There are many dating life hack and quick fixes for a lonley life. It's not only disingenuine, it also doesn't work. This type of material you find online are only about one thing, and that is taking money from your wallets.If there is one thing that absolutely works, it is rather investing in those 'pick-up programs', invest in yourself.It's not about memorising a cheesy pickup line a YouTuber told you to say, but becoming the best version of yourself will open opportunities in all aspects of your life, not only dating.

DATING LIFE HACKS

How can we, as people, become better?• Communication: People are more responsive when you seem interested in their lives. Start to ask good follow-up questions, and actively listen to what they say.• Hobbies: Hobbies help us find communities, make friends, and prevent us from staying in our own head too long. Having a few hobbies you are excited about helps because enthusiasm is attractive.• Health: Take on a physical activity program or participate in weekend sports. It won't only make you physically healthy, but mentally too.

HOW TO BECOME GREATER

You can’t wait to date until your life is perfect and you feel completely ready - that doesn’t exist.The other person you want isn’t flawless with complete confidence either. They are a person with insecurities, fears, and flaws just like you. So don’t think you have be perfect before you ask them to get coffee.One more push up won’t make the difference on whether your soulmate spots you or not.You can grow together, learn from each other, and if you can accept yourself as you are today and accept that they aren’t perfect either, then you are ready.There’s no reason to wait....

WHEN ARE YOU READY?

THINKING only takes you half way, DOING takes you all the way.

THINKING & DOING

WILLINGNESS<ul><li>is readiness to enter and participate fully in life and living.</li></ul>WILFULNESS:<ul><li>is refusing to tolerate the moment</li><li>is refusing to make changes when needed</li><li>is giving up</li><li>is the opposite of “doing what works”</li><li>is trying to fix every situation</li><li>is insisting on being in control</li><li>is attachment to “me, me, me” and “what I want right now!”</li></ul>

WILLINGNESS & WILFULNESS

Replace willingness with wilfulness:<ol><li>OBSERVE the wilfulness. Label it. Experience it.</li><li>RADICALLY ACCEPT that at this moment you feel (and maybe acting) wilful. You cannot fight wilfulness with wilfulness.</li><li>TURN YOUR MIND towards acceptance and willingness.</li><li>TRY HALF-SMILING and a WILLING POSTURE.</li><li>When wilfulness is immovable, ASK “WHAT’S THE THREAT?”</li></ol>—What are some situations you notice willingness and wilfulness?

WILLINGNESS & WILFULNESS #2

One big misconception people have about emotions is there are good and bad ones.We should not identify specific emotions as being good or bad as there is a reason why we feel what we feel.For example, people often relate envious emotion (the feeling of wanting something that someone has because we lack it) as a bad thing. Rather we need to use envy to strive for what we don't have to improve ourselves and achieve what we want in our lives.

EMOTIONS

There will be situations where you will be afraid and fear cannot be stopped. Don't fight something you cannot stop, rather learn to CONTROL YOUR RESPONSE to fear by understanding, acknowleding, perservearing through your fears.

LEARN TO BE BRAVE

Every time fear comes at you in life, you will learn to acknowledge it, control your response easier, and move on.

EXPERIENCES WITH FEAR

If you do not know how to do something, give it a go regardless. Acknowledge making mistakes is a good practice in life. We simply will never succeed by NOT failing.

MAKE MISTAKES

I have always believed it is a good thing when you fail. Failing or things not going your way is a learning lesson that builds your character in the long run.

FAILURE

Every person needs a code; a set of values and morals that you live by and CANNOT be changed by an outside threat. These morals and values shape who you are and what your purpose in life is. Codes are developed through experiences, learning, observing others ethics and you will eventually get tested where you will need to choose between your morals or outside pressure. What you do from there on will determine if these ethics are cemented in who you are.

DEVELOP A CODE AND LIVE BY THEM

There is no timeline for when you need to reach a certain milestone in your life. Everyone reaches their milestones at a different pace. Who cares when someone has achieved something quicker than you have. Take your time, do it right, because you will get there if you keeping trying. I promise.

AT WHAT AGE SHOULD I PEAK?

Your responsibility in life is to question everything that comes your way. Never take what people say definitively without questioning and research.

MY RESPONSIBILITY IN LIFE?

