NEERA MAHAJAN – Page 46

Just An Hour A Day To Learn Something New

December 2, 2021December 2, 2021 Neera

Why is it so hard to learn a new skill in the beginning?

When I started blogging three years ago, I struggled a lot. It was taking me 7 to 8 hours to write a post. I would get frustrated, write sentences repeatedly, try to make the paragraphs flow, and work late at night so that I could publish the damn thing.

When I started sketching, it was even worse. My skeches were terrible, and I would feel horrible posting them on Instagram.

When we try something new, we are usually terrible at it, and we know it. We get disturbed at the prospect of being horrible at something, so much so that we quit to escape from the feeling of angst.

The early times of trying something new are always challenging, but a little persistence can result in huge increases in skill. The human brain is optimized to pick up new skills extremely quickly. If we could persist and practice systematically, we can experience dramatic improvements in a very short time.

I recently started writing books. For years I was convinced that it takes at least a year to write a book. Until one fine morning, I woke up and decided to write a book. That too in one week. And I did that.

I treated the book as an experiment to learn the process of writing a book. Taking the same approach as writing blog posts, I broke the book into smaller chunks and concentrated on one chunk at a time.

In the beginning, I struggled. I was all over the place. I was writing and rewriting and had no idea what I would cover in each chapter, but as the days passed, I was beginning to develop a routine for myself.

There were times I was trying not to throw my computer across the room when I got overwhelmed but then pushing through the early frustration, I developed simple techniques to meet my daily quota of writing.

First, I figured out I only have 4 -5 productive hours a day, so I made sure I didn’t waste them. Second, I learned that if I cover the core concepts first, I can fill in the blanks with research later. Third, I realized I concentrate on the smaller chunks at a time I can go through more in the given time.

As a result, I finished my book in time to publish it within a week.

So successful was this approach that I am now using it to write a book a month.

It didn’t take me 10,000 hours to master the skill of writing and publishing my first book.

Malcolm Gladwell was the first to make Dr. K. Anders Ericsson’s 10,000 rule famous through his book Outliers. Through several examples, Gladwell found that it takes around 10 years or 10,000 hours of practice to reach the top of ultracompetitive, easily ranked performance fields, such as professional golf, music performance, or chess. In those fields, the more time you’ve spent in deliberate practice, the better you perform compared to people who have practiced fewer hours.

But there is a caveat.

Most of the time, we are not seeking to become world-class golfers or chess players. I didn’t write a New York Times bestseller in one week. I just wrote a book. My focus was on solving a problem (mine as well as my readers) and hence I wrote a useful book.

In the process, I learned a skill in one week.

To learn a new skill, you need to figure out what is the focus. In my case, the focus was on solving a problem.

If you are learning career skills, your focus may be on performing well enough to produce a result that’s meaningful to you and useful to your employer.

If you are learning personal skills such as a hobby, your focus should be on enjoying the process and having fun.

Rather than Malcolm Gladwell’s (aka Dr. K. Anders Ericsson’s) 10,000 rule, I subscribe to Josh Kaufman’s “20-Hours rule”.

Josh Kaufman, the author of The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything Fast states that it takes you just 20 hours of deliberate practice to learn a new skill.

The concept of the “10,000-hour rule” is very intimidating. It can serve as a barrier to learning anything. If you believe it takes that long to see results, you’re less likely to start in the first place.

And the idea of “mastery” is also a deterrent. We don’t have to “mastery” every skill we ever learn. Developing new skills in a way that allows us to perform “well enough for our own purposes.” This approach is by far the most practical approach for skill acquisition.

According to Josh Kaufman, you can learn just about anything if you commit to “deliberately practice” for 20 hours.

About 40 minutes to one hour a day is all you need to get the results you’re looking for. It is not to attain mastery or for competitive performance but to get good enough.

