Connor Lambert

Often we have everything in our life planned out, but rarely does it ever go in the direction you'd want it to go. We are never going to get everything we want at the time we want it to happen and that's okay.

Life takes us somewhere we would never anticipate but timing is everything. When we are patient, humble, and dedicated, we can attain success through and through.

You do not need to prove anything to anyone. Other people will always have something to say about you but you shouldn't let this affect your confidence. Only you know who you are and what you're capable of.

Peace comes when you realize that your happiness is created by you, and remember that a truly happy person will never show it off because humility builds character and it allows one to grow and prosper without stressing about what others think.

We must show ourselves compassion and understand that we all have lived life differently.

With how far we've come in our journey, have you ever taken a moment to step back and reflect on how you felt about yourself? It's easy to overlook the importance of understanding ourselves and then compare ourselves to other people and what they've achieved at their age, but this only leads to unhappiness and discontentment.

We were taught at a young age to not say anything unkind to anyone, but as we grow older and delve deeper into the digital and idealistic age where there is an abundance of platforms to speak on, we speak on things where kindness does not follow.

It is important to keep in mind that not everything needs to be said - negativity, hate, and hurtful critiques; this does not include speaking against government and racism, but more on actively looking for gossip. We must keep good company instead.

It is inevitable for us not to experience anything in a negative light, and as such, how we respond to these situations determines the outcome of the situation, affecting your mental, emotional, and physical state.

What we choose further only solidifies our morals and values, resulting in who we will grow as individuals in the future. Learn how to treat everything as something you can learn from and you will learn the art of living a balanced and undisturbed life.

A habit is a routine or behavior that is carried out repeatedly and most of the time automatically.

When you are faced with a problem repeatedly, your brain starts to automate the process of solving it. Your habits are sets of automatic solutions that solve the problems you come across regularly.

Goals are good for establishing a direction, but systems are best for making progress.

Goals are about the results you hope to reach. Systems are about the mechanisms that lead to those results.

1. Changing your outcomes. This means changing your results: losing weight, publishing a book, etc.
2. Changing your process. This means changing your habits and systems: for example, developing a meditation practice.
3. Changing your identity. This means changing your beliefs: the way you see yourself and the ones around you.

You could choose and start a habit because of motivation, but you'll stick with it only if it becomes part of your identity.

To change your identity:

1. Establish the kind of person you want to be.
2. Prove it to yourself with small wins.

The main components of habit formation:

• A Cue: It causes your brain to begin a behavior. It is a bit of information that predicts a reward.
• A Craving: It is the motivation behind every habit. Without a desire, we don't have a reason to act.
• A Response: This is the very habit you perform; it can take the form of a thought or an action.
• A Reward: The end goal of every habit.

• Make them evident.
• Make them attractive.
• Make them effortless.
• Make them satisfying.

• Make them invisible.
• Make them unappealing.
• Make them hard to perform.
• Make them frustrating.

A better method is to cut bad habits off at the source.

You may be able to resist temptation once, but you will most likely not be able to have the willpower to control your desires each time they appear. Thus, your energy would be better spent optimizing your environment.

We imitate the habits of three groups:

• The close. Proximity has a powerful and impressive effect on the way we behave.
• The many. We feel the pressure to comply with the rules of the groups we're part of. Being accepted is the greatest reward.
• The powerful. We are attracted to behaviors that we think will make people respect and admire us.

Create a motivation ritual by doing something you really like right before a difficult habit.

Habits are attractive when we associate them with positive feelings and unattractive when we associate them with negative feelings.

The amount of time you have been performing a habit is not as important as the number of times you have performed it.

You could do something three times in thirty days, or three hundred times. The frequency will always make the difference.

We will instinctively choose the path that requires the least amount of work.

Diminish the friction associated with positive actions. When friction is reduced, habits become easy. Increase the friction associated with negative behaviors. This way, habits become hard.

What is instantly rewarded is done again. What is instantly punished is ditched.

To get a habit to stick you need to feel instantly successful, even if it’s in a small way.

We experience peak motivation when we are performing actions that are right on the edge our current abilities.

Not too difficult, not too easy.

As you step into a new job, reflect on your last job.

• What worked well?
• How can you build on your strengths?
• What specific actions will you take to put what you learned into action?

The first day of a new job is an opportunity to reinvent yourself. To ensure expressing yourself clearly, write an elevator pitch for yourself.

Meet with mentors for tips, write the pitch, and practice saying it out loud.

