean. Avoid processed food and add fish, nuts and seeds to your diet. Eliminate bread, pasta, sugar. Learn to fast and drink coffee to replace food. However, do not skip breakfast. Keep yourself hydrated at all times. Take multivitamins and fish oil. Walk at least 15 minutes a day. Use the gym. Sleep is important and get as much rest as you can. Minimize eating portions and eat small and order small dishes only. Avoid snacking, this is very important. Avoid carbonated drinks and only eat when hungry. Stop when you are full.

How to Become a Hybrid Minimalist. Is the way you spend in line with your values and desires and your happiness? Do not become a slave to your possessions. This is very important. The key to everything is moderation. You can still collect things you like and lead a minimalist lifestyle. Find a good job which you like and pays okay. Forced minimalism will not make you happy at all. Live with only what you need. It is better to be a practical minimalist. Or you can even be a balanced materialist. Buy only what you need and take care of what you own. Get rid of toxic relationships from your life. Learn to love your day job. Re-arrange your stuff and get your stuff to friends who might need them more. Sell your things. Avoid buying too many storage containers which lead to clutter. The key is to avoid buying duplicated items. Find a lifestyle which works for you and which you are comfortable with.

Owing less is better than organizing more. – Joshua Becker

Conclusion. Do not de-clutter so much that you rely on others for stuff. Ensure that you have tools for emergency. Never take minimalism in the extreme form. Others might find that you are weird. Cut back in areas which doesn’t matter as much. Ultimately, be happy with your choices and the make the most of them.

 

What Matters Most by James Hollis

Living a More Considered Life

This book will not cover basic and obvious things like relationships. This book is more concerned over the relationship with one-self. Imagination is our greatest faculty. At the minimum, we should bring no harm to others. We should take responsibility for our personal shadow. Consider the idea of loss in your life. Relationships will bring us new problem and we will learn to solve them. This will help us to grow even more. One needs to learn to be accepted in society. One needs to stay psychologically balanced and in silent contemplation. We retain the freedom to choose and determine our fate even in trying circumstances. Humor is important. The ideas contained in the book should keep you thinking and reflecting. We must continue to contribute to the world. We should understand and become more of ourselves. This book is for those who view themselves as exiles. In the past, there was no need for self-reflection. We need to answer questions that life throws at us or we will live an unconscious, unreflective life.

We are here to be eccentric, different, perhaps strange, perhaps merely to add our small piece, our little clunk, chunky selves, to the great mosaic of being. – James Hollis

Shock and Awe: That Life not be Governed by Fear. Sometimes, you will get moments of Deja-vu in life. How do you get back when you lost your track in life. Life from birth to death is fraught with danger. Values and ethics get passed down from one generation to next. There is killing and eating in the animal kingdom and we live in a competitive society. We need to recognize that life is cruel and that prey has to die. Yet as life seems fleeting, we long for its permanence and stability. The fact is that life is extremely unpredictable. Cancer can strike one anytime. Therefore, it is important not to be governed by fears. Many kids think that the world revolves around themselves. However, some still are attention getting and seeking when they grow up. We all suffer from overgeneralization. Parents should not go into hiding and avoid difficult questions asked by their children. For relationships to thrive, couples must forgive each other and show grace. Often, subconsciously, we let others define who we are. Our soul never sleeps. The psyche can provide us with hidden energy to choose the right course. It is a constant battle going on in our brain. One needs to ask ‘what really matters most’. Our ego is on autopilot. Often, our decisions are made from adaptations in the past. It is important to recognize the fear (example: ego). Learning to cope with your fears will liberate you. Do not hate humans as they are all subject to the same fear. In general, we suffer from the fear of ‘overwhelmment’ and ‘abandonment’. Although humans are weak, you should have your own will and not simply listen to others. When we are afraid to get neglected, we start becoming control freaks or dominate others. We are all exposed to such threats. Fear is the enemy.

How easy to fall back into the sleep of innocence, naiveté, fundamentalism of one kind or another, avoidance, rationalization, and self-deception. These demons are the enemy of life. – James Hollis

Fear not. What is not real, never was and never will be. What is real, always was and cannot be destroyed. – The Bhagavad Gita

We are defined as a reticulated network of behaviors, attitudes toward self and world, and reflexive stratagems designed to get our needs met and to manage the anxiety in whose slipstream we daily stride. – James Hollis

Saving the Appearances: That We Learn to Tolerate Ambiguity. Some stories of our lives are unconscious in nature. Choose security over honesty. We have the power to rewrite biographies. Sometimes, we suffer from an identity crisis. Often, we find ourselves in between states and experience various contradictory messages. Life is full of ambiguity and complexity. Bruno endorsed Copernican observations even when at that time, everyone thought that the Earth was in the center of the Universe. Acknowledge the complexity of the modern world. Do not keep relying on older models. Things change over time. Bruno was placed under house arrest after publishing his views. When ambiguity emerges, some societies take the fascist mentality and discounts dissenting views and thoughts. Some people sacrifice in order to reach a higher goal. Sometimes, in order to ‘save appearances’, we lie etc. We all want to stick to collective views and to avoid ambiguity. This is known as the herd mentality. Knowing what you do not know is wisdom. Subtleties and contradictions need to be eliminated. We need to respect ambiguity and tolerate anxiety. Politics tends to make people’s lives more comfortable. Is it acceptable for our lives to be governed by fear? One should rely on the facts.

The truth is, all of life is a grand, blooming ambiguity. The more we know about it, the more we realize we do not know. – James Hollis

Unchallenged conviction begets rigidity, which begets regression; but ambiguity opens us to discovery, complexity, and therefore growth. The health of our culture, and the magnitude of our personal journeys, require that we learn to tolerate ambiguity, in service to a larger life. – James Hollis

Starving Amid Abundance: That We Consider Feeding the Soul. What happened to old rituals? In the past, people performed rituals for the sun to rise. Why do so many people head to Las Vegas to gamble? It has to mean something right. Why do they come? Is gambling so seductive? Why do people gamble even though they know the house will win? Has people projected their souls onto money? Some people think that if they win, they are gifted. Some think that money can transform their lives. Money is spiritually irrelevant. Are we spiritually impoverished? Soul means psyche and it is the essence of our being. When we live in accordance with our soul’s intent, we feel an inner peace. Although we have many material comforts, we are starving. In life, we are encouraged to find salvation for sufferings and to distract ourselves. Most of us listen too much to our parents and lose our own message. Do not simply defers your interests in service of others. Learn to make important choices about your life. Once in a while, review your commitments and try to make a difference. Spare some time to feed your own soul. It is the task of life to find what really can feed our soul. There is no right or wrong answer. When you experience boredom or loss of energy, the psyche is not right. Always pay attention to levels of satisfaction and reciprocity. We should no longer ignore our soul anymore.

We serve the world by finding what feeds us, and, having been fed, then share our gift with others. – James Hollis

That We Respect the Power of Eros. A lot of us want to lead controlled and predictable lives. Why do people who have attained huge success in life suddenly give it up? Why do they engage in self-defeat at the end? Eros was a young God. How can we not be possessed by Eros? Eros is our God. God suggests a form of immensity and endurance. Eros is a life force, and so is Logos. Both of them manifest in our soul. We need them to balance one another. One existential condition is separation. We need to get used to being alone. Eros is all about connection. For females, Eros is a big thing and women invest a lot in their relationships. Men treat Eros as more goal-directed behaviors. Men tend to focus more on external attainments. For that reason, men tend to be lonelier. Their lives seem to be miserable at times. Some of them turn to pornography and drugs and alcohol. For a man, he tends to project his anima upon success. They want to show that they are instinctive and sexual. For a female, it is more about spirited energy. If you are not in touch with Eros, you will feel that something is missing. Women have a more nuanced relationship to Eros. Men usually do not respond well to crises. Women can bounce back because they have a stronger network of friends. Women tend to grieve openly and with more honesty. Men try to bury and deflect. Carl Jung thought that culture forms are intrinsic search for meaning. We are symbol-making animals. Always ask what life requires and wants of us? Do not neglect your Eros at all cost.

That we Step into Largeness. We need to adapt to the voices around us. Most of us prefer to live ‘small’. Do not serve till you neglect your own needs. Sometimes, even though you have been a good parent, you still wonder why something is missing. You start asking, why am I here? Often, we do not understand ourselves well enough. Do not lose permission to be who you are. We lose contact with our instinctual guidance. Sometimes, people confuse their identity with their outward persona. Many teenage girls would rather be a celebrity. They long for fame and attention. You can’t escape from your soul. Often, people cling on to strongly to their past and do not let go. Some like to complain that others do not care about them. They have not lived a larger life. Some just refuse to grow up and take care of themselves. It is important to stop whining and take charge of your life. No choice is without cost. The contradictions faced in life are important to help us grow. Many children from broken homes suffer later in life. But it does not need to end up this way. To some, being lazy is something bad and they would not be able to tolerate such periods of their lives. Sometimes, you can do what the soul wants. Realize that what our psyches are different from what the world wants of us. Live your inner authority with risk and boldness. Fear is an enemy of largeness. Some people fear their own freedom that they do not take any action in the first place. One needs to escape your clutches of your past. It is crucial to step out of fear and reductionism.

That We Risk Growth over Security. Fear holds up back from conquering the world. Lethargy causes us to be seduced and leads to procrastination. Living requires a lot of effort. Do not be afraid to show up because you can’t meet expectations. But does this mean you should live a very stable life? Do not live someone else’s life. Sometimes, you just have to step out into the unknown. Every time our emotional development stalls, enlargements of our soul can painfully teach us an important lesson. Most people actually prefer security over growth. If you choose security, you do not allow your soul to grow. Our psyche will demand us to grow and to explore and to stay curious. There is a lot to learn. Odysseus was someone who always faced his fears and persisted. Do not get distracted and lose our journey. We endeavor to educate our young. Even the author requires an education. Often, after we have attained our goals, we stop and rest and stop striving further. During the second stage of your life, stop and ask what matters most. Life is about being defeated by even larger things.

Boredom is the pathology of the depressed, or the unimaginative. Ceasing to grow is a failure of nerve, because it is not what our psyche demands. – James Hollis

That We Live Verbs not Nouns. Our ego is complex. Our ego prefers predictability and certainty. It prefers comforting nouns. However, in reality, things are never fixed. It is strange that modern people still deny the theory of evolution. If you do not expose your children to theory, they cannot learn and progress. We naturally want to pin down the world and control it. Even though we can control our natural environment, we are still unhappy at times. The truth is that everything is in flux. For most religious concepts, it stemmed from an affective experience before becoming an idea. Communities have more staying power than societies. Humans created dogma, rites and cultic practices. Rites are reenactment of primal experience. Cultic practices are events that help preserve a set of values. Communities get institutionized. We are all idolaters and need intelligence. Some people who attend Bible Studies are more interested in finding certainty than exploration.