Jeff Kaufman suggests 10 Principles of Rapid Skill Acquisition in his book The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything Fast!,

1. Lovable project — It’s important to pay attention to what you’re personally most interested in learning. Even if you think you “should” focus on learning something else, when you’re naturally interested in a particular skill, you’ll learn extremely quickly. So follow your interests where they lead, and avoid forcing yourself to grind through abilities you’re not interested in exploring.
2. One skill at a time — Don’t choose multiple skills at the same time. Concentrate on one skill at a time and give it your full attention.
3. Target performance level — Decide what you want to be able to do. It is called a “target performance level.” If you have a clear idea of how good you want to become, it’s much easier to find specific practice methods that will help you get there as quickly as possible.
4. Deconstruction — Most skills are really just bundles of smaller subskills you use at the same time. Break the skill down into smaller parts. By breaking down the skill into manageable parts, you eliminate the early feelings of overwhelm and make it easier to get started.
5. Critical subskills — Practice the most important subskills first. A few subskills will always be more important than others, so it makes sense to begin by practicing the things that will give you a significant increase in performance. By focusing your early practice on the most critical parts of the skill, you’ll see a dramatic increase in your performance after a few hours of practice.
6. Barriers to practice — When learning a skill, there will always be barriers that interfere with the learning process. These barriers could be internal such as fear or self-doubt, or external such as distractions (a ringing phone, knock at the door, TV). Eliminate any hindrances for one hour.
7. Make time — The exact amount of time it takes to acquire a new skill depends on your desired performance level — if you don’t make things harder than they really need to be, it’s not at all uncommon to reach your initial objective in a few hours.
8. Fast feedback loops — Find a way to get fast feedback on your progress so that you can correct yourself quickly and stay on the path of speedy learning. You can hire a coach or take time to reflect on your mistakes and correct them.
9. Short bursts — Numerous studies in the fields of motor and cognitive skill acquisition have established that the first few hours of practicing a new skill always generate the most dramatic performance improvements.
10. Quantity and speed — Practice quickly and often and do not focus on achieving perfection. It’s better to recognize that you’re likely a beginner, and you shouldn’t expect yourself to be an expert from the start. By prioritizing quantity and speed, you’re less likely to get frustrated and subsequently demotivated during the initial stages of practice.

Kaufman field-tested the “First 20 Hours” on a wide variety of skills in several contexts — fine and gross motor movements, cognitive processing, personal hobbies, and professional skills.

The general pattern looks like this – when you start, you’re horrible. But you improve quickly as you learn the essential parts of the skill. After reaching a certain level of skill quickly, your rate of improvement declines, and subsequent improvement becomes much slower.

This phenomenon is called the “power law of practice,” and it’s one of the most consistent findings in skill acquisition research. According to Kaufman, this effect has been known since at least 1926, and it’s been replicated many times in studies of both physical and mental skills.

Even when you have learned a new skill, you will lose it over time if you don’t continue to practice it.

Skills deteriorate over time is a given, but it is also easy to re-acquire a skill after you’ve learned it. It usually doesn’t take much practice to bring your skills back up to past levels once you know what you’re doing. An hour or two every few months is usually sufficient to maintain your current level of performance. You’re just reconnecting parts of your brain that haven’t been connected in a while. The neural wiring is still there; it’s just a bit rusty.

Is there any skill you would like to learn?

Would you be game enough to test Josh Kaufman’s “First 20 Hours”?

I would like to hear about it here.

You can write your first book in one week. I did it. So can you. Want to know how? Just download the book and get going.

Finding The Right Energy To Write Your Book

October 8, 2021October 8, 2021 Neera

Writing a book is a mammoth task. There are several components to the successful writer path:

Managing to find the time and discipline to write amid a busy life and practice.
Finding your writing style and voice.
Finding the intersection for your expertise, your passion, and the needs of the marketplace
Learning about and handling the business and marketing aspects of publishing in order to ensure that your book finds its intended readers.

Last week I came across an interesting concept from Bill O’Hanlon’s book, Becoming A Published Therapist. Bill O’ Hanlon is a psychotherapist who has written 30 books.

Being a psychologist, it was automatic that he would try to get to the bottom of why it is hard to write books and how to conquer that.

He concluded that it takes a particular kind of energy to get through the process of writing a book, getting it published, and then getting into the hands of the readers.

Passion for a book is like an electrical impulse traveling down a wire, and that electrical impulse has to be strong enough to affect a lot of people, from the writer to the agent to the editor. Then from the editor to the publicist who needs to get the book reviewed, the art director who is responsible for coming up with the right cover, the sales reps who sell the book to the store buyers. Then from the store’s main buyer to the individual booksellers and, eventually, to the customer. — Lee Boudreaux, Senior Editor, Random House

O’Hanlon reckons ideas aren’t enough. The book must have some driving force that turns it from an idea into action. The essayist Annie Dillard has the same view.