Find a person that provides useful insight into life. The things that person shares should be of value to your life; the mistakes your mentors made, the good decisions they made. Everything this mentor share IS a learning lesson.

FIND A MENTOR

Being brave puts you out of your comfort zone, allowing you to face new challenges, hardships, and experiences which inevitably will build your strength of character. These challenges will test your limits and help you reach new high points in life. A person that does NOT grow is a person who is static and not growing up.

COMFORT ZONE

No person in this world is independent. We all need each other to grow. Find like-minded people that want the same thing as you, and by working together, you exchange information and learn things you may not know which will help you be the best version of yourself.

YOU NEED HELP

The day we stop forgiving is the day we poision our own hearts with bitterness and spiral our relationships downward towards ongoing anger and isolation

FORGIVENESS

Some people are like clouds, once they go away the day gets brighter. Get rid of the toxic people in your life that make you feel bad about who you are. You should be able to look at your friends say to yourself, "These guys always have my back"

FRIENDSHIPS

Saying no is paramount to your mental health. Learn to assert your boundaries, value your self-respect and say no to things you don't want to do. If you see something your friends are doing and you don't want to do, learn to say no and walk away. Freinds do not peer pressure, they support your decisions. People will make fun of you, call you names. Be assertive, say no and walk away.

ASSERTIVENESS

You are young. There are things we want in life; relationships, money, a sweet car, etc.Be patient, live the process of growing up and working because you will eventually get there. As young people, you are full of energy, you want to take over, be the leader, etc. STOP, take your time and build yourself by letting those that are older with experience lead. WATCH them, ASK questions and BUILD your vocabulary from them.

BE PATIENT... RELAX

Learn to listen. As young people, you want to be the top dog, you want to lead. Learn to understand, you may not have the qualities, knowledge, skills and experience as to someone who is older and has experience. Use this time to step back, LISTEN, LEARN and GROW your skills for the future to have effective leadership skills.

LEADERSHIP

Talking excessively does not make you a leader. Telling people what to do does not make you a leader.Inspiring through your actions and taking care of those around you makes you a leader. Being silent is just as important as communicating. Leadership is about listening and formulating a strategy for your team after everyone has shared their knowledge and opinions. Leaders eat last.

YOU TALK TOO MUCH

Don't buy anything you cannot buy outright if you own a credit card. With your weekly income, designate certain percentages of your money to other causes, like paying rent or utilities. Be efficient with your funds. Avoid debt.

CAN I AFFORD IT?

Never have expectations from anyone. Do not rely on people to deliver for you. Having expectations from people to give you something will make you constantly think if they will or not deliver and may eventually will lead to disappointment when not delivered. Try to solve problems yourself as it will help you learn new ideas.

EXPECTATIONS

"Advice to Young Men" by William Cobbett. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.

My Advice for People

Advice to Young Men

Most people spend so much time trying to understand their low self-esteem, that they don’t have any energy left to build higher self-esteem. If you want better self-esteem, focus on identifying and building consistent habits that will improve your self-esteem. Here are four pretty good ones to start with.

Self-esteem is something you can build with better habits.

The people you consistently spend time with affect your wellbeing and self-esteem too. If you constantly hang around people who don’t particularly like you, that’s gonna rub off and it’s going to be harder to like yourself more. On the other hand, if you spend a lot of time with people who genuinely like you and enjoy spending time with you, it’s going to be much easier to like yourself more.

1. Spend More Time with People You Actually Enjoy

Self-talk is a behavior. It’s something we do. And sometimes, it’s something we do so often that it becomes a habit. If you’re constantly cruel to yourself, you’re going to feel the same as if another person was constantly cruel to you. The best way to undo a habit of overly negative self-talk is to focus on one simple idea: gentleness.Be gentle with yourself and you’ll find it a lot easier to like yourself.

2. Practice Gentle Self-Talk

Having clear values means you have a well-defined vision for the things that matter most to you. The term values includes everything from traditional virtues like honesty and integrity all the way down to more mundane but still important commitments like maintaining your physical health through exercise or spending quality time with good friends.When your values are unclear, there’re not very motivating.