That We Find and Follow the Path of Creativity and Delight in Foolish Passions. A man I know was obsessed with the cultivation of grapes and wines. He was an oenophile. Such behavior was associated with snobbery. Sometimes, we are stirred by forms and images. We can be inspired by them. It is different to be possessed by a god and by a complex. Which God should one choose? ‘What does it ask for me?’ Ordinary people, under extraordinary circumstances, have murdered other humans too. We do not choose our enthusiasms. Passions must resonate within us. Keep your enthusiasm alive. Some people are willing to take risks. We all want to freely express ourselves, but are held back sometimes. What does your soul want? Do not let the ‘parent complex’ stand in your way. We are all asked to die. Through death, we can enact the developmental plan. Do not live in constant servitude to your parents’ wishes. Pay close attention to what your dreams tell you. At times, your dreams can reveal your psyche and what it is trying to reveal. We need to sacrifice ego comforts in order to grow and develop. A passion is something which we feel deeply. All of us have passions. At times, we can revive some of them. Use your free time to indulge in your passion. There is nothing foolish about passion. Each of us have our own myth to create. Reading can be a passion too. Passions can be constant. People were doing the same things very long ago as well. Passion helps provide much needed clarity. Passions can invoke nostalgia. It also provides something in common with another person. It serves as a bridge among different people and even different generations. Some passions can be timeless and transcend generations of people. Although our memory might fail us, there are times when passions help provide meaning for our lives. Let your passions nourish and animate.

There is a big difference between wasting time – our popular culture offers a vast arena of possibilities for doing so – and having a passion. – James Hollis

That We Engage Spiritual Crises, and other Bad Days at the Office. Even in the worst of crises, try to learn from it. A spiritual crisis occurs when we can’t understand ourselves properly. We often create a fake self to deal with anxiety. Some of them might be due to trauma etc. Although humans are resilient, we get hurt easily. Sometimes, we all feel powerless. When you understand that life is absurd, then you will start to make choices with real consequences. Choose your inner values carefully. Sometimes, by fate, we end up in places where we don’t want to visit. At times, there might be discrepancies between expectations and outcomes. Problems arise when we expect too much of others. Life might be problematic when we are constantly being told what to do but can’t do anything for ourselves. What are the methods to deal with the above? Sometimes, cultures can even collapse. Ego consciousness might implode on itself. Life can overwhelm us from time to time. Healing is important, but unfortunately, not everyone heals. Some people regress and they prefer the old state of affairs. However, we stop growing because of this. We all need to find what is true for ourselves and to find the truth. There are too many modern distractions like computer games nowadays. Hordes of people believed in communism and embraced fascism. Herd mentality is strong in humans. Our psyche is constantly evolving and growing.

That we write our story, lest someone else write it for us. We all have to achieve our own agenda. Life is a sum of our stories. We all need to stand for things we believe in. We should live our stories. Unconscious stories affect us as well. You are always free to rewrite your life’s plot. As a kid, we used to wonder about the world a lot. We are usually in service to someone else’s questions. As adults, most of us have lost our childhood wonder. Ask yourself, who are you? Learn to connect with the invisible world. The poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, also reflects on his childhood days. We are still trying to figure out what to do with our stories. The great people in life are never happy. The modern culture is all about addiction and distraction. Many adults have forgotten their story of their past. How can we take corrective action? How can we reclaim our journey? We need to take accountability of our own story. We must learn to embrace uncertainty. Do not ‘go home’ and go to somewhere that is safe. You must listen to the story that your psyche tells you. It is not necessary to climb the corporate ladder. Rather, one should just strive to be a better human being. What matters most is that we become who we really are.

What was the face you had before the world was made? – Zen koan

Amor Fati: That we fight fate, and love it also. Fate can destroy our journey. We are the primary source of our own suffering. Some of us suffer from the narcissistic personality disorder. To what degree should we serve fate? Do you still have room to play? We need to recognize that energy is ever changing. Life is about the accumulated consequences we have made. Each of us all have stories. We need to experience a larger measure of consciousness. One needs to do logical things. However, do not keep manipulating the psyche of others. Our story can be changed via risk, courage, energy and persistence. How can one expect to love one’s fate? Our psyche is indeed a shape shifter. It is a fact that we do not have complete freedom in our lives. Humans created the concept of ‘karma’. Life is driven by inherited forces. The fact is that sports can build character. We all owe death a life. Even sometimes are beyond our control, we should play life with elan and a healthy investment of spirit. Life is more than outcomes, it is also about attitude. The first half of our lives is usually preoccupied with the sense of developing an ego. The second half of our life is to seek out the meaning of life. We need to keep asking what life asks of us.

That we live more fully in the shadow of mortality. How can we live more abundantly in the presence of our mortality? Modern medicine can prolong life, but it can’t prevent the inevitable. Modern people are living longer. Is longevity the goal? Are we living better lives? Sometimes, we can achieve what we want in life but still feel miserable inside. Some people believe in an afterlife. Judaism believes that one lives through one’s descendants. Those people who have taken risks in their lives usually have a better time with dealing with mortality. Mortality means that what we do matters. We have to live more responsibly and more reflectively. There is no need to shrink from death. It is important to develop a relationship with the present. Keep asking why you are here. There is a need to respect symbol formations too. To experience joy, one needs to also experience loss. It is courageous to live in service to your values.

Look, you and I are going to die; the readers of this poem will die; the page will turn to dust, so I won’t delude ourselves into immortal pretensions, but rather I will say, simply, I saw you there, outlined in the doorway, with the sun at your back – I saw you. – Archibald MacLeish

That we accept at last that our home is our journey, and our journey is our home. Our life is a strange rhythm of exile and homecoming. Why is exile necessary? We must depart from what we know in order to cope with uncertainty. We all have different tasks to address. Pathology should be your friend as it helps in reconciliation. Suffering is the requisite for consciousness and recovery. Suffering is humbling in nature. Homecoming means re-establishing the relationship with the self. It is the journey that matters even though you might not find the snow leopard. The journey can one unimaginable richness. Life is always full of surprises. I am always filled with awe and horror at the same time. During the first stage of our life, we struggle with the world. Can we still be honest with ourselves? Religion doesn’t bring out the best in people all the time. We all need to construct more meaning. Keep seeking to improve yourself. The world is full of travelers. We all need to do good and to do it faithfully. One needs to wrest with the bigger questions in life.

Start Something that Matters by Blake Mycoskie

To laugh often and love much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children. To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends. To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition. To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded. – Elisabeth-Anne Anderson Stanley

Tom’s Story. I was involved in an online driver-education program. I took part in the Amazing Race with my sister. To relax, I took a holiday in Argentina. The poverty was starling and that woke me up. I saw how they walked barefoot and got cuts on their feet. I wanted to help. I considered looking for donors, but that wouldn’t be sustainable. Then, it struck me. I should create a business that provided the kids with a constant flow of shoes. I called the company TOMS with the catch-phrase ‘Shoes for a Better Tomorrow’ or ‘Tomorrow’s Shoes’. The polo teacher, Alejo, joined me on this business venture. We knew what design we wanted. Finally, we found a local shoemaker willing to work with us. We collaborated and I tweaked on the design. I sent the shoes out for testing as well. How could I get people to pay for the shoes I made? Talking to your friends works and they also loved the idea. It is very important to show up in person. Some saw that TOMS made a good story. The newspapers picked up my story. However, the inventory management system was bad and we suffered and couldn’t fulfil orders. The local shoemaker helped to manufacture shoes. The media loved our idea, which was to sell a pair of shoes for profit and then give a pair away. Once we had enough shoes to give away, we went around Argentina. I was overjoyed to be able to provide shoes for the needy children. It made everything seem worthwhile and meaningful. The children were really grateful when thanking us. It was like my life’s work. I wanted TOMS to be my life. I left my other businesses to focus on TOMS. My work had a positive impact on others. The giving aspect of the business gave us a story. There are new tenets to success that must be followed. This book will show you how you can make a difference. You will learn to create a business. You want to make the world a better place. It is possible to earn money, achieve personal fulfilment and to create a positive impact on the world.

What’s changed is the definition of success. Increasingly, the quest for success is not the same as the quest for status and money. The definition has broadened to include contributing something to the world and living and working on one’s own terms. – Blake Mycoskie

A good story transcends boundaries, breaks barriers, and opens doors. It is a key not only to starting a business but also to clarifying your own personal identity and choices. A story evokes emotion, and emotion forges a connection. – Blake Mycoskie

Find Your Story. I liked Adam and Eric. They realised that there was a toxic product and decided to make a safe one in their labs. They wanted an environmentally friendly product. They found people to take care of the packaging. Eventually, the two of them managed to get shops to carry their brand. Press love a good story. Their store received a lot of publicity. Now, they are one of the largest eco-friendly cleaning brands. They had an idea to sell, not just a product by any means. This helped to get customers excited. Stories are powerful. Never underestimate their importance. We rely on stories to remember things. A good story helps open doors. There is too many products out there and we suffer from decision fatigue. You need to connect with the audience emotionally. People are more concerned with personal stories than anything else. Facts only matter that much. Environmentally friendly products are good. Campaigns based on stories are very effective. TOMS was a very young company. The TOMS story was a huge sell. People help to spread the word too. This was the power of our story. People have to believe in what you are doing. Supporters will be loyal customers. AT&T bought our story too. Later, I filmed a commercial and it was a big success. How do you find your story? You can create the only Texan vodka. Identify the communities you belong to and find your story that helps you get off the ground. We usually get caught up in everyday life. It is important to get in touch with ourselves and articulate our passion. If you did not worry about money, what would you do? What cause would you serve? You have to feel strongly about your cause and organize your life around your passion. Commit to telling the story at EVERY OPPORTUNITY. Use ideas from your supporters as well. Listen to them. For example, TOMS organized a barefoot shoes day. Ensure your story is authentic and comes right from the heart. Connect to all the groups you know. This will be your community. When people ask you what do you do, tell them with passion. Learn to partner with others as well. Manage your social media to ensure the story is consistent online too. Find the influence makers who will love your story. Share your story with your social network. It is important to know your audience. Be specific about your idea.

