In order for a bamboo nut to grow 80 feet in six weeks, it needs to be watered and fertilized for five years. At any time the water and fertilized process is stopped, the bamboo nut will die. Most people will see the 80 feet of bamboo growth but will quickly forget the five years worth of work that went into it. 

With your life, you have to do the same thing. You have to constantly be working on yourself, if you work on yourself and do the right things to grow in today's environment, you will see exponential growth in your life eventually. 

To work on a project, can take a long time to complete and what separates the success folks from the others, is that they just continued work on their craft and themselves. You can be living in a car like Steve Harvey for three years before you make your big break. 

How bad do you want something? Are you willing to move back with your parents and give up a good salary so you can work on your dreams? If you do, you are going to have a lot of work in front of you and you just have to keep watering and fertilizing your talents so that one day you can actually grow.

Journal Prompts

1. How can you be patient like the bamboo nut on your major goals?
2. How can you be more comfortable with taking a step back so that can focus more on your long term goals?

Something bad is going to happen to all of us. Some might have it worse than others but we are all going to go through something terrible. A tornado wrecked your home or a serious illness took down someone you love. One way to get over the pitfalls of lives is just to love them and accept them. If life gives you a tough thing to handle, it's because you're strong enough to handle it. Otherwise, who else do you want this unfortunate situation to happen to? The answer should be no one else, and just realize that it is your turn.

Someone that wishes that this event happened to someone else is not being a good person and is having a victim’s mindset. Both traits won’t resolve the issue any faster and won’t help the person grow to their full potential because they’re trying to avoid responsibility. Don’t run from responsibility, embrace it.

Journal Prompts

1. How can embracing responsibility help you grow to your full potential?
2. How can you avoid having the victim’s mindset that runs away from responsibilities?

The brain has two different parts for making decisions. The amygdala, which is responsible for quick decisions, like my hand is on a hot stove and I need to remove it. The Pre-frontal cortex is responsible for logical thinking, like what is 18 times 23124, which thanks to a calculator, is 416,232. To do that math, I can't just come with an answer right away. 

We have to be aware that we have two different parts of the brain that make decisions. We can be in a heated argument with someone and our amygdala takes over and we say something that we regret. If we have the time to take a break and think about our words, then the conversation could not be as hostile

Since we like to save energy on making decisions, our brain likes to develop rules of thumbs that we like to follow. If this thing happens, then we do this. This was very helpful back in the day when we were hunter gatherers. If we see a tiger, we run or attack. But in today's society, there are a lot more variables and if we make too quick of a decision, it can be very harmful to us. So slow things down and take time to make a decision but also don't fall into the trap of analysis paralysis either. Just beware of your habits so you can learn to make better choices with your life.

Journal Prompts

1. How can you ensure that you don’t make too quick of a decision?
2. How can you ensure that you don’t take too long with your decisions?

Even though we have smartphones, social media, computers, and virtual reality headsets, and things are so much more different today than 25, 50, 100, 200 years ago, a lot of things have remained the same in terms of having curiosity, desire, seeking safety, and wanting acceptance. People are not robots, even though there are some that act like it. 

There will always be people who strive for power and there will be people who will be self-conscious about their decisions. During the Roman Empire, they dealt with a lot of the same social issues that we deal with today. 

So if you can understand people and why they do stuff, you will see that things don't really change.

Journal Prompts

1. How can you ensure that you don’t lose focus of people and how they behave? 
2. How can you use the principles of human nature to help you in today’s environment?

There will be more information created over the next five years than the previous 500 years. The world is changing fast and we need to be prepared for it. We need to have more skills to help us think creatively and to be able to bounce back from adversity. 

The worst thing we can do to prepare for this fast changing future is to stop trying and learning. Life won't be very forgiving if you follow this path so always focus a portion of your day on your development.

The world is going to change and we have to accept it. Since it's changing so fast, we need to accept it even faster. 

