Every evening is a reminder to slow down and savor life's sweetest moments ✨

EVENING 

“Telling yourself you have all the time in the world, all the money in the world, all the colors in the palette, anything you want—that just kills creativity.”

“Good artists borrow, great artists steal.”—T. S. Eliot’s dictum, Igor Stravinsky, Pablo Picasso, Steve Jobs

You don’t need to be a genius, you just need to be yourself. That’s the message from Austin Kleon, a young writer and artist who knows that creativity is everywhere, creativity is for everyone. A manifesto for the digital age, Steal Like an Artist is a guide whose positive message, graphic look and illustrations, exercises, and examples will put readers directly in touch with their artistic side. When Mr. Kleon was asked to address college students in upstate New York, he shaped his speech around the ten things he wished someone had told him when he was starting out. The talk went viral, and its author dug deeper into his own ideas to create Steal Like an Artist, the book. The result is inspiring, hip, original, practical, and entertaining. And filled with new truths about creativity: Nothing is original, so embrace influence, collect ideas, and remix and re-imagine to discover your own path. Follow your interests wherever they take you. Stay smart, stay out of debt, and risk being boring—the creative you will need to make room to be wild and daring in your imagination.

career

Career

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

strategy

Strategy

books

Books

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

You don’t need to be a genius, you just need to be yourself. That’s the message from Austin Kleon, a young writer and artist who knows that creativity is everywhere, creativity is for everyone. A manifesto for the digital age, Steal Like an Artist is a guide whose positive message, graphic look and illustrations, exercises, and examples will put readers directly in touch with their artistic side. When Mr. Kleon was asked to address college students in upstate New York, he shaped his speech around the ten things he wished someone had told him when he was starting out. The talk went viral, and its author dug deeper into his own ideas to create Steal Like an Artist, the book. The result is inspiring, hip, original, practical, and entertaining. And filled with new truths about creativity: Nothing is original, so embrace influence, collect ideas, and remix and re-imagine to discover your own path. Follow your interests wherever they take you. Stay smart, stay out of debt, and risk being boring—the creative you will need to make room to be wild and daring in your imagination.

I’m a writer who draws. I make art with words and books with pictures. Author of Steal Like An Artist and other bestsellers. Visit my website: http://austinkleon.com/

Austin Kleon

Steal Like an Artist

A mantra is a short and meaningful phrase you repeat to yourself.When you're facing a stressful situation, it helps by occupying the brain enough so that it doesn’t get caught up in obsessing, planning, and catastrophizing.

Develop a Mantra

When you react to it, that's when it transforms into suffering.You can learn to experience pain neutrally is through meditation: it teaches you to accept pain, sit with it and then move on, instead of reacting to it with stress.

Embrace Pain, but Don’t React to It

Don’t turn away from challenges. If you want to get better at anything, you’ve got to stress yourself. Just make sure that you follow these challenges with periods of rest and recovery.

Stress + Rest = Growth

Think of 3-5 things that matter most to you. They may be guiding principles of your life or aspects of the person you want to become.Then write a sentence or two on each, describing what they mean to you. These are the values you’ll want to act in service of when the going gets tough.

Know Your Core Values

Toughness is experiencing something that is subjectively distressing, and then leaning in, paying attention, and creating space to take a thoughtful action that aligns with your core values.

What It Means to Be Tough

When he's asked about the keys to his success, Eliud Kipchoge -the greatest, grittiest marathoner of all time-begins his explanation by pointingnot to his physical fitness but his mental game. "If you don't rule your mind, your mind will rule you," he says.

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

health

Health

mentalhealth

Mental Health

How to Toughen Up (Mentally, That Is)

“If you get off your ass and actively seek out pain, the body is anti-fragile. Meaning it gets stronger the more stress and strain you put on it.….but if you avoid stress and pain… your muscles will atrophy, your bones will become brittle and you will degenerate into weakness.”

“We are inconsequential cosmic dust, bumping and milling about on a tiny blue speck. We imagine our own importance. We invent our purpose—we are nothing. Enjoy your F*cking coffee.”

<ul><li>The default human condition is to avoid pain and pursue pleasure, But this pursuit of pleasure is toxic because it is misleading and self-defeating.</li><li>The antidote is to actively engage with pain and learn to suffer well.</li></ul>

Pain Is The Universal Constant

“…while pain is inevitable, suffering is always a choice… there is always a separation between what we experience and how we interpret that experience.

<ol><li>A sense of control: We’re in control of our own life.</li><li>A belief in the value of something: Something important enough to work toward, something better, that’s worth striving for.</li><li>A community: A group that values the same things we do and is working toward achieving those things.</li></ol>

To Build And Maintain Hope

“Humans warp their perceptions to fit their expectations.”Examples:<ol><li>In the pre-Uber days, we were willing to wait for 30 min for a taxi to come. Today we complain if there is a delay of even 5 min. </li><li>A decade back, someone was living in a small apartment and very contented. Today, the same family lives in a Villa with a much higher living standard and feels less satisfied than before. </li></ol>Convenience has improved but satisfaction has not.

The Blue Dot Effect:

People want diversions from their pain, like social media to scroll through, or cheeseburgers or ice creams to divert them from their stress, These things, these diversions, give us the feeling of ‘freedom’ (temporary freedom from our pain), but really this is just FakeFreedom.

FAKE FREEDOM

<ol><li>For every action, there is an equal and opposite emotional reaction.</li><li>Ur self worth equals the sum of our emotions over time.</li><li>Ur identity will stay your identity until a new experience acts against it.</li></ol>Emotional gravity: People are pulled towards other people with similar histories and experiences like our own.