It’s about creating a successful business that also connects supporters to something that matters to them and that has great impact in the world. – Blake Mycoskie

Face Your Fears. Jump right in. Do not hesitate. If you have a good story, do not hesitate to share it. Pam self-published a book. Never give up even if you receive a setback. Always aim to change the lives of others. Fear is more common than what people realize. We are more impressed by boldness. Fear is always with us. You need to learn to overcome it. For many, they give us once the ‘fight-or-flight’ syndrome kicks in. We all need a safe haven to escape from. Create a plan and overcome your fears. Sam Walton is a real success story and who didn’t give up. You must have courage of your convictions. Learn from the mistakes of others. The difference between success and failure is how you overcome setbacks. Be comfortable with fear. Life goes on and you can always start afresh. Don’t fear the unknown. You can never be fully prepared for something. Everyone makes mistakes once in a while. Do not worry about what others think. Do not wait for the best idea to come, for it never will. Learn to remember to live your story. Surround yourself to inspirational quotations. Use inspirational quotes to push you during difficult times. I often read biographies of inspiring people too. Take one small step at a time. Follow the Japanese ‘kaizen’ mindset of small improvements at each time. If you need help, go and ask for it. Create a pros and cons list. The timing is never right and the key is to get started.

Be Resourceful without Resources. We didn’t know if the TOMS business model could work. Many people applied for our internship programme even those they wouldn’t get salary. This was a chance to do something different. We let the interns have a fun time to compensate for the lack of pay. The garage is enchanted. Learn to improvise your space. Learn to lower the expectations of others. Make everyone feel like a team and create a good company culture. Most people start off with humble beginnings. Most people start businesses with a few resources. Imagination trumps money. A lack of money will force you to be alert and hardworking. A lack of money will force you to be creative in getting what you want. Too much money is toxic. If you attract too much money, you need to answer to investors too. Pets.com invested too much in advertising after receiving money from venture capitalists. If you incorporate giving in your business model, it will reap benefits. Stand for something bigger than yourself. Develop a presence where it is free. Social media is free anyway. Dispose of formal titles. Create innovative names so that the people lower-down will also seem important. Use an interesting business card so that people will remember you. Always treat the interns well and feed them properly so that they will be happy. Read other resources on how to better manage your resources.

If you have little money and have to bootstrap and improvise to pull things together, that becomes embedded in your company’s DNA forever – so as you scale up, you maintain the frugality and efficiency that helped you survive your earliest days. – Blake Mycoskie

Keep It Simple. Learn to simplify things. Always think simple and strip it down. Footwear are simple. We used the black canvas as the design. In design, simplicity is the key. Simplicity is very important. Simplicity can also be applied to a goal or a mission. Keep it simple and do the best you can. Learn to unclutter your work area. Learn to schedule things and don’t let technology enslave you. Please clean up. Own as little as you can.

Build Trust. Tony Hsieh is a successful entrepreneur in the US. Zappos was a bit hit. Their business model is all about trust. Employees all look out for the best interests of their company. Employee bonding is very important. The people were given much freedom to tweet. The turnover is very low. Trust is built with the vendors and customers too. Both internal and external trust are important. The hard approach for your staff may not be the best anymore. Make sure the whole team is on the same page. Information is not top down nowadays. Ideas can spring up from the bottom. Empowerment is the key. The soft style of leadership works better. It is important to build a climate of accountability. It is okay to make mistakes. Recall the product if has been shipped to the customer but turned out to be faulty. If someone breaks trust, you must be ruthless about it. There are companies who reward employees for admitting mistakes. Have zero tolerance for people who bad-mouth others. Always place the customers first. Tumi helps to repair bags. Being open and forthright is very important as well. We allowed selected customers to join us on shoe drops. State your goals clearly. Please offer honest and constructive criticism. Empowerment is related to job satisfaction too. Learn to trust the interns. Fine tune your hiring policy to ensure you hire the best. Wear your product so that others will believe you.

People are more likely to do favors for each other if they are friends, not just co-workers. – Tony Hsieh

Giving is good business. Even giving free lunch to needy kids can change their lives. Lauren sold bags and the proceeds went to needy children in Rwanda. Giving is more important than ever. Fight for something bigger than yourself. The smiles on the kids’ faces will definitely keep you going. Pepsi also dropped their SuperBowl commercial and gave money to people who could come up with business ideas. Social work is becoming more popular. TOMS managed to attract many different types of partners. Sometimes, for-profit companies might want to pair with not for-profit companies. Is social responsibility about increasing profits in the long term? Even if you don’t start a business, you can have tremendous impact too but starting new initiatives at work. If you can’t start something big, start something small. Start giving now. Do not simply give money away. You can offer to do pro-bono services. Incorporate giving anywhere you can at work. Trust the host organization to make proper use of the gifts. Try and seek feedback in order to improve your giving. Tailor your gift to the organization’s needs.

The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others. – Mahatma Gandhi

The Final Step. OneShot is a non-profit that provides meningococcal meningitis vaccinations to college students. It also addresses this problem in Africa. Soon, this story caught on. You will get immense joy hearing praise from your customers. Even if you just help one person, it is an enormous achievement. Once you start helping others, you will see that your life is filled with purpose.

Screw Work, Let’s Play by John Williams

How to do what you love and get paid for it

The book will show you how to get paid to do what you like. Create an ideal life in the present now. Happiness leads to better success. There are 10 secrets to obey closely by. Secret 1: How to work out what you really want. Secret 2: How to choose what to do next. Secret 3: How to get started right now. Secret 4: How to guarantee your success. Secret 5: How to play for profit. Secret 6: How to play the fame game and win. Secret 7: How to create an irresistible offer. Secret 8: How to win your first paycheque. Secret 9: How to play full time. Secret 10: How to play your way to the rich life. There are 21 myths you need to understand. The author has interviewed many people for this book. Join the play revolution. It is possible to make money from the things you do. Nowadays, people value freedom and want to stretch themselves. The image of an entrepreneur is more fun now. The internet has allowed many to create online businesses. The play ethic encourages to be more spontaneous and fun. Play isn’t a selfish thought. Nowadays, people with a developed right brain wins. Work will are easy to do will be outsourced nowadays. Times are unpredictable. Start what you want to do right now. It really plays to have fun. Happiness leads to successful outcomes, more than the other way around. Good jobs have the following characteristics: autonomy, meaning and variety. Choose the right things to play. You must get into the flow of things. The problem is that many people are doing the wrong work. We have done work that is based on previous generations say are good. You should find a job that suits your personality and strengths. Try and each your first playcheque before you quit. Be a creator, and not someone passive anymore. Sometimes, you can work anywhere you want. You can even change countries to run your business from. Players must put creativity and fun first. Players are multi-faceted. Learn to respond to the world around you. Be actively engaged in the world. Never stop exploring and never stop learning. However, it is also necessary to know what the market needs and wants. You must solve real world problems in order to make money. Work is never effortless. Seek full expression of yourself. Scrap your career plan as things change too fast. Learn to live in the present. You can’t compete with someone who loves what they do. I wanted to get paid to play. Set your own hours. Now, I am a different portfolio of many different acts. The book will give you an idea of how to make every minute count.

But I’ve found out that the more I focus on what I enjoy doing even when it’s not immediately obvious how I’ll make money, the more successful I am. – John Williams

If you limit your choices to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is a compromise. – Robert Fritz

One of the most valuable things you can ever do is to get to know what you do and don’t enjoy doing. And it can also be one of the most difficult things to do. – John Williams

A scanner is someone who loves to learn and explore new things but gets bored easily. Scanners are more about breadth than depth. – John Williams

When you are truly in play, when you are following the unfolding path of what provides you engagement, expression, excitement and curiosity in the world, then your work is simply a natural expression of who you are and who you are becoming. – John Williams

How to work out what you really really want? You must know what play feels like. People usually see work as something they must do. What would work that feels like play look like? Ask ‘what do you want’ first. Your progress will be tremendous if you like what you do. Write down ideas in a notebook that excite you wherever you go. The first of 21 myths are (1) If it’s important, you’ll remember it. This is not true in reality. Always carry a notebook around with you. Pay attention to every detail. See exactly what draws your attention. Follow every lead, act on your hunches. Myth 2: The answer to my work search is in some magical new thing I have never tried before. Most times, you will actually realize that you are doing what you like, just that it cannot be considered work. Take a year off to discover. What would you do for a year? Write down all you would do if you had a year off for yourself. Pretend money is not an issue. Look back at your career, recall your happy moments. Who is your career hero? Brian Eno had a very varied career. Who do you envy? Envy is good. It shows you something which you need but don’t currently have. What do you find difficult stopping? For a player, you can bring all the skills you have onboard and don’t need to focus on one label. Are you a Scanner? A scanner is someone who has many varied interests. Entrepreneurs turn out to be often scanners. By owning your own business, you can do whatever you like. Craft a life that suits you. Write down a few different 1 years off you can take and imagine the different possibilities. You can have what you really want but you need to be flexible about it. You must visualize the exact experience you want to have. Don’t worry about what others think of you. You don’t need long expensive training as well. Work at its deepest level is play. Make minor adjustments in your life first, but start with doing what you like.

Where the needs of the world and your talents cross, there lies your vocation. – Aristotle

If you’ve been stuck for a long time on what to do next in your work, and you can afford some time for experimentation, it’s worth choosing almost anything you’re really keen to do and having a play with it for a few weeks. – John Williams

How to choose what to do next? Paul McCartney contemplated between being a coil winder or a musician. His dad kept persuading him to get a proper job. It requires courage. Myth 5: Doing what you love is selfish. Do not hold back as you are short-changing the human race. Don’t hold back. Even if your work isn’t good, it might inspire others. Your play must meet a need that people have.Learn to help others. ‘Pleasure + Engagement + Meaning = Happiness’. Pleasure means enjoying positive emotions from tasks and relationships. Engagement is getting lost in a task which is play. Meaning is using your strengths to serve a greater good. You need all three to be happy. Look back at your work, when did you stand out? Write it down. Increase your frequency. How to enter a flow state? You can go for personality profiling. Wealth Dynamics is one such system. There are 8 different profiles: 1) Creator; 2) Star; 3) Supporter; 4) Deal maker; 5) Trader; 6) Accumulator; 7) Lord; 8) Mechanic. Which profile are you? Do not try to be an all-rounder. Instead, work on your strengths. Hire people with complementary skills and to fill in where you are lacking at. You must be aware of your talents. Some people are good at flirting. It’s a skill. The sweet spot is when talent, skill and passion mean. Skills are important because it is not easy to compete with the veterans. You must try to apply skills from your previous work. There is always the love vs money balancing act. There are far too many people stuck in lousy jobs. How to avoid starving? The problem with arts is that there is too much supply and not enough demand. Get creative about how to distribute your product. Get someone to promote your work. Do not be afraid that your work will be rejected. ‘The facts are always friendly.’ Carl Rogers. What do you value more? Try and network to get to know more people. Experiment to figure out what you truly want. Get others to describe your strengths.