“Writing a book is like rearing children — willpower has very little to do with it. If you have a little baby crying in the middle of the night, and if you depend only on willpower to get you out of bed to feed the baby, that baby will starve. You do it out of love. Willpower is a weak idea; love is strong. You don’t have to scourge yourself with a cat-o’-nine-tails to go to the baby. That’s the same way you go to your desk. There’s nothing freakish about it. Caring passionately about something isn’t against nature, and it isn’t against human nature. It’s what we’re here to do” — Annie Dillard, “To Fashion a Text”

The Four Kinds of Energies

In O’Hanlon’s view, there are four main energies you can tap into when you write your book.

Blissed Energy
Blessed Energy
Pissed Energy
Dissed Energy

Your primary writing energy maybe just one of the above or a combination of more than one.

These energies are split between “what you love and what upsets you.”

The first two represent the “positive energies”, and they arise from what you love; the last two, are the “negative energies,” and they come from what upsets you.

Let’s have a look at what they are.

Blissed Energy

Blissed is the excited, deeply joyful energy that some people get when they think of or pursue specific endeavors in life.

If you love music and it brings you joy to the point of taking you to the state of ecstasy, music may be your bliss. Or it might be sports that do it for you.

Anything that you find profoundly soul-satisfying or fulfilling gives you blissed energy. You can tell what blisses you out by what kinds of things you can’t keep yourself from doing, thinking about, or sharing with others.

I get into a state of trance when I sketching. For George Lucas, it is movies.

“You have to find something that you love enough to be able to take risks, jump over the hurdles, and breakthrough the brick walls that are always going to be placed in front of you. If you don’t have that kind of feeling for what it is you’re doing, you’ll stop at the first giant hurdle.” — George Lucas

There is a Hasidic saying that, everyone should carefully observe which way his heart draws him and then choose that way with all his strength.

The way of following your bliss into writing is to observe what you are drawn to and then follow that passion.

Bill O’Handon was drawn to Solution-Oriented Therapy, a form of Solution-focused brief therapy, and has written over 30 books on the subject.

I wrote my first books because I had to. Something inside me insisted, and while I could have resisted the call, I knew that I would be letting myself down as well as shirking an important contribution I could be making. So, I guess that is the first reason to write: because you feel you have to write. — Bill O’Hanlon.

Blessed Energy

Blessed energy involves people or situations that have bestowed grace or encouragement on you in life.

Perhaps you had a friend who believed in or encouraged you. Or a parent or grandparent told you that you could do anything that you set your mind to or that you were smart or talented. Or a colleague has always encouraged you to follow your dreams.

The paranormal mystery writer Charlaine Harris has a husband who believed in her even more than she believed in herself. He gave her an electric typewriter on their wedding day and suggested that she quit her job and start. She still couldn’t bring herself to do so. But her husband’s continued to nudge her. Today she is a writer of many successful novels. One of her series, The Southern Vampire Mysteries, has been made into a popular television show, True Blood.

Pissed

Pissed (meaning “pissed off” in this context) refers to the stuff in life that upsets you, gets you angry, or makes you righteously indignant.

The best-selling business author Tom Peters was asked whether his book, In Search of Excellence, which caused a shift in business practices worldwide, was written for that purpose. His response was:

“When I wrote [it] . . . I wasn’t trying to fire a shot to signal a revolution. But I did have an agenda. My agenda was this: I was genuinely, deeply, sincerely, and passionately pissed off!

Another writer who used angry energy to write was the author J. A. Jance. When she tried to enter a creative writing class in the 1960s, the professor told her that “girls don’t become writers” and that she should become a teacher or nurse instead. Jance’s then-husband was also an aspiring writer and he declared, “There will only be one writer in this family, and it’s me.”

Some years later, after divorcing and becoming a single parent, Jance got up at 4:30 a.m. daily to write for several hours before her kids awakened, and she had to get them to school before going to her job.

What gave her the energy to get up so early and persist in her writing until she got published?

She was pissed.

She got her revenge in print. She made one character in the book a husband who drank too much and declared himself the only writer in the family and never published anything, and she made the crazed killer a creative writing teacher.

