How Do You Learn?

Do you learn because you have to or because you’re curious to know what you don’t know?

We remember what we want to learn more than the things we have to learn. Once our mindset is set up straight (meaning that once we fully realize that we don’t know everything), what ever we set our minds to learn becomes easier. We no longer learn because we have to, we learn because we are genuinely curious to know.

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Revision Wednesday
Blog post edited/re-posted on December 24, 2014

Chris Brady Recommended Book List

Looking to work on your thinking in the new year? Start with the below books recommended by Chris Brady.

Attitude and Success

See You at the Top, Zig Zigglar
The Greatest Salesman in the World, Og Mandino
Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations On and Off the Court, John Wooden
The Psychology of Winning, Dennis Waitley
Life is Tremendous, Charlie "Tremendous" Jones

People Skills and Principles

How to Have Power and Confidence in Dealing With People, Les Giblin
How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie
Personality Plus, Florence Littauer
Bringing Out the Best in People, Alan Lloyd McGinnis
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey

Leadership

It's Your Ship, Captain D. Michael Abrashoff
The Cycle of Leadership, Noel Tichy
The World's Most Powerful Leadership Principle, James C. Hunter
The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, John C. Maxwell
Launching a Leadership Revolution, Chris Brady and Orrin Woodward (it's a summary of so much of our learning!)

Historical Leadership Illustrations

The Founding Fathers on Leadership, Don T. Phillips
Scuttle Your Ships Before Advancing, Richard Luecke
Churchill on Leadership, Steven Hayward
Character Counts, Os Guiness
The American Leadership Tradition, Marvin Olasky

The History of Liberty

The Future of Freedom, Fareed Zakaria
The 5000 Year Leap: The Miracle That Changed the World, W. Cleon Skousen
How the West was Lost, Alexander Boot
The Conservative Mind, Russell Kirk
The Passion of the Western Mind, Richard Tarnas

Economics

The Economy in Mind, Warren T. Brookes
Economics in One Lesson, Henry Hazlitt
The Making of Modern Economics, Mark Skousen
Human Action, Ludwig von Mises
Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand

Politics and Governance

Politics: Easy as P.I.E., Bob McEwen
The Revolt of the Masses, Jose Ortega y Gasset
The Road to Serfdom, F. A. Hayek
The Creature from Jekyll Island, G. Edward Griffin
Slouching Towards Gomorrah, Robert H. Bork

Source: http://chrisbrady.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/09/recommended-book-list.html

“Letting go” words from YODA

"Attachment leads to jealousy. Train yourself to let go of the things you're afraid to loose." -Yoda

Yoda may just be a fictional character but the things he says are often wise and well thought out. It’s true that if we don't let go of an ex (for example), a feeling of jealousy would arise when ever we hear of his/her whereabouts.

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Originally posted - November 2010

Hope is Wrong?

"Don’t get your hopes up, you might get hurt." Is that familiar to you as it is for me? A life without hope is a hopeless life.

Is the hurt after the hope so great that we shouldn't have hope in the first place?

Nothing great was ever achieve without hope. To hope is to have something to look forward to, it’s to risk being hurt but the risk is worth taking.

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Originally posted - November 2010

Trapped Elephant

Circus elephants are trained at a very young age to obey orders. Part of their training is to not try to break free of their chains. They do so by putting a metal pole, deep in the ground, with a chain on the elephant’s neck. The more the elephant pull, the more it chokes him.

After a while, they don’t have to put the metal pole too deep in the ground because the elephant stopped trying to break free. He convinced himself that it’s not possible.

In the event of a earthquake or a fire, or any other event that would scare the elephant, if the elephant is able to break free, he will never accept being in chain again.

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Originally posted - November 2010

[Update December 2, 2019]
To me, there are 2 points to this story:

• In the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson: “The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.”
• We prefer freedom over imprisonment.

While most of us don't have physical chains to bind us down we do have mental ones that does just the same. Once we move past those fears they don't usually hold us down anymore. It's time to break free!

Regrets

20 years from now, you will regrets more the things you haven’t done than the things you did do. I don’t remember where I took that from, but I thought about it a lot lately.