Successful people apparently have fewer thoughts; they don’t engage in endless deliberation. Perhaps this is because the research shows that over-thinking makes you miserable and unmotivated. – John Williams

People who strive for something significant, whether it’s learning a new craft or raising moral children, are far happier than those who don’t have strong dreams or aspirations. Find a happy person and you will find a project. – John Williams

Begin somewhere; you cannot build a reputation on what you intend to do. – Liz Smith

How to get started right now? It’s trial and error. Try and see if it works. Sam Bompas and Henry Parr have embraced play. They have experimented with food. Pitch for something and try to make it work later. Myth 6: I can’t start anything until I know exactly where I’m heading. Things move too fast and are unpredictable. Pick an interesting project and go for it. Pursue projects that are important to you. There are problems with goals. Myth 7: Once my life is the way I want it to be, then I’ll be happy. How you choose to live life everyday matters. Your happiness will create your success. Start on a project straightaway. Thinking is overrated. If you can’t solve a problem, overthinking might not help if you don’t have new inputs. How to pick a play project? It should last for from a few weeks to a few months. The point is to get into motion. Listen to your gut feeling and do it now. The skills you learn will come in handy again next time. Make sure that it is enjoyable to do. If you’re stuck in career paralysis, any project will help you. Don’t worry about making money. If you’re self-employed, pursue a project that is close to your heart and in line with your strategy. Read about leaders in the new field of work. Go to networking sessions and get your hand on any experience you can get. Myth 8: I should go and research this all day on the internet. There is no need to research excessively. Try to speak to someone knowledgeable instead. Track down the smart people. Think big start small. Break it down into smaller parts. Start with a short novel or a blog. Explore about business opportunities on the blog. Turn your home into a gallery. Launch a regular event. Talk to random people and use meetup.com. Write down a larger objective of your project. Get your idea and evolve it. Commit to your play project. Create something and share it with the world. Give yourself some deadlines too. Record the feedback that you have received. Have some direction. Having a mission is attractive. When you’re playing, even if you can’t make money, it will feel good.

If you’re changing somebody else’s baby’s diapers that feels like work. But if it’s your own kid, that doesn’t feel like work. – Derek Sivers

The fact is that motivation often comes after you start something, not before. – John Williams

How to guarantee your success? Simply do not stop. It is always risky in business. Setbacks are painful. Setbacks are there to see whether you will give up. Our thoughts can become self-fulfilling prophecies. A positive outlook on life is the key. Tackle your negative thoughts and doubts. Your head might be filled with negative voices. This is your ‘top dog’. Your top dog is not your voice of reason. Think of the supportive alternative to the top dog. The key is habit. Learn to hang out with supportive people. Build your support team. Your support team should consist of 4 to 5 people. Myth 9: People who are successful don’t need support. Learn to manage your fear. It is important to deal with your fear. Whatever scares you, go do it. Do not always play it safe. Don’t stop. Keep fine tuning your play project so that you can make money. Don’t simply throw away your play project unnecessarily. Take total responsibility of your life and don’t blame others. Ask people for what you need. Learn to have uncomfortable conversations with yourself. There is no need to ask for permission. Don’t ask ‘how’, ask ‘who’ instead. Look back at how you overcame challenges. Steal the strategies of others, not the content. Myth 10: Famous people are just different from me. Use the Millionaire Test. ‘If I were already a millionaire, would I do this thing I am considering right now?’ It is important to do things even when you don’t feel like doing them. If you don’t have big blocks of time to spare, do little and do often. Learn to manage time in micro-blocks. Do not feel overwhelmed. Do things to reduce your overwhelm. How to manage your brilliant ideas? Store your new ideas so that you can refer to them again. Ideas have a half-life and it pays off to work on them immediately. Ideally, work on your project a little each morning. Do give yourself some creative idling time as well. Try to take a nap as well.

How to play for profit… and purpose? This chapter will show you how to actually get paid. Never give up too quickly. How do you get paid to enjoy what you’re doing? You must solve a problem. People pay to get rid of their pain. It should alleviate some form of discomfort. Offer something that is on people’s to-do lists. You have to solve an existing problem. Link your current field with life. Sometimes, people are interested in what they want. Write down the problems you think people have. Look for the pain that people are experiencing currently. Write down your clients’ desire and the obstacle that they are currently facing. What challenges have you struggled with in your life?

How to play the fame game – and win. You must be known for something at least. Play out your ideas on a global stage. Start with a blog or a meetup group. Share your ideas with people and garner feedback. Test and see what happens. Myth 11: I must keep my good idea secret otherwise someone will steal it. There are very few ideas out there. Execution is what matters. Try not to keep it secret for too long. Step 1: Pimp your project. Learn to brand yourself. Don’t blend in, do something big instead. Humor is a great tool to use throughout your work. You need to market yourself and show how you are different from the rest. Use what you have learned. Marketing won’t help you if you’re mediocre. Never underestimate the power of a good story. Start a movement. People are generally attracted to those who are passionate. Step 2: Choose your channel of communication. Authenticity and integrity are very important. Which channel do you want to use?. Email is one form, where people can subscribe to your posts. Blogging is a great way to build ideas. Simply chronicle your journey and blog about it. Writing in your own authentic voice makes you unique. Tumblr is better for images. You can even blog about your life. Make use of free services on the net. Print on demand sites like Lulu and Blurb work as well. You can run your own radio or tv show too. It just takes one afternoon and is very simple indeed. Step 3: Who are your kind of people? Who would you love to sell your services to? Find a niche and a group of small people who find you irresistible. People prefer specialists. Step 4: Start the conversation. Step 5: The art of seduction, or how to turn your fans into customers. Think from your customer’s perspective. ‘Enter the conversation already going on in your customer’s head’.

How to create an irresistible offer? What will you offer to people? The Money gym is an interesting concept. You need to find something that people really want. How do you deliver your product or service? Learn to provide a service to individuals. If you possess a skill, it is much easier. However, there is a disadvantage in selling your own time. People in the annual rich lists do not sell their time. Combine your service offering and offer people a package. It is possible to work 6 months and then travel 6 months if you are a free lance worker. Find a supporting income stream that is enjoyable. Attend conferences and networking events. How to make passive income? It is thrilling to be able to do so. The internet is one of the lowest risk passive income you can generate. Use the internet as a vehicle to sell your expertise. These are known as information products. You need a large number of people to talk about your product. Another way is to interview people for free. The power of knowing the problem. Even if you don’t know enough in the topic, you can hire people to write for you. You can sell ebooks through your website. You can organize teleclass etc. You can also promote other people’s products. Very few people can make money from their blogs. A membership programme is a good way to earn money too. This allows you to have a deeper connection with the customer. You can take your work and produce an e-book on it.

The secret of living is to find people who will pay you money to do what you would pay to do – if you had the money. – Sarah Caldwell

How to win your first playcheque? Money makes play sustainable and can keep you going. Myth 12: You can’t get paid for doing what you love. If you choose the right path, you will enjoy the journey. It is also possible to ask for a new job scope to revamp your career etc. You can also consider working part-time. Let your enthusiasm win the job. Your first playcheque will be your landmark. If possible, try to achieve this without quitting your job yet. Myth 13: All my friends have said they would buy what I’m offering, so I must be on the right track. It is not sufficient as you must really collect the money from them. When you’re new, you can do some work for free. Later on, charge a token sum. Charging a small amount also guarantees that people will show up. Myth 14: I can’t possibly charge for what I’m doing yet – I need to read more books and take more courses and workshops. Don’t use that as excuses not to start. Run a campaign. Learn to focus. Success takes a while. Gather feedback from others and fine tune your product. If you want something, show focus and enthusiasm. Myth 15: I can’t talk to anyone until I have some fancy business cards printed and my website launched. Business cards are over-rated anyway. Celebrate your first paycheque.

Don’t be too quick to jump from the work that’s currently providing your income: better to gain momentum first while still being paid elsewhere. Being stressed about money is not a state conducive to playfulness –  John Williams

How to play full time? How do you play full time? You need some word of mouth recommendations. What you do must excite people and your friends alike. Do not let your friends do favours for you. Find 10 people who will rave about it. You need to find 10 people who truly truly love it. If not, seek a rethink. Others will tell you whether they like it. In ordinary jobs, you can’t say I don’t like that task, so I’m not doing it. You should shape the product for yourself. Try to avoid recruitment agencies. You should always try and create your own role. Join networking events to get noticed. When you seek out your ideal job, your enthusiasm shines. Go freestyle. This book says that self-employment is less risky. Some businesses can perform well in downturns. You don’t need a new idea. You just need to do things better than others. An online business is easy to start. Launch one project at a time only. Learn to focus on your type of projects. Collaborate with others. Hire people to make up for your weaknesses. You don’t need a very long business plan. Do your sums properly. Please do your market research. If you switch fields, you will take a while to get used to it

How to play your way to the rich life? The richer you want, the more impact it should create on others. Most entrepreneurs don’t care about the money at all. Appreciate the rich moments in life. Is it about the freedom to travel? Travel using your laptop like Chris Guillebeau. Is your rich life about free time? Is your rich life about the power to change the world? If so, set up a social enterprise. Start your play fund to manage your money. Remove your internal blocks. Change your perception about sales being tacky. There are no prizes for being a starving entrepreneur. Your closest friends have a big impact on you. Charge exactly what you’re worth. Sometimes, lowering prices might cheapen your product. Learn about supply and demand. Sometimes, the bandwagon changes due to regulation etc. That is the time to make more money. P is for Product – Sell the right thing. R is for Right People. I is for Increasing Trust. C is for Communicating value. E is for Expect it. If people say it’s too expensive, it’s because they haven’t seen enough value in it. Choose a rich strategy.

The Art of Work by Jeff Goins

The Art of Work by Jeff Goins

A Proven Path to Discovering What You Were Meant to do

Finding your calling can be difficult and tiring. It also involves many twists and turns. There is no destination and you will always be on a journey. Everyone is searching for their calling in life. This book also contains messages and examples of people who have made it.

A calling is not some carefully crafted plan. It’s what’s left when the plan goes horribly wrong. – Jeff Goins

There is no guarantee that you will still be alive tomorrow. Therefore, it helps that you can should live life to the fullest. Garrett was a blind cyclist. However, he overcame the odds and became a miracle. Discover what you were born to do. ‘What should you do with your life?’ Learn to find your vocation in life. A vocation is more than a job. You are dealt with a pack of cards and you need to make the most of what you have. It’s what you do with your chances that counts and makes the difference. When you were young, you had big dreams. But somehow along the way, you gave them up. Listen hard to the whisper in your voice. Do not come up with excuses on why you shouldn’t want to do something. Trust your gut but also do things that are uncomfortable and painful. There are 7 themes to someone’s story: 1) Awareness; 2) Apprenticeship; 3) Practice; 4) Discovery; 5) Profession; 6) Mastery; 7) Legacy. Some stages are overlapping in nature. There is a process to finding your life’s work. Do not think of everything that you could have been. Every life is important and significant. Learn to see difficulties as opportunities. Life is full of surprises and you need to react best to them.