3. Clarify Your Values

People with low self-esteem are usually really good at keeping their promises to other people and really bad at keeping promises to themselves. They’re so concerned with other people’s wants and needs that they end up constantly compromising what they want. And when this compromise becomes a habit, their self-esteem takes a serious hit.True self-esteem comes from balancing the wants and needs of others with the wants and needs of yourself.In order to feel good about yourself, make sure you’re putting fuel in your own tank. And the best ways to do that is to keep your promises to yourself.

4. Keep Your Promises to Yourself

4 Simple Habits for Better Self-Esteem

<ul><li>One of the first stages toward making your dreams a reality is to be able to visualize them.</li><li>Davis learned to jump after rebounding back from traumatic situations, and he’s never looked back.</li><li>Find creative methods to think about your goals to overcome procrastination.</li><li>Face your worries head-on by working through them, taking action, and being focused.</li><li>Make a plan and discover your purpose to attain your objectives.</li><li>It’s time to take a risk once you’ve invested in your connections.</li></ul>

Key Concepts From The Book

The human mind is a wonderful thing. It stays with us throughout our lives, active and uninhibited in children. Imagining a new future is one of the most crucial initial stages in making any major life change, even if we use it in less evident ways as we become older.But there's a difference between imagination and reality. Dealing with reality is a different story. One finds it hard to believe that we can envision our future to make it a reality.

Visualize Your Dreams

Taking a chance can pay off handsomely. The real expertise is knowing which risks to take.If you wish to quit your career, an exit strategy could include exploring other positions that are a better fit, determining what skills you need, and engaging with a mentor or supervisor. If the issue is more personal, such as wanting to end a relationship, your exit strategy may entail visualizing various scenarios or emotions and practising your responses over and over.

Take The Chance

Remember that not everything in life is meant to stay forever when things get scary. Knowing when a circumstance is about to expire puts you in a position of strength, not weakness.

Why do so many of us fail to attain our ambitions? Procrastination is frequently the root of the problem. In other words, whether it's putting out the garbage or going to the doctor, we tend to put off doing things we know we should do.The human inclination to prefer present rewards over future rewards is known as time inconsistency, and this phenomenon contributes to our procrastination.

Find Creative Methods to Think About Your Goals to Overcome Procrastination

In the future, you might desire to be healthy and fit, but right now, you might crave a doughnut. Even if you know that you should eat well, the doughnut's implications appear far away. So you eat the doughnut, rather than taking responsibility now, you transfer the buck to your future self.

The Doughnut Is Tasty And You Can Eat It Right Now

Procrastination isn't the only reason why many individuals abandon their dreams. We're prone to obsessing over disempowering questions like What if I'm not good enough? You may feel hopeless, powerless, and unworthy if you have this perspective.Measure your success in terms of your own objectives, not the objectives of others. Also, keep in mind that failure is a necessary component of success. In fact, it’s the most effective approach to study and progress!

Self-Doubt

We've all experienced terror at some point in our lives as humans. Did you know, though, that much of your fear is taught behaviour? In actuality, humans have only two phobias from birth: the fear of falling and the dread of loud noises. Everything else can be learned or acquired.Fear can sometimes be justified. Sometimes it's merely a figment of the imagination, but other times it's not. One thing is certain: living in fear makes it impossible to live your aspirations.

Face Your Worries Head-On 

<ul><li>To begin, change the way you think about your worries by recognizing them; naming your fear reduces its potency. </li><li>Next, figure out what it is you're afraid of. </li><li>Third, make an attempt to do whatever it is that is upsetting you. </li><li>Fourth, boost your self-esteem by repeating positive affirmations about your special qualities and abilities. </li><li>Fifth, once you've overcome fear, write down what happened and how you overcame it; you'll be able to call on those emotions again in the future.</li><li>Finally, keep visualizing your dreams becoming a reality.  </li></ul>

Conquer Your Worries: The Steps

Establish a strategy and identify your purpose in order to attain your goals.Start by answering a few fundamental questions, such as Who am I? and Why am I here? to construct your own purpose statement. You can start drafting your life plan once you have your purpose statement. This is a written overview of your visions, dreams, and goals that you wish to achieve in a specific time frame. It should be an honest appraisal of where you are in life. Some categories can be career, health, personal relationships, finances, and spirituality.

Discover Your Purpose to Attain Your Objectives

Humans are social beings who require healthy relationships in order to thrive. However, if you don't look after yourself, it will be difficult to look after others. You must develop self-confidence in order to be and perform your best. Making your aspirations a reality becomes a form of self-love.Once you've engaged in your connections, it's time to take a risk.