The best-selling mystery writer Sue Grafton did something similar after she went through a terrible divorce in which she got legally trounced in a very unfair way. After spending time fantasizing about the perfect undetectable way of killing her ex, she decided to do it in print, leading to her first best-seller, A Is for Alibi.

Dissed

Dissed means two things: dissatisfied or disrespected. Dissed refers to the areas of life you were, or someone you care about was disrespected or mistreated. It also refers to those areas in which you are dissatisfied with the status quo, including when you were wounded, hurt, or traumatized.

Being wounded in a certain area can help you be more sensitive to others who have suffered similar hurts. Martin Luther King was moved to social action by being disrespected and by seeing people he cared about disrespected too.

Billy Connolly’s grew up in Scotland and was a very poor student, in part due to some unrecognized learning problems. His teachers beat him and generally humiliated him in front of the other students. When he became a successful film star and internationally renowned comedian, he used to drive by those former teachers’ houses and feel a smug satisfaction that he had proven them wrong in their prediction that he would grow up to be a failure and worthless. Disrespect and humiliation made Billy Connolly the person he is today.

A variation on this dissed energy is being wounded. The novelist Anne Rice’s 5-year-old daughter died of leukemia. She grieved mightily, of course, but when the time came to go back to her work as a legal assistant, she found she just couldn’t do it, even though her family needed the income.

Her husband suggested that delay going back to the office and work on that novel she had always wanted to write. The novel that emerged from that period was a compelling dark novel about vampires called Interview With the Vampire. It featured a 5-year-old character who became a vampire (and therefore could never die). Rice imbued this character with all the qualities and features of her dead daughter, in the hopes of never forgetting those aspects of her as time marched on.

Takeaway

O’Hanlon suggests not starting on your writing project unless you have enough energy to pull you through the rough bits, the dips, the discouraging moments, and just the sheer amount of time it takes to see your book through to publication and get it successfully out into the world.

My first book was written from a combination of “Pissed” and “Blissed” energy. I was “pissed” at my inner critic for constantly telling me that my work was not good enough. But I was equally driven by my passion for writing.

But my future work will come from “Dissed” and “Pissed” energies. Dissatisfaction in me leads to curiosity to find out if there is a solution and a kind of stubbornness to get it done against all odds.

I have several books in the draft mode. I would start a book as soon as I get the idea. I get energized about a topic or a story. Every idea has an energy associated with it. If you don’t tap into it, the energy subsides and the idea disappears. I work on the book and take it as far as I could with that energy.

But as Bill O’Hanlon discovered ideas aren’t enough. The book must have some driving force, some special kind of energy to take it from idea into action.

What energy you can tap into to write your book?

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Credit: Credit to concept of four types of energies goes to Bill O’Hanlon and many examples came from his book Becoming a Published Therapist.

The Research, The Book, The Author The Quote

October 5, 2021October 5, 2021 Neera

I was doing some research for the novel I want to write in the month of November (NaNoWriMo) is around the corners Writers! October is for plotting if you want to participate), and I first came across a book, then its writer, and then a quote that intrigued me enough to share them with you all.

I will explain all those in the same order.

The Research

I watched the movie Edie, on TV the night before and loved it.

The movie was about an 83-years-old bitter and gruff woman who had spent the previous 30 years of her life looking after her husband, who had a stroke. After his death, and when her relationship with her daughter begins to worsen (she is persuading her to move into a retirement home). Edith runs away from home. All her life, she has been doing things for others. She didn’t want to die with a bundle of regrets. So, while still in good health, she attempts to address at least one of them — to climb a mountain in the Scottish Highlands.

The movie was so refreshing that I wonder if there is a market for books with middle-aged protagonists.

My research led me to a book called Fleishman Is in Trouble.

The Book

Fleishman Is In Trouble is about a middle-aged man who is finally free from his nightmare marriage and is ready for a life of online dating.

The book came about from an unusual incident when its author, Taffy Brodesser-Akner, went for lunch with a friend.

Her friend, a male, dropped a bombshell at lunch, “ I’m getting a divorce. I have already moved out. The alimony has worked out. The child support worked out too.” Then he took out his phone and showed Taffy how difficult it is for somebody of their age to be on dating apps.