Listen to Your Life. Listen to clues and be aware. Larry did a CAT scan and found that he had brain tumour. Larry only lasted 9 months more before he passed on. Always remember to show your appreciation to people you love. Even in your painful moments, life is teaching you a lesson. You must be aware and learn to pay attention. Sometimes, things are not always in your control. Hard work can only get you so far. Some people like to believe that if you must your mind at anything, you can succeed. But getting whatever you want may not make you extremely happy. Life would not be very fun if you were determined in everything you do, but you had no choice over what you could do. How you react to events makes a difference. 87% of the workforce is not engaged in their work. Maybe we should stop looking for happiness. Rather, we should look for meaning or find a reason to be happy. If people have an on-going project, or a job to do, then they have a reason to live another day. See the purpose in your suffering. Do what is required of us. Pain can be a blessing too. Fear can be a motivator. You must know when a good time to listen to it is. Sometimes, if you didn’t do well in a certain aspect, you could strive to help others improve on the situation. Look out for major events or ‘inciting events’ in your life. This big event might just spark you into action. You must believe that you are called to something. You need desire and willingness to begin. Many people know what their dream is, the problem is that they do not dare to admit or say it out. Ask yourself something deeper. There are no guarantees against failure. The key is to keep moving and do not stop. Some of the answers are already inside you. You just need to dig them out. ‘Clarity comes with action’ J. Everyone has a calling, somewhere deep inside them. The unknown is what is keeping us from pursuing action. Listen to your life. Habits of awareness are very important. Learn to listen attentively. Write down the major events of your life on paper. Look out for a recurring theme. Understand that nothing is wasted. Everything that has happened in your past can shape your future. Look below the surface. Learn to watch other people. When in doubt, commit to the path. Do not have a commitment problem. A vocation is something you become. Change takes time. Committing to a wrong thing is better than standing still. This is better as you will still learn from failure. Failure is painful, but it is the best way to learn.

When you are stuck fulfilling an obligation instead of chasing a dream, you aren’t your best self. This is why we find more people moving from one job to the next. They are doing their best to be happy but failing miserably. Most of us have done this at some point, quitting one thing for the promise of something better. And we were disappointed to find that the next job or relationship held the same complications as the one we were escaping. – Jeff Goins

You don’t need some big plan. You just need to be a little dissatisfied. You need to have a vague premonition that the world is not completely right. That’s what awareness is: a sense that something more is possible. – Jeff Goins

If you pay attention to your life and the lessons it can teach you, you won’t feel so lost. Your story will seem less like a series of disjointed events and more like a beautifully complex narrative unfolding before you. – Jeff Goins

Nothing is wasted. No job, no task, no obstacle is useless, if we are willing to see how it can fit into our calling…As you explore your calling, you will be surprised by how your previous experiences are conspiring to lead you in the direction of your life’s work. You just have to listen. – Jeff Goins

You cannot find your calling on your own. It’s a process that involves a team of mentors. And everywhere you look, help is available. – Jeff Goins

Accidental Apprenticeships. You can’t do it alone. An apprentice eventually becomes a professional. Sometimes, apprenticeship takes very long, even up to 10 years. It can take up to 10 years to master a craft. Unfortunately, the apprenticeship model is not popular nowadays. There is no such thing as a self-made man and we are all products of the environment. We need help to grow. Learn to refine and sharpen your skills. Help is instructive, but essential. You cannot master something on your own. Listen to those voices, even if people enter your life willingly. When you give birth, it is important to be able to receive support from your loved ones. A mentor need not stay in your life for long as there would be other mentors that come along the way. It is difficult to find a mentor because most people are self-reliant and think they can do it on their own. A teacher will challenge you to think and act differently. ‘The teacher appears when the student is ready’. You must be willing to look for mentors in unexpected places. How do you find them? Fortune favours the motivated. You just need to keep your eyes open. Interns should be involved in the whole process and they should be able to acknowledge the work that they have done. Pass the skills on to the master and multiply it. In Germany, apprenticeship is very common. The student can work and study at the same time and this helps to add tremendous value. An apprenticeship allows you to obtain guidance from an expert. Opportunities are always available, but you have to look at the right place. Practise the tools available to you. You need to seek out your mentor. Give each other support. You need to be deliberate about the opportunities you seek out. Leap and the net will appear. There is a power in harnessing the community. Your mentor might come from the least likely of places.

Always do more than what is required of you. – George S. Patton

For many of us, there is a fundamental problem with our understanding of our own capabilities. We are often exceeding our own expectations of ourselves. And in spite of the evidence pointing to the contrary, we continue to believe in the myth of talent, that some people are born in the certain way, and we cannot rise above our circumstances and achieve something greater than we’ve ever done before. – Jeff Goins

Painful Practice. Forget about passion. Rather, you should do something you are good at. However, there are singers on American idol which were not very good in the competition but went on to be superstars. Talent is over-rated. Everyone needs intense preparation. The type of practise is very important. Doing your best doesn’t work all the time. Mindset is very important. Do not give up too quickly and still think that you tried your best. Most skills are learned. Deliberate practice is a type of performance that leads to expert performance. The right type of practice is the key. Do not give up when the going gets tough. It is easy to settle for good, but not great. The practice must not be too enjoyable and it has to be difficult. Recognize what you do for fun and what you want to excel at. You must love your work. A spark of inspiration is important. Sometimes, you might be practising even without knowing it. This is known as accidental apprenticeship. Where does motivation come from? It starts with a spark. Inspiration and motivation to practice is important. We all want to make a contribution to the world eventually. William Hung’s video went viral. He even cut an album and achieved fame.

Putting an activity through painful practice is a great way to determine your experience in life. If you can do something when it’s not fun, even when you’re exhausted and bored and want to give up, then it might just be your calling. – Jeff Goins

If you can love what you do, even when it hurts, then you may have more than a hobby. And if you’ve never pushed your talents this far before, if you’ve never tested your skills that much, then you probably haven’t discovered your true vocation. – Jeff Goins

The idea that every person can be whatever he or she wants isn’t always true. Success is more than a matter of hard work; it’s contingent on factors sometimes outside of our control. Where and when you were born can influence what you do. – Jeff Goins

When you see a little hope, doors will open…Never give up, because all you need is a little hope. – Jeff Goins

Building Bridges (The Leap That Wasn’t a Leap). Some people can just relocate to Africa. Sometimes, if you move to a new area, you can make a bigger difference doing what you love. Find what you love and what the world needs. A calling is always messy. There is no guarantee of success, but you just have to take the leap sometimes. Do not trust people when they say they just know when they have found their passion. It is an intentional process. Famous people usually like to admit that they have special powers. Action is more complicated than you think. Listen to the whisper in your heart. Clarity of calling doesn’t come from a moment of epiphany, but rather, a series of deliberate decisions. It is crucial to find a mentor. You have to RESPOND to the call by taking ACTION. Prepare and learn to trust your feelings. Every step will reveal choices you have to make. Learn to take small steps at a time. There is no need to do something audacious. Take small steps. Reality doesn’t conform to what you think life should be. Sometimes, leaping without preparation is not a good idea indeed. It would be good if your project can offer hope to others and change their lives. Before you leap, you need to do your research. Instead of leaping, build a bridge. Not knowing is an excuse. It is normal to feel afraid after leaving your job. If you want a safe journey, continue to do what you do. You MUST KEEP MOVING, even if it is in the wrong direction.

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There’s no point in being a damn fool about it. –  W.C. Fields

Pivot Points (Why Failure is Your Friend). You might find your passion by experiencing failure. Even when opportunities have dried up, you can pivot. Sometimes, what you do isn’t what you planned from the start. Pivoting is learning how to deal with difficulties and uncertainties. Successful people learn to deal with failure. Sometimes, you will need to try new stuff. Make the most of any situation that you are thrown in. When you are failing, do not give up and despair. Hardship is an opportunity to succeed. Learn to push through your failure. Focus on what you are meant to do. Life is not a dream. You must transform yourself into a dreamer into a doer. Say ‘let’s’ instead of ‘what if’. Keep moving, even if it’s in a different direction. Stop talking and start doing. You must try.

Albert Einstein worked in a patent office; Benjamin Franklin was forced to flee his hometown; Steve Jobs got kicked out of his own company. We all face times of irrelevance; of falling on our own faces and thinking we have no business doing any of this. But pain is a great teacher and failure is a faithful mentor. – Jeff Goins

Dreams are powerful. They are fuel for change. But by themselves, they do no good. Hanging out in coffee shops and talking about one day being a writer or an activist or an entrepreneur is just about the worst thing you can do. – Jeff Goins

The Portfolio Life (A New Kind of Mastery). Places can also have a big impact on you. Later, I decided that I wanted to be a park ranger. Jody changed career from a financial analyst to be a park ranger. Have a portfolio life. Most self-employed people take up portfolio lives and try different types of tasks. Freelancing is the trend. We are hardwired to take up multiple hobbies and combine them to produce our best work. There are 5 different types of work: 1) fee work; 2) salary work; 3) homework; 4) study work; 5) gift work. Careers do not last that long nowadays. Have a portfolio mindset. Invest your life. Have someone to share your vocation with. Play is important too. Play is what you do to make your work interesting. Your work must have an ultimate purpose. Sensible people reinvent themselves every 10 years. You must do your work well. Masters keep pushing and carrying on. Stop focusing on being famous. Money is a by-product. Understand the true meaning of work. What are you working for? We all have a moral responsibility to ask whether the work is good or not. Work is a means of making people better. Increase in income, to a certain extent, does not make people happy. Flow is an important stage to achieve. Use your gifts in a challenging way. A calling may evolve over time as well.