Newton’s Laws of Emotion

<ul><li>Real freedom comes from sacrifices and choosing what to give up.</li><li>The only TRUE form of freedom is through SELF-LIMITATION. It is not the privilege of choosing everything you want in your life, but rather, choosing what you will GIVE UP in your life.</li></ul>

REAL FREEDOM

<ul><li>The hope that brings the most joy to our lives is the same hope that brings the greatest danger. </li><li>We must stop hoping and accept what is. That is the only way to end the perpetual cycle of conflict.</li><li>Don't hope for better. Be better. Be something better. Be more compassionate, more resilient, more humble, more disciplined.</li></ul>

Hope Is F*cked

<ol><li>Innovations (Upgrade pain): Innovations replace pain with a more tolerable pain.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Diversions (Avoid pain): Diversions help people to numb their pain. Examples: weekend out with friends and the use of social media.</li></ol>

The Feelings Economy:

“Freedom itself demands discomfort.”

“Living well does not mean avoiding suffering; it means suffering for the right reasons.”—Mark Manson

From the author of the international mega-bestseller The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck comes a counterintuitive guide to the problems of hope. We live in an interesting time. Materially, everything is the best it’s ever been—we are freer, healthier and wealthier than any people in human history. Yet, somehow everything seems to be irreparably and horribly f*cked—the planet is warming, governments are failing, economies are collapsing, and everyone is perpetually offended on Twitter. At this moment in history, when we have access to technology, education and communication our ancestors couldn’t even dream of, so many of us come back to an overriding feeling of hopelessness. What’s going on? If anyone can put a name to our current malaise and help fix it, it’s Mark Manson. In 2016, Manson published The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck, a book that brilliantly gave shape to the ever-present, low-level hum of anxiety that permeates modern living. He showed us that technology had made it too easy to care about the wrong things, that our culture had convinced us that the world owed us something when it didn’t—and worst of all, that our modern and maddening urge to always find happiness only served to make us unhappier. Instead, the “subtle art” of that title turned out to be a bold challenge: to choose your struggle; to narrow and focus and find the pain you want to sustain. The result was a book that became an international phenomenon, selling millions of copies worldwide while becoming the #1 bestseller in 13 different countries. Now, in Everthing Is F*cked, Manson turns his gaze from the inevitable flaws within each individual self to the endless calamities taking place in the world around us. Drawing from the pool of psychological research on these topics, as well as the timeless wisdom of philosophers such as Plato, Nietzsche, and Tom Waits, he dissects religion and politics and the uncomfortable ways they have come to resemble one another. He looks at our relationships with money, entertainment and the internet, and how too much of a good thing can psychologically eat us alive. He openly defies our definitions of faith, happiness, freedom—and even of hope itself. With his usual mix of erudition and where-the-f*ck-did-that-come-from humor, Manson takes us by the collar and challenges us to be more honest with ourselves and connected with the world in ways we probably haven’t considered before. It’s another counterintuitive romp through the pain in our hearts and the stress of our soul. One of the great modern writers has produced another book that will set the agenda for years to come.

productivity

Productivity

philosophy

Philosophy

mindfulness

Mindfulness

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From the author of the international mega-bestseller The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck comes a counterintuitive guide to the problems of hope. We live in an interesting time. Materially, everything is the best it’s ever been—we are freer, healthier and wealthier than any people in human history. Yet, somehow everything seems to be irreparably and horribly f*cked—the planet is warming, governments are failing, economies are collapsing, and everyone is perpetually offended on Twitter. At this moment in history, when we have access to technology, education and communication our ancestors couldn’t even dream of, so many of us come back to an overriding feeling of hopelessness. What’s going on? If anyone can put a name to our current malaise and help fix it, it’s Mark Manson. In 2016, Manson published The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck, a book that brilliantly gave shape to the ever-present, low-level hum of anxiety that permeates modern living. He showed us that technology had made it too easy to care about the wrong things, that our culture had convinced us that the world owed us something when it didn’t—and worst of all, that our modern and maddening urge to always find happiness only served to make us unhappier. Instead, the “subtle art” of that title turned out to be a bold challenge: to choose your struggle; to narrow and focus and find the pain you want to sustain. The result was a book that became an international phenomenon, selling millions of copies worldwide while becoming the #1 bestseller in 13 different countries. Now, in Everthing Is F*cked, Manson turns his gaze from the inevitable flaws within each individual self to the endless calamities taking place in the world around us. Drawing from the pool of psychological research on these topics, as well as the timeless wisdom of philosophers such as Plato, Nietzsche, and Tom Waits, he dissects religion and politics and the uncomfortable ways they have come to resemble one another. He looks at our relationships with money, entertainment and the internet, and how too much of a good thing can psychologically eat us alive. He openly defies our definitions of faith, happiness, freedom—and even of hope itself. With his usual mix of erudition and where-the-f*ck-did-that-come-from humor, Manson takes us by the collar and challenges us to be more honest with ourselves and connected with the world in ways we probably haven’t considered before. It’s another counterintuitive romp through the pain in our hearts and the stress of our soul. One of the great modern writers has produced another book that will set the agenda for years to come.

Mark Manson (born 1984) is a professional blogger, entrepreneur, and former dating coach. Since 2007, he's been helping people with their emotional and relationship problems. He has worked with thousands of people from over 30 different countries. He regularly writes and updates his blog at: www.markmanson.net

Mark Manson

Everything Is F*cked

A great man is hard on himself; A small man is hard on others.

EVENING

Steal Like an Artist

How to Toughen Up (Mentally, That Is)

It's time to
Read like a Pro.

Everything Is F*cked

CURATED BY

EVENING

Steal Like an Artist

How to Toughen Up (Mentally, That Is)

It's time to Read like a Pro.

Everything Is F*cked

CURATED BY

It's time to
Read like a Pro.