Taffy’s mind was blown. Not because she didn’t think she was “that’ old, she was going through her struggles of being in the ‘invisible’ age group. She was stupefied because she had never seen anything like this.

She thought, if I had never seen anything like it, other people may not too. So it might be a good story.

So she left the luncheon and called her editor at GQ and said, “I have to do a story about dating apps.”

“You know, you don’t usually sound like a clueless New Jersey housewife in her middle age, but right now, you do.” Her editor explained to her that the GQ readers know all about dating apps, and they’re not going to risk their reputation as a hip magazine on a 40-year-old woman writing about dating apps.

That pissed Taffy off.

The Author

Taffy Brodesser-Akner didn’t intend to become a journalist. She went to film school. While working her way through the curriculum, she showed a couple of things to her professors, who said, “This isn’t good.” She figured she was not going to make it into screenwriting.

So, right after college, she got a job in journalism because that was a thriving industry (You are meant to laugh here!).

She kept telling herself; I am not a good creative writer, I am not a good screenwriter, nor a good journalist, but I should be happy that I am having a go at it.

Eventually, journalism made her a good storyteller.

And she knew when she found a good story. A middle-aged man finding his way through dating apps was a good story.

Straight after the call with her editor, Tassy pulled over into a restaurant. She sat down and wrote the first ten pages of her first novel.

Now the question was how to write the rest of the novel.

The Quote

While still grappling with the idea, Taffy Brodesser-Akner saw something on Twitter by the magazine writer Chris Jones that blew her mind:

If you write 500 words four days a week, on the fifth day you revise those 2,000 words, and on Monday you start over again, in a year you will have finished a book.

She wrote the first 30 pages in one month. In six months, she finished her novel.

It was published in June 2019 and instantly became a Sunday Times and The New York Times bestseller.

She said she wrote the first 30 pages in one month.

Takeaway

The middle-aged demographic is on the rise. According to 2005 statistics, the average age in Western World is predominantly 40+. Just in last night’s news, it was mentioned that according to recent statistics, 50% of the Australian population is more than 50 years old.

Books with middle-aged protagonists are doing well. Apart from Fleishman Is In Trouble, there are many more which are doing well.

Four days of writing and one day of editing is a brilliant strategy. You can change the number of words to your capacity. It can be applied to NaNoWriMo. Write 2000 words a day for 3 days, edit on the 4th day, then start again.

Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash

Stop Writing Like An Author

October 1, 2021October 1, 2021 Neera

For years I struggled to write.

Whatever I wrote did meet my standards. I wanted my writing to sound like the authors I was reading at the time. I tried to sound like Malcolm Gladwell, Elizabeth Gilbert, Jhumpa Lahiri, and James Clear.

If I couldn’t write like them, what is the point of writing, I would groan.

I wanted my prose to sing.

If my stories are not as interesting as David Sedaris’s, why bother.

But writing had gone in my blood, and it just wouldn’t go away.

I loved writing diaries and journals because there I could be myself and write whichever way it came to me.

Sometimes I would go back and read them and wonder did I write this? Why can’t I write like that when I am writing books or articles.

The answer was when I wrote for publishing, I tried to write like an author — perfect prose with an authoritative voice. I wrote from my brain.

In my diaries, I wrote from the heart.

If I were pondering a question, I would write down what I was thinking. I would write things that were bothering me without hesitation.

One thought would lead to another, and unexpected connections will form. As a result, the prose would be more engaging and passionate.

I was not an author there. I was me.

So I decided to use the same approach to writing articles. I am typing this story on my phone after dinner on Friday evening as soon as the idea for this article came to me.

I am even typing with both thumbs, something I have never done before, to keep up with the flow of thoughts.

The best articles I read are written in a conversational tone. This is how Jessica Wildfire writes. She picks big-touchy topics and then writes about them as if she is confiding her thoughts to her best friend. That makes her articles so engrossing. No doubt so has clarity of thought. For readers, the articles are lightweight and yet thought-provoking. Conversational style helps her with that too.

When you stop being an author, you stop looking for perfect prose and say what you want to say plainly and simply.

Sometimes while trying to craft good prose, you lose what you want to say.

Good prose is effortless. It comes to you in your spoken words. You only need to tighten them.

And it is much quicker, more fluent, and has a better impact.