Don’t search for your calling. Explore, try new things, keep your feet moving. Something will grab you. It will call to you. It is no different from falling in love. You can’t sit on the couch and decide that you are going to marry a certain girl. You fall in love after sharing experiences, joy, challenges, maybe even heartbreak. All of which could not have happened without leaving your couch, being involved, and meeting the one girl you can’t stop thinking about. – Jody

A life isn’t significant except for its impact on other lives. – Jackie Robinson

You don’t have to earn a living for 30 years to turn around and spend the next 30 years giving it away. If significance is what matters to you, you can structure your life and work in a way that allows to live your legacy now. In fact, your giving doesn’t have to be a by-product of your success; it can be the very thing that drives it in the first place. – Jeff Goins

Sometimes, all the little things in life aren’t interruptions to our calling. They are the most important part. – Jeff Goins

Your Magnum Opus (What Legacy Looks Like). Poverty is not objective, but it is more subjective. It is more of a mindset. How do you turn your work into something generous? Work should be both the means and the end to a better life. ‘Do what you love and do it for people who you love.’ Success isn’t about you. Work isn’t just a means of getting a paycheck. Do what you are good at and help others. A job is not just about improving yourself. You are still making a difference even if you don’t do things you like. The small things in life count. A calling is a life well lived. Freedom must have boundaries attached to it. Do not spend time pretending to be someone else. You can also prove your talent through great work. If you do meaningful work, you become yourself. Do not ignore your call. Your calling is not just your vocation, it is your entire life. Legacy should be your goal. Be consumed by the calling. Your work is a support system for your life.

It can be dangerous to have a compulsion to work. Lose yourself in the process. However, this could be a problem if you cannot disassociate yourself from it. Use it in your advantage. How do you not let a passion destroy you? You should work hard, but you need to acknowledge the limitations of life. There will always be unfinished work before you die. But you don’t have to kill yourself over it. At that time, you should try to pass it on to the new generation.

Scott Adams quotes 1 to 25

Quotes are extracted from ‘How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big’

1. Beware of advice about successful people and their methods. For starters, no two situations are alike. Your dreams of creating a dry-cleaning empire won’t be helped by knowing that Thomas Edison liked to take naps. Secondly, biographers never have access to the internal thoughts of successful people.
2. When I was a commercial loan officer for a large bank, my boss taught us that you should never make a loan to someone who is following his passion. For example, you don’t want to give money to a sports enthusiast who is starting a sports store to pursue his passion for all things sporty. That guy is a bad bet, passion and all. He’s in business for the wrong reason.
3. My boss, who had been a commercial lender for over 30 years, said that the best loan customer is someone who has no passion whatsoever, just a desire to work hard at something that looks good on a spreadsheet.
4. For most people, it’s easy to be passionate about things that are working out, and that distorts our impression of the importance of passion… The ones that didn’t work out—and that would be most of them—slowly drained my passion as they failed. The few that worked became more exciting as they succeeded.
5. In hindsight, it looks as if the projects that I was most passionate about were also the ones that worked. But objectively, my passion level moved with my success. Success caused passion more than passion caused success. So forget about passion. And while you’re at it, forget about goals, too.
6. A CEO of a company that made screws offered me some career advice. He said that every time he got a new job, he immediately started looking for a better one. For him, job seeking was not something one did when necessary. It was a continuing process.
7. This makes perfect sense if you do the math. Chances are that the best job for you won’t become available at precisely the time you declare yourself ready. Your best bet, he explained, was to always be looking for a better deal. The better deal has its own schedule. I believe the way he explained it is that your job is not your job; your job is to find a better job. This was my first exposure to the idea that one should have a system instead of a goal. The system was to continually look for better options.
8. As for my own system, when I graduated from college, I outlined my entrepreneurial plan. The idea was to create something that had value and—this next part is the key—I wanted the product to be something that was easy to reproduce in unlimited quantities. I didn’t want to sell my time, at least not directly, because that model has an upward limit. And I didn’t want to build my own automobile factory, for example, because cars are not easy to reproduce. I wanted to create, invent, write, or otherwise concoct something widely desired that would be easy to reproduce.
9. If you drill down on any success story, you always discover that luck was a huge part of it. You can’t control luck, but you can move from a game with bad odds to one with better odds. You can make it easier for luck to find you. The most useful thing you can do is stay in the game. If your current get-rich project fails, take what you learned and try something else. Keep repeating until something lucky happens.
10. I do want my failures to make me stronger, of course, but I also want to become smarter, more talented, better networked, healthier and more energized…Failure is a resource that can be managed.
11. Good ideas have no value because the world already has too many of them. The market rewards execution, not ideas. From that point on, I concentrated on ideas that I could execute. I was already failing toward success, but I didn’t yet know it.
12. Humans are like sponges. Put any two humans together and each starts absorbing the traits of the other, including biases, fashion sense, work ethic, morality, preferences, conversation style, knowledge, aspirations, and – according to recent studies – even weight. We don’t do most of this intentionally. It just happens.
13. If you want to be more fit, spend time with friends who make it look easy. If you want more ambition, find some friends who already have it. If you want to avoid being a pessimistic sink hole, avoid the people who give off that vibe. And if you can’t find the right kind of people locally, consider moving.
14. For most of my adult life I’ve had at least one change-the-world type of project percolating in my spare time no matter what else I’m doing. It could be as simple as a new business model I’m concocting in my mind or an invention I’m tinkering with.
15. Once you become good at a few unimportant things, such as hobbies or sports, the habit of success stays with you on more important quests. When you have tasted success, you want more.
16. A great strategy for success in life is to become good at something, anything, and let that feeling propel you to new and better victories. Success can be habit-forming.
17. If success were easy, everyone would do it. It takes effort. That fact works to your advantage because it keeps lazy people out of the game.
18. I’ve come to believe that success at anything has a spill-over effect on other things. You can take advantage of that effect by becoming good at things that require nothing but practice.
19. If you don’t like to practice, don’t waste on a strategy that requires it. You simply need to pick a life strategy that rewards novelty seeking more than mindless repetition.
20. We humans tend to enjoy doing things we are good at, while not enjoying the things we suck at. We’re also fairly good at predicting what we might be good at before we try.
21. Another huge advantage of learning as much as you can in different fields is that the more concepts you understand, the easier it is to learn new ones.
22. I believe exercise makes people smarter, psychologically braver, more creative, more energetic, and more influential.
23. If you are lucky enough to have career options, and only one of them affords a path of continual improvement, choose that one, all else being equal.
24. Always remember that failure is your friend. It is the raw material of success. Invite it in. Learn from it. And don’t let it leave until you pick its pocket.
25. Life is messy and you’re going to be right only sometimes. You’ll do everyone in your life a favour by acting decisively, though, even if you have doubts on the inside.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (Part 2)

For Part 1, click here.

I took a month before I left Gateshead. The sisters kept requesting me to stay behind for longer. Eliza preferred me as I could get work done. She was planning to move to a religious house and study the Roman Catholics. I was to return to Thornfield soon and apparently, Mr Rochester had headed to London for the wedding preparations. I was upset and starting running. I missed Mr Rochester. As I was running to the house, he saw me. I was happy to meet my master. After we chatted, we departed. I secretly hoped that the marriage would be called off.

Thank you, Mr. Rochester, for your great kindness. I am strangely glad to get back again to you: and wherever you are is my home – my only home. – Jane Eyre

There is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow-creatures, and feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort. – Jane Eyre

And if that boisterous Channel, and two hundred miles or so of land come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communication will be snapt; and then I’ve a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly. – Mr Rochester

The skies were radiant. I headed to the orchard. I met Mr Rochester again. I wanted to slip off unnoticed. However, he spotted me and wanted me to look at a moth. I walked the orchard with him and told him I was attached to the house. I was surprised when he said I had to move out of Thornfield as he would be getting married tonight. He would look out for employment for me and Adele. He mentioned about a house in Ireland which may need help. At that moment, I started crying. He didn’t expect to ever see me again. He wanted to find out what I thought of him. I was struggling for words. I couldn’t bear to part. I was adamant on leaving if he married someone else. I didn’t want to be his mistress. I told him that I didn’t think Ingram was suitable for him. Now, I was angry and wanted to leave him. He tried to marry me now and I told him he needed to honour his previous decision. Finally I agreed to marry him. It was a stormy evening that night.

I love Thornfield, because I have lived in it a full and delightful life – momentarily at least. I have not been trampled on. I have not been petrified. I have not been buried with inferior minds, and excluded from every glimpse of communion with what is bright and energetic and high. – Jane Eyre

Do you think I am an automaton? – a machine without feelings?…Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! – I have as much soul as you, – and full as much heart! – Jane Eyre

But, Jane, I summon you as my wife: it is you only I intend to marry…My bride is here because my equal is here, and my likeness. Jane, will you marry me? – Mr Rochester

I was not surprised to see that a brilliant June morning had succeeded to the tempest of the night; and to feel, through the open glass door, the breathing of a fresh and fragrant breeze. Nature must be gladsome when I was so happy. – Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre, you look blooming, and smiling, and pretty. Truly pretty this morning. Is this my pale, little elf? Is this my mustard-seed? This little sunny-faced girl with the dimpled cheek and rosy lips; the satin-smooth hazel hair, and the radiant hazel eyes? – Mr Rochester

It all seemed like a dream. Later, Mr Rochester kissed me. He would marry me in 4 weeks. I still couldn’t believe I was getting married. I didn’t want any jewels from him. I wanted to be still plain and didn’t want to seem like a princess. He wanted to bring me to vineyards. He wanted to give me a Europe tour. Now, Mr Rochester claimed fake courtship with Miss Ingram. He said he did that to make me jealous. I was pissed by this. Now, he apologized and asked for forgiveness. Mrs Fairfax was shocked by the developments. She couldn’t believe a filthy rich man could marry someone like me. Mr Rochester was 20 years older than me. She did not encourage the marriage as she felt I was a pet of his. Later, he brought me to a silk warehouse to try dresses. He also bought me jewelry. I didn’t want to earn more money from him. He invited me for a one on one dinner, but I declined. I wanted to continue being a governess. Later, he wanted me to play on the piano. However, he pushed me aside and started to play himself. He did not address me sweetly now. I was keeping him in check and thought I did a good job.

To women who please me only by their faces, I am the very devil when I find out they have neither souls nor hearts – when they open to me a perspective of flatness, triviality, and perhaps imbecility, coarseness, and ill-temper. – Mr Rochester

I ask only this, Mr Rochester: don’t send for the jewels, and don’t crown me with roses: you might as well put a border of gold lace round that plain pocket handkerchief you have there. – Jane Eyre

Tomorrow would be the wedding. I felt restless now. The night before the wedding night, Mr Rochester was not around. I was perplexed by the enigma. I was starting to get pissed. Unfortunately, he was not there. I shed a tear. I ran out in the rain and hoped to find him. Later on, I hopped on his horse and we start galloping away. He was a still a dream to me and I was doubtful of him. I looked pained and he wanted an explanation from me. I confessed that I loved him with all my heart. I started telling him my dreams now. Later, I imagined another lady approaching me in my sleep who was not even Grace Poole. I told him that the lady was ghastly and fearful indeed. It reminded me of vampire. He convinced me that it was just a dream. The veil in my room was torn into half and it was certainly not a dream. He told me it must have been Grace Poole who was present. We were a little anxious about tomorrow’s wedding.