Take The Risk

Your relationships can be divided into two categories. The first tier is your own board of advisors: Trusted family members, friends, and coworkers.Your extended network makes up the second tier. You should put effort into developing these connections. Make an effort to connect with people who aren't like you — they can provide vital insights.

The Two Categories Of Relationships

it's easy to put things off until tomorrow, but procrastination may be lethal when it comes to attaining your aspirations. Instead, take modest efforts toward huge goals, invest in your relationship with yourself, and create a strategic life plan to get back on track to success.

The Bottom Line

Consider revisiting some of your previous times of self-doubt when you’re feeling more confident. When you’re in a good mood, write down your anxieties and then contrast them with positive affirmations. This will offer you something to lean on the next time you’re worried.

Bonus: Advice To Follow

This book is an empathetic handbook in realizing your dreams. It shares intimate, affecting anecdotes and sets out a step-by-step guide to overcoming your fears and achieving success.

Free yourself from self-limiting beliefs and fears that keep you stuck. This book lays out a blueprint for how to take control of your life and begin living your dreams. We all dream. We all imagine. And we all want to live our best life. But why is it that 90 percent of people admit that if they got to live their life over, they would live it differently? What keeps us comfortable with the status quo and unable to get beyond “What if”? In part 1 of this book, Dr. Shirley Davis addresses these and other questions by guiding the reader through a personal journey of self-discovery, a search for significance, and an examination of the self-imposed limitations that can hijack our purpose, power, and possibilities. In part 2, she details the readers' journies toward realizing their dreams by reimagining their lives, identifying their “why,” and developing a life plan to stay focused and accountable. She describes the right questions to ask, the right mindset to adopt, and the right relationships to build that will enable everyone to live the life he or she has always imagined. Dr. Davis reveals the necessary steps for releasing the limits we place on ourselves as a result of life's tests, wrong thinking, and bad decisions. She helps readers overcome paralyzing fears that keep dreams on pause and inspires the confidence to jump first and grow wings on the way down.

Stashed ideas

Living Beyond “What If?”

These will serve as guidelines for regaining emotional, social, financial & spiritual freedom.<ol><li>Meet life with Full Presence</li><li>Reclaim your Agenda</li><li>Defeat your Demons</li><li>Advance with Abandon</li><li>Practice Joy & Gratitude</li><li>Do NOT break Integrity</li><li>Amplify Love</li><li>Inspire Greatness</li><li>Slow Time</li></ol>

The 9 Declarations

Personal Freedom means liberty from the restrictions of social oppression & the tragic self-oppression that is fear. Freed, we have the ability to express who we truly are and pursue what we deeply desire without restrictions set by others.Ironically, we are loosing our freedom because of abundance. We are being caged by our vices.

Personal Freedom

Personal Freedom does not mean the release of responsibility, it also does not necessarily mean the absence of struggle. Some might hope that “freedom” means we can give up or release responsibilities from our lives, but nothing could be further from the truth. The thinking goes, “If I am free, shouldn’t I be free from all responsibilities?”We must be conscious and responsible for our beliefs and behaviours if we are ever to be free.

Responsibility for our Freedom

Avoidance may be the best short-term strategy to avoid pain and conflict, but it is also the best long-term strategy to ensure suffering.In any given moment we can play a combination of vital roles:<ul><li>Observer - the default viewer</li><li>Director - us in control</li><li>Guardian - to our mind, body & soul. Protect what we eat, what we listen, what we read etc ...</li><li>Warrior - fight for something we believe in</li><li>Lover - who are we fighting for?</li><li>Leader - provide vision & discipline to others so they can achieve their dreams</li></ul>No matter the role we should never detach from our daily lives. We must choose to live in reality.

1. Meet Life with Full Presence & Power

<ol><li>On one hand we are becoming slaves to our own tools, especially our mobile phones. We must understand that our time can be spent meaningfully or wasted. But in order to spend it mindfully we need to clarify our needs & desires. </li><li>On the other, we are under the pressure of social obligations. We have to reply artfully & forcefully to those who are always demanding of our time. We can not subordinate our agenda to those whose lives are not in order.</li></ol>Only then we can live a purposeful life and be free. If you want to live a life of purpose you need to be spending your time on your own adventure.