You can’t regret something that will happen in the future nor something that’s happening in the present, only from things that happened in the past. So how do you know if you’re going to regret something or not?

I believe that moral compass as a lot to do with regrets. One with a aligned moral compass will have less regrets than someone with an unaligned moral compass.

A regret is something personal, it’s disappointment for something. There are 2 categories of regrets:

Psychological Regrets: Didn’t have the guts to do something because it appeared to be a bad idea at the time.

Conduct Regrets: Opposite of psychological regrets. It’s doing something that you shouldn’t have done but appeared like a good idea at the time.

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Originally posted - November 2010

Saying "sorry" too Often Deludes it

When you do something wrong, you should apologize but there is such a thing as apologizing too much.

When you apologize too much, you come across as someone who doesn't have any backbone. Don't apologize for "existing".

Take note of the times you've apologize and ask yourself if is was necessary to do so.

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Revision Wednesday
Blog post edited/re-posted on April 1, 2015.

Self Confidence

A lack of self confidence makes other people doubt in your abilities to accomplish anything even when you have years of experience on the subject.
Self confidence can make an expert look like a fool or a fool look like an expert.

What this means is that confidence in your abilities is more important than the abilities themselves.

Self confidence needs to be treated individually rather than be bound to what you do (or what you like). Doing otherwise will only create a temporary posture when your field of expertise is brought up but you will loose it as soon as the subject change.

Being comfortable with yourself will make you comfortable in any situation.

If you want more information, the below books (pictured above) are a good place to start:

• "Resolved - 13 Resolutions for LIFE" book by Orrin Woodward
• "How to have confidence and power in dealing with people" book by Les Giblin
• "Psycho Cybernetics" book by Maxwell Maltz

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Revision Wednesday
Blog post edited/re-posted on February 25, 2015

Great Leaders

"Great leaders have ambition beyond their own personal self-interest. They are not satisfied with personal success only, but focus almost entirely upon furthering the vision of the enterprise." -Jim Collins

Ray Kroc is the person who made Mcdonalds what it is today. Kroc discovered the Mcdonald brothers' restaurant in Southern California during the 50s.
The Mcdonald brothers were doing pretty good but did not see the potential they had their hands on. They had the fast food production and delivery down to a science but only Ray Kroc saw the true potential.

Ray Kroc is the person who came up with the idea of franchising the restaurant

Good is the enemy of great. The Mcdonald brothers were doing pretty good and, because of that, could not see the "great" in their system.

Dream - Struggle - Victory

"All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake up in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act out their dream with open eyes to make them possible." -T.E. Lawrence

Dream - Struggle - Victory... I must of heard this a thousand time throughout my years of being associated with great men. I've come to realize that the struggle will come regardless if you have a dream or not. The difference is that the struggle won't be followed by a victory if there's no dream.

While a dream doesn't guarantee a victory: not having a dream guarantees no victory is possible. After all, how could someone win if the rules on how to keep score hasn't been defined?

Dreaming is the most important thing in life and it's also often over looked. "I don't need a dream" they say "I just go". To that I ask "but where are you going?"
Everyone has a dream but only a few actually works towards it. What is your dream?

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Revision Wednesday
Blog post edited/re-posted on March 4, 2015

Keep track of Progress

Keeping track of progress is important to those who want to achieve. Data doesn't lie and allows one to tweak their efforts as they go. A process some likes to call "PDCA" (Plan Do Check Adjust) or "PDSA" (Plan Do Study Act).

If your goal is to loose 10lbs in a Month but don't track your progress, how will you know if you're on track? The PDCA process can help you improve constantly on your journey to the goal (as shown in above diagram).
The next time you do want to loose 10lbs, you'll already have an effective plan (that worked for you before) to get there.

For more information check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDCA

*Diagram by Karn G. Bulsuk (http://www.bulsuk.com).

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Revision Wednesday
Blog post edited/re-posted on April 8, 2015

The 10000 hours

It as been said that it takes 10000 hours to master a skill. We only have a limited amount of 10000 hours. What are you using yours for?