It would have taken me at least an hour if I had written this article like an author. I would be looking for relevant quotes, try to be preachy, and as a result, this piece wouldn’t have flowed well.

And I would spend another hour fixing it.

Now I wrote it in flat 15 minutes.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

5 Secrets to Write More In Less Time

September 19, 2021September 19, 2021 Neera

Lately, I have been able to free up more time during the day while writing much more than I ever did.

I don’t feel as stressed as I used to and have much more time reading books, going for walks, and even watching TV.

I attribute my current productivity to five changes I have made in the past few months.

Here they are without much ado.

1. Use a timer

The timer has become my #1 productivity tool. I have become very diligent in using a timer while writing. For example, before writing an article or working on a book, I set 15 minutes timer on my computer.

I tell myself I am only going to work on it for 15 minutes. I get much less resistance from my ‘monkey brain.’ I get focused quickly as the clock is ticking, and I get a fair deal done. Sometimes I go into a flow state, and 15 minutes pass in 5 minutes. By that time, I have written more than 300 words. That is a decent size article.

This technique is based on the Pomodoro technique, where you focus on a task for 25 minutes followed by a five-minute break afterward.

2. Only one priority per day

I used to spread myself very thin. Each day I will have a to-do list of 8–10 tasks, and I will go from one to another, crossing them off my list. It would leave me exhausted.

Not anymore.

Now I only have one writing-related task a day. Whether it is working on a chapter of the book I am writing or an article on Medium. When that task is done, I am free to do whatever I want to do.

I get much more done this way compared to when I had a long to-do list.

3. Step away from the computer

My eyes get exhausted pretty soon while working on the computer. Previously I used to persist and keep going. Now I have limited my computer time to the bare minimum and use other tools. I do my planning on the notebook. I even write my first draft in the notebook and then type it up on the computer later. I check my mail on my phone, and I download imaged on iPad or iPhone.

4. Use Roam Research

Recently I have started using Roam Research, a note-taking tool that uses 20th-century German writer and sociologist Niklas Luhmann’s Slip-box technique to create notes. This tool is a life changer. I have been able to organize my research (still working on it) so that I can access it at a minute’s notice.

5. Get to the point straight away

We often get stuck trying to connect points or find appropriate stories while all we want to do is give the vital information. Write in dot points. Give the information and forget the fluff. Just like you, other people don’t have time either. Short is better. To-the-point is best.

Final Thought

It was close to 10:15 pm when I started writing this article. I finished it in two 15 minutes intervals. If it weren’t for those, I wouldn’t have written it.

Photo by Filip Mroz on Unsplash

60 Lessons Learnt In 60 Years

September 18, 2021September 18, 2021 Neera

This week I turned sixty.

While there weren’t many options to celebrate amongst the six-week-long lockdown where I live, there was plenty of time to reflect on the six decades that I have spent on this planet.

While God’s Human Creation department forgot some ingredients while making me, his Good Fortune department compensated for those errors by giving me a good set of parents and a stable upbringing.

Both my parents were teachers who gave me a solid foundation to face life’s trials and tribulations. Of course, I had my fair share of those. But, what they did most was to install in me a passion for written words. So, ever since I was a little girl, I have been collecting quotes which over time, guided me, comforted me, and became the inspiration to try my hands at writing myself.

Some of them became life lessons.

I see no better way to celebrate my sixtieth birthday than to revise those and remind myself that, life is beautiful, and then you die.

Here are my handpicked 60 lessons learned in 60 years.