Mr Rochester was impatient as I took very long to get dressed. People were all busy preparing for the wedding. He appeared very grim and resolute. Later, two strangers entered the church. They would grace our ceremony. However, someone shouted, ‘The marriage cannot go on: I declare the existence of an impediment.’  The stranger admitted that it was because Mr Rochester currently had another living wife. I was utterly shocked and start trembling. The stranger was Briggs, a lawyer from London. He recited the details of Mr Rochester’s wife. She was Bertha Antoinetta Mason, daughter of merchant Jonas Mason. A copy of the certificate was also sined. Later, Mr Mason appeared and testified that the other lady was alive. I could sense the fury in Mr Rochester. Mr Mason was Bertha’s brother. No one heard of a Mrs Rochester in the house. The wedding was called off. Mr Rochester admitted that what they said was true. He confessed that he married her 15 years ago. Also, he mentioned that she was mad. Now, Mr Rochester brought us to the room where he kept her. The figure kept running back and fro. I recognized Bertha Mason and Mr Mason wanted more chances. Mr Rochester tied her to a chair. I was not extremely pissed but was certainly weak and tired. Now, I was single again. My confidence in Mr Rochester was destroyed. I, in a way, regretted chasing his mannerisms.

Jane, my little daring, you don’t know what you are talking about; you misjudge me again: it is not because Bertha is mad I hate her. If you were mad, do you think I should hate you? – Mr Rochester

Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear. Your mind is my treasure, and if it were broken, it would be my treasure still: if you raved, my arms should confine you, and not a strait waistcoast – your grasp, even in fury, would have a charm for me. – Mr Rochester

I must leave Adele and Thornfield. I must part with you for my whole life: I must begin a new existence among strange faces and strange scenes. – Jane Eyre

I knew I immediately needed to leave Thornfield. My dream was all void and I couldn’t bear to leave. I wanted to stop the suffering. I was feeling dizzy and couldn’t recover. I forgave him on the spot. He admitted he was a scoundrel. Later, he met me and that revived me. I was tormented. A part of me wanted me to leave him and a part didn’t. Later, he gave me a passionate kiss. I admitted that I didn’t want to act against him. He didn’t tell me about Bertha because he knew he couldn’t hire a governess for Adela that way. He still saw the need to take care of her and could not bear hiding her in another house. He wanted me to share his solitude even if I were to leave Thornfield. Despite all this, I was not afraid. Later, I cried heartily in front of him. Finally, he was subdued. Yet, I was remorseful. He started to tell me his tale. His dad was a horrible man and he had an elder brother. My dad gave his possessions to my brother and arrange a rich girl to date me. Miss Mason was a fine woman who was very pretty. I was fooled by all the attention I received and thought I loved her. She pressured me into marriage. After marriage, she was mad and was locked up in a lunatic asylum. Her brother would probably be crazy one day as well. In addition, Bertha had an extremely foul temper. Throughout the 4 years, Bertha was horrible towards Mr Rochester. I pitied his story. Mr Rochester didn’t have any way of getting rid of her. She often shrieked at the top of her lungs at Mr Rochester. He wanted to shoot himself. However, later after a moment of reflection, he saw hope. He wanted to travel in Europe and place her under care in Thornfield. Finally, he found Grace Poole, who was willing to care for her. On one visit, after Bertha stole the key, she tried to burn the place now. For the next few years, Mr Rochester wandered around but could not find someone suitable to marry. After such failures, he decided to live with mistresses. The first one being Celine Varens. For very long, Mr Rochester observed me and tried to second-guess what I was feeling from my facial expressions. He wanted a pledge of fidelity from me. I rejected him and he was highly frustrated. He thought that I took away love and innocence from him. Although he grabbed me, my soul was unperturbed. He knew he could hurt me but he couldn’t get at my soul. He had no choice but to let me go. I kept on resisting that I was going. I left him in deep anguish and he started sobbing now. I immediately packed and left. Finally, I was out of Thornfield. After leaving, I realized that I had no idea where I was headed but I simply didn’t want to return to Thornfield. God gave me strength and I hitched a ride from a stranger to a faraway town.

This life is hell: this is the air – those are the sounds of my bottomless pit! I have a right to deliver myself from it if I can. The sufferings of this mortal state will leave me with the heavy flesh that now cumbers my soul. – Mr Rochester

I did not like it. It was a groveling fashion of existence: I should never like to return to it. Hiring a mistress is the next worse thing to buying a slave: both are often by nature, and always by position, inferior: and to live familiarly with inferiors is degrading. – Mr Rochester

I think you good, gifted, lovely: a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my centre and spring of life, wraps my existence about you, and kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one. – Mr Rochester

I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad – as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth?’ – Jane Eyre

I was alone in the coach. I approached a mountain. There were no passengers on the streets. There was no one to comfort me, there was only nature. Finally there was a gush of wind. I didn’t know where to go. In addition, I was hungry and without much money. Silently, I prayed for Mr Rochester. After I woke up, the sun was perfect and everything seemed good. I knew I could not linger around and needed to continue living. Suddenly, I heard a church bell. Finally I entered the village. I wanted to exchange goods with them to show my hospitality. I wanted to find out about the place. There was an elegant pretty house at the top of the hill and I knocked on the door. It was crucial for me to find a job. However, I was rejected. The woman didn’t want to take my handkerchief in exchange for her bread. Later, I passed a farmhouse and received bread from a man. I was so desperate that even cold porridge was fine. I prayed to God that I would still be alive the next morning. There was a light from a candle in the vast regions and I knew I had to go there in order to have a chance. Later, I observed a few old ladies. They were speaking German, which I didn’t understand. They seemed intelligent. The landlord was Mr St John. I wondered about approaching them and telling them my tale. Hannah answered the door. I insisted on seeing the young ladies in the house but I was initially turned away. She bolted the door. Someone started speaking to me. There was someone beside me. It was Mr St John. He wanted to examine me and invited me to his house. In the house, there were two ladies, their brother and Mr St John who stared at me. The family offered me food. I introduced myself as Jane Elliott, which was an alias. Finally, I got to sleep on a warm bed. The family was getting to know me better.

I groaned – I wrung my hands – I wept in utter anguish. Oh, this spectre of death! Oh, this last hour, approaching in such horror! Alas, this isolation – this banishment from my kind! Not only the anchor of hope, but the footing of fortitude was gone – at least for a moment. – Jane Eyre

Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilised by education: they grow there, firm as weeds among stones. – Jane Eyre

Some of the best people that ever lived here have been as destitute as I am; and if you are a Christian, you ought not to consider poverty a crime. – Jane Eyre

3 days and 3 nights had passed unknowingly. I was weak and couldn’t speak well. Hannah didn’t really liked me. Diana and Mary came to visit once a day. They didn’t speak ill of me. Mr St John knew that I would recover quickly. On the 4^th day, I felt much better. Hannah smiled when she saw me now. She asked whether I was a beggar. The House was called Moor House. Mr St John Rivers was a parson. The place was his father’s residence. His sisters were called Diana and Mary. Hannah had been at the house for 30 years. I chided her for trying to abandon me and not let me in the house when I was drenched. I forgave her and moved on. Hannah and I became friends thereafter. Diana thought I was still sick as I was still pale. Diana was more authoritative. I liked her already. Later, she led me to the inner room. The parlour was very comfortable. Mr Rivers looked at me but didn’t speak. I was without friends, so he couldn’t send me away. I didn’t tell them where was my last place of residence. Mr Rivers wanted to help and was willing to listen to me. I described a brief history of myself to them. I agreed to do any job that Mr Rivers asked of me.

I started to feel happy in the house and didn’t feel out of place at all. I even grew to like the surroundings of the house, not just the people. Diana really excited me. They were also impressed by my drawing ability. However I was not close to Mr Rivers as he was rarely at home. He also appeared to be broody in his outlook of life. He didn’t like Nature very much. I knew that he was not passionate about Christianity and nowhere close to God than where I was. Diana and May would soon be moving out to be governesses elsewhere. I approached Mr Rivers but he mentioned that the house would be shut up and he didn’t have employment to offer me. He wanted me to be Mr Olivers’ mistress. I accepted it. I would be located at a village school. He could tell that I was not ambitious, but impassioned. He was surprised that I took up his offer. Mary and Diana were upset as they could soon be without a brother. Later, Mr Rivers brought in a letter. It read: Uncle John is dead. Mr Rivers was still a mysterious guy. They were not upset as they had not seen their uncle for a long while. A week later, Mr Rivers and Hannah headed off to the parsonage and abandoned the house.

Some of the children are unmannered, rough, intractable, as well as ignorant; but others are docile, have a wish to learn, and evince a disposition that pleases me. I must not forget that these coarsely-clad little peasants are of flesh and blood as good as the scions of gentlest genealogy; and that the germs of native excellence, refinement, intelligence, kind feeling are likely to exist in their hearts as in those of the best born. – Jane Eyre

My new home was a cottage. There were 20 students in the village, but most were not literate. I was not very happy teaching them. However, I knew that I should give the children a chance and be patient with them. I was not very upset at the choice I made to leave Mr Rochester as I had stuck to my principles. I started talking to Mr Rivers now. Later on, he admitted in his life that he wanted to be a missionary. A pretty lady came by and started talking to Mr Rivers and I. She was Miss Oliver. Mr Rivers wasn’t good with people and he offended her unknowingly.

Later, after teaching, I realized that some of the students were witty and amiable and polite. I gradually liked some of the best girls. They also were into self-improvement. I became a favorite teacher in the neighbourhood. My heart swelled with thankfulness. However, I still dreamt of Mr Rochester sometimes. Rosamond Oliver often came to visit me, as she promised. She was a charming lady. She was a young kid. She looked some of my pictures. Later, I agreed to sketch a portrait of her. Later, Mr Oliver appeared impressed with it and wanted me to spend the evening in Vale Hall. They all thought I would be bored of life in Morton and would quit soon. One day, when I was drawing Rosamund, Mr Rivers appeared. He came to see how I was doing and brought me a book on poetry. St John stood to examine my drawing. He praised the drawing. I offered to do a replica so that he could keep it for himself. Rosamond actually preferred to be with Mr Rivers. I suggested now that he take the original piece after I sensed some hesitation. I told him that she liked him. He had doubts on marrying her and that he felt she may not make a good wife. He didn’t want to give up being a missionary. I could tell that he was uncomfortable when I constantly challenged his thoughts. He was a Christian philosopher. Later, while I was drawing, he started to prevent me from doing so. There was something that caught his eye. He didn’t say what was wrong and tore and kept a piece of paper and vanished quickly. I couldn’t solve it and simply ignored it.

