Brienne writes

Action cures fear - David J. Schwartz I heard that this afternoon while listening to Ali Abdaal's Not Overthinking podcast episode: Book Discussion: "The Magic of Thinking Big" . What actions are you withholding? Would you try giving it a go now that you've read that?   --- That's all for today, see you tomorrow!

Points from The Secret to Getting Anything You Want in Life given by Jennifer Cohen | Jen Cohen | TEDxBuckhead Youtube video . "You need to ask for what you want, you miss a hundred percent of the shots that you don't take." What is boldness?  "You chase what you want and you don't take what you can get" "Ten percent target. Whatever you want most in life, you make ten attempts. The purpose of it is to get very comfortable at failing ninety percent of the time."  That's all for today, see you tomorrow!

What has the coronavirus done for you?  In the beginning, it brought a lot of fear, panic, sadness and anxiety.  I remember taking the bus after heading out to buy necessities, after a period of time staying home. Seeing places so empty, like a scene right out a zombie apocalypse. It was really disturbing to see places that used to be bustling with people, empty. People were scared of people, us afraid of one another and loathing the ones that do not don a mask or removing the mask to sneeze or cough.  But what has it done for you? It made me treasure the people around me, the time that I have, or do not have, it got me to think hard about what matters most, be it people or things I did with my time.  As what Noah Kagan mentioned in the Noah Kagan | OkDork, Don't Do What You Love | The Wolf's Den #78 Youtube video,  "to enjoy life in any aspects is to enjoy the ride. I have a mantra that I read in the morning, it says,  Enjoy the journey, not the destinati...

Some key points as I'm in the midst of watching this  Noah Kagan | OkDork, Don't Do What You Love | The Wolf's Den #78 Youtube video. Words from Jordan Belfort :  "If you wanna make money, find out what you are great at and monetize that." "I don't let my fears hold me back, I let my fears empower me. When I'm scared, or nervous, I work harder, I use it as a way to work harder, propel myself to success versus being paralyzed by my fears." "When I'm fearful, it's my sign to go." "So much of success is getting yourself to do the things you know you have to do even when you don't feel like doing them and another side to that coin is doing things other people might not be ready to do. → working harder, putting myself out there, not being scared to fail, be judged..." "It's not that I'm so confident, it's that at this point in my life, I know the truth about myself, I know I have the resiliency, the...

From Ali Abdaal's   Not Overthinking: Bouncing Back, Finding Fulfilment and Being Productive featuring Noah Kagan “Be intentional with your words. Don’t say 'that shit', 'whatever', 'that stuff'.... It kinda becomes partially true so be intentional about that... Also try to remove the words 'I think', be definitive in your thought. Not ‘I think this’, but ‘this is what I think’. Not ‘I’m trying to do this’ but ‘this is what I’m doing’." From Noah Kagan's secret to success in sales, marketing, hustling ... and life On the definition of a hustler:  "I don't know if it's something that can be taught or not but someone who's a hustler,.. they are able to deal with rejection, because the difference between people who are making it and hustling and getting success is that they're willing to persist when it's painful for others. They're willing to go to the gym and even not at the gym, they're not just playing aro...

From  Ali Abdaal Issue #126 Email: The Value of Saying Yes "David Eagleman say that the secret to a long life is to create different memories and life experiences, even if those experiences are something as simple as taking a different route to work. Apparently, our brains tend to mesh together similar memories. So if we always live in the same house, take the same route to work, work in the same office, eat the same kind of meals, etc. the brain will compartmentalise that as all kinda being the same day, and time will seem like it has passed a lot faster. If we add diversity to our daily lives however, we generate unique memories giving us the feeling that we lived longer." --- From  David Eagleman: On Time "We live behind the times.  There is no such thing as now. We live in the past by about half a second. Why? Because the brain is always collected information from all the senses: from your eyes and ears to your fingertips and toes. These pathways process information...

Just watched a YouTube video shared by someone I follow on Instagram (@annikakefli).  Weight Training for Women Balances Hormones with Dr Tyna Moore . What I took away from the video: 1.  Having strong glutes takes care of most people's pain. 2. Dr. Moore used hormesis to explain how compound exercises could benefit the body. Hormesis is where you stress an organism and it responds to that stress favorably. When you put your body under controlled stress and rest it adequately, it grows. 3.  Lifting weights metabolically revs up your system and for 3 to 8 hours after, you receive the metabolic benefit of burning fat as well as hormonal benefits.  4. Dr. Moore sees gnarly changes in labs with runners. They tend to burn out their adrenals and then the rest of their hormones. She sees a number of runners and cyclists with diabetes. It comes down to skinny fat. You look thin, but metabolically you show up as pre-diabetic skinny fat... A study showed that type 2 diabetes ...

"Develop a defense against people who want to convince you that you can't do it. Accept negative advice only as a challenge to prove that you can do it." - The Magic of Thinking Big by David J. Schwartz  A friend (@chipster_wes) posted that on Instagram and it got me thinking.  In our lives, there are countless of people that speak to us trying to give us good advice. And they do it with no ill intent. But sometimes, their words, due to their seniority and life experiences could convince us to not do the things we want to do the most. And we could believe their words enough that we forgo our dreams if we are not careful.  But that is not to say that the fault lies in others. Do I know exactly what I want? Is my inner voice louder than theirs? Is my inner critic so harsh that it dissuades me from pursuing my dreams?  --- That's all for today, see you tomorrow!