She that loveth books will never want a faithful friend. Books are wholesome counselors, cheerful companions, and effectual comforters. Also, they don’t reveal your secrets.
Education is the training that will help you get on without intelligence. If you have figured that out, you are intelligent enough and hence don’t need a college degree.
You will escape from school only to find that the world is a bigger school and that you are back again in the first grade. The only drawback is that there is no second grade.
Learning is finding out what you already know. Doing is demonstrating that you know it. Teaching is reminding others that they don’t know just as much as you do. Online teaching is prompting students that there is a better and more expensive course than the one they just bought.
Examinations are formidable to even the best prepared, for the greatest fool can ask more than the wisest can answer.
A secret is what you tell someone else not to tell because you can’t keep it to yourself. This is also a great way to create fake news.
You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however. Alternatively, you can try praying.
Don’t waste your time collecting other people’s autographs. Devote it to make your autograph worth collecting. While you are doing that, practice your signatures.
If at first, you don’t succeed, then marriage is not for you.
We are all mad; only the degree varies.
He who rides the tiger cannot dismount. Try a donkey instead. They are more prevalent anyway.
Rabbits jump, and they live for 8 years, dogs run, and they live for 15, turtles do nothing and live for 150. They also win the race.
The road to success is always under repair. Mind the potholes.
Living is the art of getting used to what we didn’t expect.
What you are afraid of doing is a clear indicator of what to do next.
People who are late to the parties are often so much jollier than the people who have to wait for them. (It is because they have a husband who doesn’t confuse parties with work meetings.)
When you have to put up with mean people, think of them as sandpaper. They may scratch you, rub you the wrong way. But eventually, you end up smooth and polished. And the sandpaper? It will be worn out and ugly.
We all boil at different degrees.
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
Do what you feel is right. You will be damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves yet make them know that you are lying.
Those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them — then they destroy you.
It is important to know when to stop arguing with people and give them the pleasure of being wrong.
Be a good person, but don’t waste time trying to prove it to others.
Every next level of your life will demand a different version of you.
There’s no rule that says I have to live life like everyone else.
When a student is ready, the teacher appears. When a student is truly ready, the teacher disappears.
You’ll have good days, bad days, overwhelming days, too tired days, I-can’t-go-on days. And every day you’ll still show up.
Life is about how you handle plan B.
Grow through what you go through.
A woman is unstoppable after she realizes she deserves better.
When you can’t control what is happening around you, challenge yourself to control the way in which you respond. That is where your true power lies.
Money is just a concept. It has no real value. The day you understand that, you will understand how to make your own money.
If you don’t get on to build your own dreams, someone will hire you to build their dreams.
Life is like an elevator on the way up, sometimes you have to stop and let some people off.
Keep smiling… One day life will get tired of upsetting you.
Nothing ever goes away until it teaches you what you need to learn.
People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character.
As long as you know who you are and what makes you happy it doesn’t matter how others see you.
Make yourself a priority. At the end of the day, you are your longest commitment.
It is up to you to see the beauty of everyday things.
Energy flows, where focus goes.
There’s no need to rush. What’s meant for you is always to arrive on time.
A bad attitude is like a flat tyre, you can’t get very far until you change it.
You can’t change the people around you. But you can change who you choose to be around.
If it is important to you, you will find a way. If not, you will find an excuse.
Being negative only makes a difficult journey more difficult. you make be given a cactus, but you don’t have to sit on it.
When you’re not sure, flip a coin because while the coin is in the air, you realize which one you’re actually hoping for.
One year = 365 opportunities.
You either say how you feel and f*ck it up, or say nothing and let it f*ck you up instead.
The smarter you get, the less you speak. You grow to realize that not everyone is worth confrontation. Your time is valuable, your energy is priceless and you don’t want to waste either on people who don’t deserve it.
Every time you are able to find humor in a difficult situation, you win.
Be careful who you trust. Salt and sugar look the same.
You are the best project you will ever work on.
Stop setting new year resolutions. Stop raising the bar each year. Stop under-promising and over-delivering. You are not a Fortune 500 company that has to show more profit each year. You are a living being like any other. You have the right to be in this universe. A cat never has to set a new year resolution. Free yourself of any expectations, especially your own.
There is a trick to a graceful exit. It begins with the vision to recognize when a job, a life stage, or a relationship is over — and let it go. It means leaving what is over without denying its validity or its past importance in our lives. It involves a sense of future, a belief that every exit line is an entry, that we are moving on, rather than out. The trick to retiring well is the trick to living well. Life isn’t a holding action but a process. We don’t leave the best parts of ourselves behind, back in the sports field or the office. We own what we learned back there. The experience and the growth are grafted onto our lives. And when we exit, we can take ourselves along quite gracefully.
Beautiful young people are due to makeup, but beautiful old people are works of art.
We do not necessarily improve with age; for better or worse, we become more like ourselves.
In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It is the years that you don’t have to spend in the nursing home.
When you get to the age when your thinking goes from “you probably shouldn’t say that” to “what the heck, let’s see what happens,” you are in the sixth decade of your life. At that age everything is fun.