Most people are spread out too thin or spend too much time entertaining themselves. They never master anything of value.

Spend some time thinking about what you want to be really good at and start investing time in that skill. Find a mentor and track your progress along with how much time you've spent learning the new skill. Will it take you 10000 hours?

Quit trying to keep up with the Jones's...

"Quit trying to keep up with the Jones's because the Jones's are broke." -Orrin Woodward

Some people put reputation above all else and they believe that if they don't have the latest gadget-it will hinder their social standing.

"We buy things we don't need with money we don't have to impress people we don't like." -Dave Ramsey

There's a difference between looking successful and being successful and that's not determined by how good a car looks.

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Revision Wednesday
Blog post edited/re-posted on January 15, 2015

There Are No Limits

We set our own limitations in life. Whether we say we can't or we can, both statement are true because we make it so.

"Don't tell me the sky is the limit when there are footsteps on the moon." -Lana Hamilton

We will never do more than we think we can. To do more, we have to become more. We have to read on a daily basis to expand our thinking. The book of the Month, Resolved by Orrin Woodward, is a good place to start.

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Revision Wednesday
Blog post edited/re-posted on March 4, 2015

Multitasking doesn't Work

We don't multitask well. There's a reason why it's illegal to text and drive. We can't focus on 2 things at once.

Multitasking is like having 1L of water to divide into many glasses. We pour a little here, a little there and next thing we know we're out of water and none of the glasses are full.

"Be present wherever you are. Multitasking is a thief, robbing us of joy and stealing our ability to focus and create clear memories. If you're with your kids, be with your kids. If you're at work, be at work. Stop splitting yourself into little worthless pieces." -Chris Brady

Multitasking creates stress when trying to accomplish too many things at once.
To remedy this, make a list of what needs to get done and prioritize it. Don't start the next task until the first one is done. Focus only on the present task.

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Revision Wednesday
Blog post edited/re-posted on April 15, 2015

Commit or don't Commit at all

"A marriage based on the premise "Well, let's give this a shot, and if we 'grow apart,' we can always get divorced," is doomed before the vows are complete." -Lou Holtz

There's no grey area in life. You either do it or you don't. Maybe means you're not doing it.

If you say you're going to do something but don't plan on backing it up with work-don't say you're going to do it. It is better to have someone know you're not going to do it than to have them expect it and you not delivering on your promise.

The Comfort Zone

The comfort zone is the area of comfort we set out for ourselves in which we are comfortable in. Chris Brady likes to call it the "familiar zone" because there's really nothing comfortable about it.

How can we call it comfort when there's debt? Or when we're not chasing our dreams and settling for lesser ones... It truly is more accurate to call it a familiar zone.

"Only through pushing past a person's comfort zone will a person improve his level of skills." -Orrin Woodward

It is important to expand that zone on a daily basis so we become comfortable in every situation life throws at us.

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Revision Wednesday
Blog post edited/re-posted on April 29, 2015

ModestNeeds.org - small change. a world of difference.

It's a hard world out there and sometime all we need to make it to another month is a few extra bucks to help pay the bills.

Modestneeds.org was launched in 2002 by Keith Taylor and is designed to help people by giving them a little push financially.

You can either donate money to Modestneeds.org, and they will give it to who ever, or you can decide who to give it to using the website. You can also register yourself and ask for money if need be.

Check it out here:
https://www.modestneeds.org

Promise of the Sick

When we're sick, we tend to make ourselves promises like "When I get better, I'll exercise and eat right" but when we actually do get better, we're back to our old habits.

One day, we won't have a second chance. If we make such promises to ourselves, we should follow through on them.

Men's Health Training guide 2014 is out

I'm a sucker for Men's Health magazine/books (pictured) that comes out every now and then. I find myself on the lookout for it every time I do my grocery shopping.

This edition follows the same format as its predecessors; giving great advice about food, fitness, supplements etc...

It's a must own for those looking for information on healthy living.

500 Post!

Today marks my 500 blog post anniversary! A big Thank you to LIFE cds, books and association for providing me with inspiration throughout the years and to my readers who happen to stop by every now and then to read something.

Love you all! :)