Journal Prompts

1. What ways are you preparing for the future?
2. How can you use information about what is going to change in the future to make yourself more successful?

If you read the book, "Freakanomics" they discuss how a lot of things we experience in the world have a hidden side to them. There are many things where we think we’re doing good, but actually we’re not doing good. 

For example, take recycling, how often is it that the trash can with different slots, but slots for trash and recycling go into the same bin? Or if you don't clean out your yogurt cup and still recycle it, this causes damage to the recycling machines. So follow the rabbit hole and see if you're truly being a good person. If you love nature and you're constantly worrying about the environment but you travel all around the world, every week in a private plane. Are you doing everything you need to do to live within your principles. 

To see how the sausage is made can be a rude awakening and that might change the way you think but you have to ask yourself, do you want to live a lie and feel important, or do you want to do important things and actually make a difference in the world. 

Journal Prompts

1. How do you know you're truly doing good with your actions?
2. Are you taking any shortcuts in your actions like not cleaning out the yogurt cups? How can you improve in this area?

If you see something that isn't right, say something or even better, do something. If you see someone do something that needs to be corrected, don't go yelling at the person that they are wrong. Just be tactful and let them beware of their mistakes. If you become aggressive at someone, they might change their ways or they might dig deeper into that personality because they want to spite you. It's going to take more effort to go this route but it's going to be the best way to create permanent positive change.

After you do it enough, it will become easier and easier to do. So if you see something, do something. 

Journal Prompts

1. How can you be more comfortable with calling things out?
2. How can you life be better more mistakes were called out with compassion?

When it comes to controlling people, the only person you can truly control is yourself. You can control your standards in life in terms of how clean you keep your environment, the quality of work you turn in, how nice you are to people, and always doing the right thing but that's because you know better so do you better. You know not doing the right thing will lower the standards for yourself and then you won't be able to live with yourself. 

Since not everyone came from the same background from you, you should be forgiving of someone and teach them the lessons on how to have high standards and the best way to do that is to set the example by having high standards. People are going to let you down with their low standards but if you don't address the issue and be forgiving, then it's not going to change. Don't be a jerk when people mess up. Just express how you feel and give guidance on how to improve the situation. If they change, then awesome. If they don't change, then you might need to start hanging around other people and until they change their ways but remember to be forgiving and not hold any grudges.

Journal Prompts

1. How can you express your standards to those around you?
2. How can you ensure that you’re forgiving of others?

When you have a group, it is easy to follow whatever the group is already doing. They are comfortable with how things have been going, but being comfortable with what has always been done doesn’t typically lead to long term success.

This is why you should question things and see if it is really the best way to do something. This can be really uncomfortable because it can be everyone against you. But if you know something to be true and they are all following a lie, it's best for you to go against the group. This will lead to your long term success and they will be left behind. 

To change the group, you have to be confident, know you stuff inside and out, and know how to persuade people to change their groupthink. It’s okay to go with the group, but just make sure you know it’s the right path to be on. 

Journal Prompts

1. What can happen to your life if you get trapped in the snares of group thinking?
2. How can you avoid the snares of groupthink?

If you feel like you're not enjoying your life, it is typically because you're lacking these qualities in your life, control, autonomy, and creativity. Having control gives you the ability to know that you can change your situation. Autonomy is the ability to make decisions without having to answer to someone else. Creativity is the ability to come up with new solutions. There won’t be a perfect solution that gives you all three 100% of the time but you can design your life to be pretty satisfied with the balance.

In order to get all three of these things, you just need to be so good they can’t ignore you. Once you reach this level with your life, then you will have more power to dictate your life. Instead of hoping things come your way, things will come to you and you’ll be able to pick and choose what projects you want to work on. It takes time to build up to this level but the outcome is very desirable.

Journal Prompts

1. What would having control, autonomy, and creativity mean to your life?
2. How can you become so good they can’t ignore you in your niche?