Nicholas

Let's say I plan to go for a morning walk tomorrow. Tomorrow comes and for whatever reason, I miss my walk. I could hate myself or investigate "why", so I can put into place ways in which I can reduce the likelihood of missing my walk tomorrow. Self-improvement in a nutshell.

When people say “Back in my day things were better”, what they actually mean is that things were simpler. But whether they were better is an arguable point. The question you should ask when people say this is “better for whom?”

When you learn how a subject behaves and how it inherently is, it makes it easier to tolerate and take what it does less personally.

A song can be sad while the album is happy. A stock can be down while the mutual fund is up. Today can be bad while your life has been good. Zoom out, the big picture doesn't lie.

Keep expecting everything to fall into your lap. Keep denying your responsibility to control the direction of your life. Keep getting offended at menial things because that's your only source of entertainment. It will take you very far. In the wrong direction.

Don't quit, pivot. It isn't working because what you're doing doesn't work. Move in a new direction. Test new methods. Learn new information. Experience new problems. If you aren't making the progress you want, you aren't going to make more progress by quitting altogether.

In an age of abundance, our issue is not scarcity, it's having too much. Whereas all the previous generations were striving to make more, do more, know more, we must strive to do less. Narrow our focus and care for our attention as a precious resource that can be taken from us.

It isn't hard. You perceive it as hard because it isn't familiar to you. You fabricate the situation in your head and disconnect from reality. Breathe, focus, execute.

Surround yourself with people who make you want to be better. Not because they tell you to, but because their actions make you realize what's possible.

People will criticize everything they can so they don't have to face the thought of changing themselves, their mind, or their actions. Once you accept this, truly accept it, you remove one of the greatest limits to reaching your potential: caring what other people think.

The older you get, the more you realize it's less about what you want and more about what you're willing to give up.

You won’t make it without obsession. But nobody starts out obsessed. They start out curious. They experiment. They build things. They break things, They fail. And eventually they can’t pull themselves away. Curiosity turns into obsession with time and persistence.

Goals are for vision and filtration. Systems are for habits and action. If you don’t filter opportunities through your goals, your attention will bounce around mindlessly toward shiny objects (and you won’t have a chance at creating a system that achieves your goals).

Build for yourself, write to yourself, sell to yourself. The most profitable niche is you.

The importance of following people on social media that you disagree with, as explained by @AdamMGrant on the latest Huberman Lab podcast. Available in all formats at hubermanlab.com

You're allowed to allow yourself to not get upset by things that don't need to upset you, which is almost everything you get upset by.

Everyone has a sex drive. But few realize it goes beyond physical survival. Humans also have the desire to reproduce their mind – or the ideas and beliefs that form their identity. Business, politics, and religion are spiritual sex that are often shallow and lack connection.

Focus less on money and more on value. If you regularly create and give value, money will take care of itself. (Now read this tweet again and replace the word money with “love.” Now replace it with “happiness.” Now “success.”)

You struggle to write about anything you want because you don't know how to make your interests interesting to your readers, and you don't realize that people can (and want to) become interested in new things. People remember and trust those who introduce them to new interests.

Changing your mind should be something celebrated, not ridiculed. It represents a form of success, not failure.