2. Reclaim Our Agenda

We spend more time checking our stats than our souls.

The demands of the whimsically needy or the terminally ill-prepared are not our issue. Their lives are NOT our responsibility. This idea is freeing:I am not in charge or responsible for the wrecks others have created in their lives and I don't need to save everyone in my life.

You are not responsible for the happiness of others

We all host a 3 serpent head demon which makes us miserable: <ol><li>Doubt -  questions our worth & course of action. </li><li>Delay - use our fear to stop us from doing anything</li><li>Division - we feel everyone around us is an idiot or unworthy of trust.</li></ol>We are able to beat the demon back with <ol><li>Faith - “I believe in my ability to learn & figure things out.”</li><li>Action - "I will move fwd in spite of my fear"</li><li>Love ❤️  - "We are all made of the same purity, all fighting our own demons" </li></ol>

3. Defeat your Demons

We must believe that we can bend reality to our own preferences, crafting the lives we desire through disciplined learning. And we must ACT.The issue is we have been conditioned to believe the opposite. Instead of bold action we have to be cautious and follow the rules. Instead of ambition we are thought to ask for permission. Instead of being proud about our success, be ashamed of it.These assumptions come from an unenlightened mind blinded by scarcity and jealousy. However, progress is good. And we should be proud of our success.

4. Advance with Abandon

A great tidal wave of cynicism & pessimism has washed ashore and drowned the dreams of our people. The emotional energy of the world is flatlining. We risk turning into a culture of slow-moving, low-aiming, negativity-spewing brats and blamers.We will swim away from whirlpool of negativity & rekindle the magic of life. We will act like happy children again & again:<ul><li>Be curious.</li><li>Release expectation.</li><li>Take pleasure in small things and expect good things.</li><li>Cheerfully engage the moment.</li></ul>Let this become our practice, our mastery, and our art.

5. Practice Joy & Gratitude

In our darkest hours we compromise on who we are, what we believe in and we act against what we know to be true. Most of these breaks are small in scale but they compound. We should commit to the 6 practices of integrity:<ol><li>Think before we act</li><li>Never commit to anything we lack passion for</li><li>Keep our word</li><li>Always treat others with respect</li><li>Tell the truth</li><li>Always favour action</li></ol>These emotions are usually when we compromise: impatience, disappointment, desperation, aggression, hurt, loyalty & power.

6. Do Not Break Integrity

Integrity is learning to feel hurt but not integrate its darkness into our soul or cast it onto another.﻿

When loyalty is chosen over truth, corruption is always near.

Love is our origin & our final destination. But we stop giving it or receiving it because we were hurt & we don't feel safe doing it.Hurt has nothing to do with love, and love is unaffiliated with and unaffected by pain.

7. Amplify Love

We no doubt live in a noisy, numb, narcissistic age. The talents and attentions of the majority are not invested in personal mastery and social responsibility but squandered on games, voyeurism, and base sensationalism. As leaders, we will ask for more from those around us. Let us demand:<ol><li>Honesty</li><li>Responsibility</li><li>Intelligence</li><li>Excellence - strive for the highest level in everything</li><li>Courage </li><li>Respect for others - fairness, empathy, love</li><li>Vigilance - "Know what stands in our way"</li><li>Service - "Make a difference"</li><li>Unity - "We are in this together"</li></ol>

8. Inspire Greatness

We are not supposed to miss this moment. Awareness is humanity’s best weapon against time. So let us always remember our capacities to be gifted time benders.To slow down the moment, we must heighten our senses. To feel something more, we must either take more in, or more deeply sense that which is already here. <ul><li>Touch more things around us. Feel the textures.</li><li>We should love the sounds in our ears: the car driving by; the house finch trilling in the birch tree; the beautiful, unique voice speaking to us. </li><li>Appreciate the food </li><li>Look at things like for the first time </li><li>etc ...</li></ul>

9. Slow Time

We can train our awareness with a practice called 2 (heart) beats longer:Do not breathe so quickly. Take in air for two beats longer. Do not scan the room. Sense the room by gazing into each shadow and corner for two beats longer. Do not merely glance at her. Look into her eyes and hold them for two beats longer.In time the practice becomes stronger and, over time, more automatic. This is how you slow down time.