It was snowing heavily. Mr Rivers came to visit again. It was certainly very unexpected. He wanted to talk to me and find out my tale completely. Later, he removed a letter and started reading it. Mr Oliver paid for some of the girls’ education at the village I was teaching at. He tried to guess my life story and started relating it. He had seen my parent’s graves and knew their history. He knew that I was brought up by Mrs Reed at Gateshead. Later, I was transferred to Lowood School and was under the care of Mr Rochester. He knew that Mr Rochester tried to me marry me but I rejected him because he harbored a Bertha in the basement of the house. He knew that I ran away. There were advertisements in the newspapers about me. I wanted to learn from him about Mr Rochester. My fears were true, that he had left England and moved on. He removed the piece of paper he tore earlier and there it read: Jane Eyre. I admitted I used an alias, Jane Elliott. Mr Briggs was in London and sought after me. My uncle, Mr Eyre of Madeira was dead, and left me all his property and wealth. I would be a heiress. I was worth 20,000 pounds now. I was aghast and looked like stone now. I wanted him to tell me the full story about his relationship with Mr Briggs before I let him off. He was christened St John Eyre Rivers. It was shocking. His mother’s name was Eyre. She had two brothers, one who married Miss Jane Reed and the other was John Eyre, my uncle. Mr Briggs was Mr Eyre’s solicitor. His mother was my father’s sister. We were all cousins, even Diana and Mary were cousins. It was no wonder that I was drawn to them. It was exhilarating to have discovered them. There was so much to think about. It was a life of hope and enjoyment now. I wanted to give Mr Rivers, Mary and Diana 5 thousand pounds each. He was shocked by this and asked me to reconsider. He said I didn’t understand what receiving 20,000 pounds meant and the importance it will give me or the prospects that might bring. However, I craved for fraternal and sisterly love. I told him I didn’t need to find domestic happiness through marriage as I didn’t intend to marry. Finally, he took his leave. I had the lawyers do the paper work and we were each 5000 pounds wealthier.

One does not jump, and spring, and shout hurrah! At hearing one has got a fortune; one beings to consider responsibilities, and to ponder business; on a base of steady satisfaction rise certain grave cares, and we contain ourselves, and brood over our bliss with a solemn brow. – Jane Eyre

This world is not the scene of fruition; do not attempt to make it so: nor of rest; do not turn slothful. – Mr Rivers

To Mr Rivers, the humanities and amenities of life had no attraction for him – its peaceful enjoyments no charm. Literally, he lived only to aspire – after what was good and great; but still he would never rest, nor approve of others resting round him. – Jane Eyre

It was nearly Christmas now. I left the school but promised to visit them in future. I wanted to maintain an active lifestyle. Hannah would go with me for an excursion. I wanted to do a thorough cleaning of Moor House. He wanted me to be more ambitious in life and look beyond domestic affairs. I will have cause to be happy and rejected his suggestions. Hannah and I really cleaned the place. We ordered new items from the shop etc. He would not make a good husband. A vehicle came and Diana and Mary arrived. It was certainly a joyful occasion. Diana and Mary were eloquent ladies. Mr Rivers’ mum was ill and he had to visit her. He agreed to go. I loved to listen to Mary and Diana. Mr Rivers would also be departing from England for a year. Rosamond Oliver would be married to Frederic Granby. It was a rash decision. Mr Rivers was not that close to us. One day, in the house, he wanted me to give up on German and learn Hindostanee. He wanted me to learn so that he could practice speaking it to me as he was learning it as well. I agreed to it. He was a generally very indifferent man. Vivacity was distasteful to him. Honestly, I didn’t like listening to him. It was difficult to reach the standards he set and I felt I was not being myself if I attempted to reach them. One day, I wrote to Thornfield and Mrs Fairfax to ask on Mr Rochester. However, I received no reply after 2 months and started to get anxious. I tried writing again, but there was no reply as well. I started looking ill. I didn’t think of resisting Mr Rivers. One day, there was a letter for me. I was very upset at that time. Later, he wanted me to walk in the woods with me and I obeyed. Mr Rivers would be leaving in 6 weeks. Now, he invited me to join him in India to be his helper and labourer. I could not agree to it. He said God intended me to be a missionary’s wife. I rejected him again. In fact, I was not into missionary labours and work. I took time to ponder over his proposition and wondered if missionary work was noble and of God’s assignment. I still had feelings for England and Mr Rochester. The thought of me going there to work was possible, but I did not love him and could not marry him. I was his soldier, at best. I would go to India only if I would be able to go free. I didn’t want to marry him. Now, he kept trying to convince me and said that God didn’t like my decision and that I would not commit to God entirely by only accepting him conditionally. He said he could not take a young girl with him if he was married to me. He truly believed in marriage and the ‘long-cherished scheme’ and asked me to re-consider. He said I was denying God. He was still bitter and didn’t forgive me later that evening.

I scorn your idea of love. I scorn the counterfeit sentiment you offer: yes, St. John, and I scorn you when you offer it. – Jane Eyre

Do not forget that if you reject it, it is not me you deny, but God. Through my means, He opens to you a noble career; as my wife only can you enter upon it. Refuse to be my wife, and you limit yourself for ever to a track of selfish ease and barren obscurity. – Mr Rivers

God did not give me this life to throw away; to do as you wish me would, I begin to think, be almost equivalent to committing suicide. – Jane Eyre

Mr Rivers is a good and a great man; but he forgets, pitilessly, the feelings and claims of little people, in pursuing his own large views. – Jane Eyre

Where there is energy to command well enough, obedience never fails. – Jane Eyre

Mr Rivers deferred his departure. He never truly forgave me. He was like marble. To me, he wasn’t human. His heart was like stone or metal. I still wanted to be friends with me, but he appeared cold as usual. However, I could tell he was still bitter towards me. I still refused to marry him. The words I used he claimed were untrue. I still didn’t mind being his assistant. I told him I would seek Mr Rochester again. Diana saw me. Diana could tell that Mr Rivers liked me and wanted me to marry him. She was a little surprised to know I had rejected him. Mr Rivers continually used me as a tool. Mr Rivers started reciting verses from the Bible in the evening. He kept using God to tell me what I ought to do. For a moment, I considered marrying him now after his lecture. There was a conflict between duty and passion. Later, out of the blue, I heard Mr Rochester’s voice crying out. I immediately ran out of the house. I waited for daylight.

It was daylight. Mr Rivers wanted to hear my decision 2 weeks later after he returned from Cambridge. I was strong enough and my will was strong and determined. Was the voice I heard just a delusion? Later, I explained to Mary and Diana that I wanted to go on a journey for 4 days. I left Moor House. The coach took me to Thornfield. I wanted to inquire whether Mr Rochester was home. I peeped at Thornfield from afar. Thornfield was a blackened ruin. Everything appeared to be waste. It was deathly silent as well. There was no one to answer my questions now. I wandered around the shattered interior. I fully expected a tale of misery. The host was a middle-aged man. He was Mr Rochester father’s butler. It was such a pity that the whole place was burnt to the ground. It was a horrible sight, he explained. Now, he explained the story about the fire and how it originated. He didn’t know who I was. It was almost certain that Bertha had set the place on fire. She had taken out the keys out of Grace Poole’s pocket and roamed around the house and set the place on fire. Mr Rochester, I learnt, didn’t leave England at all. He was in the house when the house burnt down. On that night, Mr Rochester wanted to save her but she jumped off the house, to her death. It was very frightful indeed. He pitied Mr Rochester’s life. The man admitted that Mr Rochester was stone blind now. Mr Rochester wanted to save everyone before he left the burning house. He was living with Old John and his wife now. I immediately wanted to visit him.

I will be your neighbor, your nurse, your housekeeper. I find you lonely: I will be your companion – to read to you, to walk with you, to sit with you, to wait on you, to be eyes and hands to you. Cease to look so melancholy, you shall not be left desolate, so long as I live. – Jane Eyre

But if you wish me to love you, could you but see how much I do love you, you would be proud and content. All my heart is yours, sir: it belong to you; and with you it would remain, were fate to exile the rest of me from your presence forever. – Jane Eyre, to Mr Rochester

You are no ruin, sir – no lightning-struck tree: you are green and vigorous. Plants will grow about your roots, whether you ask them or not, because they take delight in your bountiful shadow, and as they grow they will lean towards you, and wind round you, because your strength offers them so safe a prop. – Jane Eyre

The Manor House was old and run-down. It looked empty from afar. It was certainly a desolate place. My master appeared. It was Mr Rochester. He looked the same and still looked very fit. However, he was desperate and brooding in nature. He stretched out his hand and wanted to feel me. He couldn’t walk properly at all. According to Mary, Mr Rochester didn’t want to see anyone. The parlour looked gloomy. Pilot was still alive and was doing well. He demanded to know who I was. He wanted to feel me as I didn’t reveal who I was. He grabbed me. I was back to my master and I was delighted. I promised not to leave him again. I told him my uncle left me 5000 pounds. With this wealth, I didn’t have to rely on him for money. He appeared gloomy again. He said his soul demanded on me. Although he suggested marriage, I was only keen on being his nurse and didn’t want to be married. Mr Rochester thought that I wouldn’t be able to bear the sight of him. It was a joy to be with him. Everything I did seemed to console or revive him. He still feared that I wanted to leave him. I didn’t want to reveal too much and told him I would continue tomorrow. It was a bright sunny morning the next day and we went for a walk. The scenery was beautiful. I began my last narrative now. I told him about Moor House. Mr Rochester asked me about Mr Rivers. I told him the good points of Mr Rivers. Now, Mr Rochester started to feel jealous and thought I had liked him. Also, I related to him that Mr Rivers wanted me to marry him. He told me I could leave him now as my heart wasn’t with him. However, I refused to leave him. Now, I confessed that I didn’t love him one bit. A tear emerged from his cheek. Now, I agreed to marry him. I could take his weaknesses. He didn’t care about a grand wedding but wanted to be married to me soon. It was comforting that he wore a pearl necklace around his neck ever since I left in remembrance of me.

Reader, I married him. Mary blessed me and said that I made the right decision. Diana and Mary approved of my decision. Later, I visited Adele. I took care of her occasionally, as I had to devote time to Mr Rochester as well. She continued doing well in school and that made me happy. I have been married for 10 years now. After 2 years of marriage, his vision improved. He could see our first born. Mr Rivers headed to India and forged his own path.

Pulsation of the heart that beats in our separate bosoms; consequently, we are ever together. To be together is for us to be at once as free as in solitude, as gay as in company…All my confidence is bestowed on him, all his confidence is devoted to me; we are precisely suited in character – perfect concord is the result. – Jane Eyre

Mr Edward and I, then, are happy: and the more so, because those we most love are happy likewise. – Jane Eyre