Key points from This Rare Commodity is What Producer Brian Grazer Calls 'The WiFi of Human Connection'  written by Amy Blaschka .  From Face to Face: The Art of Human Connection by Brian Grazer: "A major reason we are so bad at forming connections is because we are losing the ability, the opportunity and the desire to look others in the eye."  And the reason for that is the multitude of screens that dominate our lives robbing us of human connection and "making eye contact which opens up endless possibilities." Ron Howard added , "If you don't look people in the eye, they don't feel respected."  --- From the same article:  Why we should practise making eye contact: 1. It helps us become a more active listener.  2. It encourages curiosity and deeper understanding.  3. It signals that you're interested and present for others.  "When we look someone in the eyes, really look at them, we are telling them, "I see you". We are re...

Curiosity got me looking up Brian Grazer because Paul Millerd mentioned (in the Not Overthinking podcast ) he took Curious Conversations from him. --- From A Career in Curiosity | Brian Grazer | Talks at Google youtube video .  Some highlights I'd love going back to:  "How did you have that kind of healthy sense of entitlement or chutzpah?" Brian Grazer: "My grandmother helped that a lot."  From the Merriam-Webster dictionary,  chutzpah  means supreme self-confidence. Brian Grazer mentioned that though he often got F's and occasional D's in his report card, his grandmother often told him he was special. She told him "You're going to find your way through this. Think big, be big." And he tried to live through those words and integrate them into his sense of self-worth. ( link ) --- Brian Grazer: "It's a very important metric to me, how I feel, energetically, towards somebody. Because you think about it. You feel it, that truth, a...

Dolce far niente.   Which translates to, "the sweetness of doing nothing" as mentioned in the film, Eat Pray Love.  I like this definition from Emanuela Aliberti from The Italian Midday in the Dolce far niente - the meaning of Italian concept explained by Italians article . "Literally, Dolce far niente is doing anything without getting bored. It's a particular kind of 'me time' when you don't do anything in particular: no massage, no reading, no sleep - just observing the buzz of life around you and recharging your batteries. It sounds like idleness, but it's actually something different. It's more like a break from the rat race. It's a moment to reorganize your energy. It's a way to unwind and to put some distance between you and your life and , magically, to see it better as a whole. "  I will try to incorporate time for doing nothing in my days next week. Will you try this out too?  --- That's all for today, see you tomorrow!...

When people are asked what they do, they often tell you about their job without talking about what other things they do in life. Work has taken up so much of our time and our lives that our identities are closely tied to work.   As mentioned in Ali Abdaal's Reimaging Our Relationship with 'Work' podcast episode  with Paul Millerd ,  " The question “what do you do?” has become such a ubiquitous question that we often feel under pressure to provide a satisfying answer.  It can feel uncomfortable when we are unable to define exactly what our occupation is to other people. We often feel the need to justify why we have pursued a particular path because so much of our identities in modern society are tied up with the idea of work. Many people are just workers – the one decision about jobs or careers dictates everything in their life. A better way to ask the “what do you do?” question would be to rephrase this as “how do you spend your time?”" The next time someone as...

I am a writer, a photographer, an artist, a student, a teacher, a lifelong learner.  "Whatever we say, we're always talking about ourselves." - Alison Bechdel in Show Your Work!  by Austin Kleon .  Who and what are you? --- See you tomorrow!

Why do blind people wear sunglasses?  I thought of this question today and found some answers from google. In short, they do it to protect their eyes and for aesthetic reasons .  ---  I started reading Austin Kleon's Show your Work and I like this excerpt a lot.   "I like the tagline at dribbble.com: “What are you working on?”  Stick to that question and you’ll be good.  Don’t show your lunch or your latte, show your work ." Also this,  "Sometimes, amateurs have more to teach us than experts.  “It often happens that two schoolboys can solve difficulties in their work for one another better than the master can,” wrote author C. S. Lewis.  “The fellow-pupil can help more than the master because he knows less.  The difficulty we want him to explain is one he has recently met. The expert met it so long ago he has forgotten."" How do we learn better or allow our fellow peers to learn better? --- I also realized that though I love listeni...

It's better to write and publish it everyday than to wait for the perfect moment to pen an entry.  I just listened to Ali Abdaal's podcast with Austin Kleon on Writing, Creativity and the Importance of Idleness and man, there were so many good takeaways. Here's some I found useful: On YouTube video content:  Videos of "Here's how I do something.." rather than "How to do something.." garner more views - Ali Abdaal On content creation: Gary Vaynerchuk: Document, Don't Create   which is also what got me to just start this blog to document my journey of writing everyday for a year to see where that takes me. I watched the video  and it's the best 22 minutes of my life spent. What I took away from it is that, showing up everyday is better than planning, waiting it out, thinking up big ideas and executing tasks in your head but not doing the work. "Too many "content creators" think that they only have one at bat - they have to make ...