2 beats longer

Self help books are usually trash. This author however shows tremendous mastery over words. The ideas are just 10% of the book and if you remotely like them pick up the book and marvel at all the fancy expression Brendon came up with. 

"The Motivation Manifesto is a poetic and powerful call to reclaim our lives and find our own personal freedom. It’s a triumphant work that transcends the title, lifting the reader from mere motivation into a soaringly purposeful and meaningful life. I love this book." —Paulo Coelho The Motivation Manifesto is a pulsing, articulate, ferocious call to claim our personal power. World-renowned high performance trainer Brendon Burchard reveals that the main motive of humankind is the pursuit of greater Personal Freedom. We desire the grand liberties of choice—time freedom, emotional freedom, social freedom, financial freedom, spiritual freedom. Only two enemies stand in our way: an external enemy, defined as the social oppression of who we are by the mediocre masses, and an internal enemy, a sort of self-oppression caused by our own doubt and fear. The march to Personal Freedom, Burchard argues, can be won only by declaring our intent and independence, stepping into our personal power, and battling through self-doubt and the distractions of the day until full victory is won. Recalling the revolutionist voices of the past that chose freedom over tyranny, Burchard—at times poetic yet always fierce—motivates us to free ourselves from fear and take back our lives once and for all.

Personal Operating System

The Motivation Manifesto

There are many different ways to frame the fundamental struggle of what it means to be human: trying to fulfill our potential. Science has the therapeutic model, in which some disease or condition must be cured and religion has the moral model, which says we must pay for our sins. However, there’s a third model, a much simpler one: the model of the amateur and the professional.<ul><li>You can divide your life neatly into two parts: before turning pro and after.</li><li>All you have to do to turn pro is decide.</li><li>When you turn pro, life gets easier.</li></ul>

Being Human

<ul><li>The defining trait of the amateur is the fear of being who she is and getting rejected for it.</li><li>A central obstacle for the amateur is that he always chases some guru or authority.</li><li>When you do your work for the sake of its practice and nothing else, that’s when you turn pro.</li></ul>

From Amateur To Pro: The Premise

<ul><li>Do you remember where you were on 9/11? You’ll remember where you were when you turn pro.</li><li>When we’re afraid to embrace our true calling, we pursue a shadow calling instead.</li><li>The difference between an amateur and a professional is in their habits. An amateur has amateur habits. A professional has professional habits.</li><li>Turning pro is like kicking a drug habit or stopping drinking. It’s a decision, a decision to which we must re-commit every day.</li></ul>

Growing Up

<ul><li>If you’re dissatisfied with your current life, ask yourself what your current life is a metaphor for. That metaphor will point you toward your true calling.</li><li>Becoming a pro, in the end, is nothing grander than growing up.</li><li>In the shadow life, we live in denial and we act by addiction. The shadow life is the life of the amateur.</li><li>The longer we cleave to this life, the farther we drift from our true purpose, and the harder it becomes for us to rally the courage to get back.</li></ul>

The Shadow Life Most Of Us Live Daily

Ambition, I have come to believe, is the most primal and sacred fundament of our being. To feel ambition and to act upon it is to embrace the unique calling of our souls. Not to act upon that ambition is to turn our backs on ourselves and on the reason for our existence.

The shadow career is a metaphor for our real career. Its shape is similar, its contours feel tantalizingly the same. But a shadow career entails no real risk. If we fail at a shadow career, the consequences are meaningless to us.Sometimes it’s easier to be a professional in a shadow career than it is to turn pro in our real calling.You can spend your whole life living a shadow career. But it’s turning pro in the craft of your calling that will bring you enduring fulfillment.

The Shadow Career

Every addiction shares two qualities:<ul><li>They embody repetition without progress.</li><li>They produce incapacity as a payoff.</li></ul>Amateurs are addicts; professionals are artists.Amateurs use addiction (distractions, displacement activities, drugs, etc.) to run away from their calling, which is the obligation to become our truest and highest selves.

Addicts Vs Creators

<ul><li>Amateurs are terrified</li><li>Amateurs are egoists</li><li>Amateurs live by the opinions of others</li><li>Amateurs permit fear to stop them from trying</li><li>Amateurs are easily distracted</li><li>Amateurs seek instant gratification</li><li>Amateurs are jealous</li><li>Amateurs lack compassion for themselves</li><li>Amateurs seek permission</li><li>Amateurs live for the future and live in the past</li><li>Amateurs will be ready tomorrow</li><li>Amateurs give away their power to others</li><li>Amateurs are asleep</li></ul>

Traits Of An Amateur

Turning pro is a decision. It’s a decision to pursue your calling in the face of overwhelming fear. It’s a decision to structure your life to confront that fear day after day. It’s a decision to develop the habits that your professional craft requires. It’s a decision to wake up.The pro mindset is a discipline that we use to overcome Resistance. To defeat the self-sabotaging habits of procrastination, self-doubt, susceptibility to distraction, perfectionism, and shallowness, we enlist the self-strengthening habits of order, regularity, discipline, and a constant striving after excellence.

Turning Pro

<ul><li>Patient</li><li>Seeks order</li><li>Demystifies</li><li>Acts in the face of fear</li><li>Accepts no excuses</li><li>Plays it as it lays</li><li>Does not show off</li><li>Dedicates himself to mastering technique</li><li>Does not hesitate to ask for help</li><li>Does not take failure or success personally</li><li>Does not identify with his or her instrument</li><li>Endures adversity</li><li>Self-validates</li><li>Reinvents himself</li><li>Is recognized by other professionals</li></ul>

Traits Of A Pro

A Pro:<ul><li>Is courageous</li><li>Will not be distracted: “The amateur tweets. The pro works.”</li><li>Is ruthless with himself</li><li>Has compassion for himself</li><li>Lives in the present</li><li>Defers gratification</li><li>Does not wait for inspiration</li><li>Does not give his power away to others</li><li>Helps others</li></ul>

Qualities That Indicate Pro-ness

Professionals follow a practice, which is “a rigorous, prescribed regimen with the intention of elevating the mind and the spirit to a higher level.” This is true for writers, yogis, bankers, and directors.A practice has a few elements:<ul><li>A space: a unique place to work on your craft</li><li>A time: a period where you work on your craft</li><li>An intention: To get better, go deeper, etc.</li><li>Lifelong: There is no finish line.</li></ul>

The Practice

Fear is the primary color of the amateur’s interior world. Fear of failure, fear of success, fear of looking foolish, fear of under-achieving and fear of over-achieving, fear of poverty, fear of loneliness, fear of death. Most importantly, the fear of being excluded from the tribe, i.e., the family, nation, race, religion.The amateur fears that if he turns pro and lives out his calling, he will have to live up to who he really is and what he is truly capable of. The amateur is terrified that if the tribe should discover who he really is, he will be kicked out into the cold to die

Primal Fear

<ul><li>Life gets very simple when you turn pro.</li><li>We finally listen to that still, small voice inside our heads.</li><li>Before we turn pro, our life is dominated by fear and Resistance. We live in a state of denial. We’re denying the voice in our heads. We’re denying our calling. We’re denying who we really are. We’re fleeing from our fear into an addiction or a shadow career. What changes when we turn pro is we stop fleeing.</li><li>When we turn pro, we stop running from our fears. We turn around and face them.</li></ul>

Everything Becomes Simple

The follow-up to his bestseller The War of Art, Turning Pro navigates the passage from the amateur life to a professional practice. "You don't need to take a course or buy a product. All you have to do is change your mind." --Steven Pressfield TURNING PRO IS FREE, BUT IT'S NOT EASY. When we turn pro, we give up a life that we may have become extremely comfortable with. We give up a self that we have come to identify with and to call our own. TURNING PRO IS FREE, BUT IT DEMANDS SACRIFICE. The passage from amateur to professional is often achieved via an interior odyssey whose trials are survived only at great cost, emotionally, psychologically and spiritually. We pass through a membrane when we turn pro. It's messy and it's scary. We tread in blood when we turn pro. WHAT WE GET WHEN WE TURN PRO. What we get when we turn pro is we find our power. We find our will and our voice and we find our self-respect. We become who we always were but had, until then, been afraid to embrace and live out.

Advice to Young Men

4 Simple Habits for Better Self-Esteem

Living Beyond “What If?”

The Motivation Manifesto

Turning Pro

It's time to

READ

LIKE

A PRO!