• Learn more about the company and coworkers. Research your new company's social media profiles.
• Keep track of your onboarding materials and pre-work. There can be many emails with forms to fill and information to pre-read. Forward important emails to your account so each one can become its own task.
• Start living your new life now. To get comfortable with a new schedule, practice your new routine before your start date.
• Keep track of assignments and prioritise tasks.
• Communicate your early wins with your new team.
• Schedule breaks throughout the day, so you don't get overwhelmed with the new workload.

Before, during or after an important event, we often perform symbolic behaviours, or rituals, that are of different shapes and forms. These acts often look superstitious and irrational. Many are practised in either a communal setting or in complete solitude.

The desired outcomes for these rituals can be to remove anxiety, boost confidence, or for improved performance in a competition. The surprising thing is that rituals are more rational and scientific than they appear on the surface, and are also effective.

Certain formulaic rituals, called Simpatias, involve a number of steps and repetition to solve problems like curing asthma, quitting smoking or minimizing bad luck.

Performing a step-by-step ritual with the clear intention to produce a specific result is often sufficient for the result to appear, even though there is no direct causal connection between the two, making the ancient phenomenon of rituals an intriguing one.

Listen to your thoughts — but don’t necessarily believe them.

They're suggestions, possibilities. But they’re not gospel. You can’t control what thoughts pop up, but you can decide what is helpful and choose not to give the unhelpful thoughts any more attention than they deserve.

• Black and White Thinking: There are heaping piles of nuance to most things.
• Unrealistic Expectations: Cynicism is bad, but a little skepticism is essential.
• Selective Attention: If your brain is always looking for the negative, you’re gonna find it.
• Disqualifying the Positive: Sometimes we go into problem-solving mode and focus only on what is broken.
• Predicting the Future: “This will never work” or “They’re going to think I’m stupid.” You don’t know the future. So don’t act like it.
• “Should” thoughts: It’s usually just an insistence that the world bends to your will and is a great way to amplify frustration.

Doing little positive things is better for happiness than occasionally bagging an elephant:

• Enjoyable stuff
• Achievement stuff: Defeat your goals in single combat and feel like a conquering hero
• Meaningful stuff: Do volunteer work or just help someone
• Physical stuff: Exercise. Not only keeps you alive, but it’s like miracle grow for your brain
• Social stuff.

If you want to keep your brain happy, be clear on who your support network is. Know who matters and nurture those relationships.

The best thing to do is to talk with the person in real life or meet up for an activity. The next best thing is talking on the phone, which is better than texts or emails. Seeing someone and hearing their voice activates your mirror neuron system in ways that texting can’t match.

Some questions to help you:

• “Who appreciates you or thinks highly of you, whether or not you agree with them?”
• “Who is there to help you out if needed?”
• “Who can you call, text or visit for emotional support?”
• “Who is good with giving you advice or helping you make decisions?”
• “Who do you like spending time with?”
• “Who can you do activities with?”

Beating yourself up won’t make you better. Instead of self-criticism, try self-reassurance.

When you’re trying to quit bad habits you often get critical with yourself which leads to bad feelings that make you cave and go back to your old ways. And self-criticism can also easily lead to bad moods.

You don’t need to buy anything or do anything to feel happier. You just need to appreciate what you already have.

Gratitude can decrease depression symptoms as well as stress in general and leads to increased perception of social support. It improves self-esteem and psychological well-being.

Importantly, gratitude has the power to activate the dopamine system.

Anti-goals represent a palpable set of values and actions that we don’t want to have and do. For example:

• Not wanting to be buried in debt or living above my means
• Not wanting to be stuck in the office until midnight
• Not wanting to be unfit or over a certain weight by 50.

• Anti-goals stem from the concept of inversion or ‘premeditatio malorum’ used by the stoics.
• Premeditatio malorum was used to envision worst case scenarios: anticipating situations of complete failure helps us to prepare mentally and also to see what we can do to avoid failure.
• Anti-goals give us a benchmark of failure to avoid and allow us to anticipate ourselves at our worst.

Sometimes it's easier to think about what we want to avoid than to consider what we want and that is why some anti-Goals will come quickly to the top of your mind e.g. “I don’t want to be living paycheck to paycheck”.

Just like goals, anti-goals need to be maintained and revisited as we grow. Therefore we have to make sure that they develop with us and help inform our knowledge of where we are and how we grow.

• They shouldn’t remain stagnant.
• Don’t let your anti-goals to make you complacent.
• Don’t let your anti-goals consume you. They should work with your goals to help keep you accountable and propel you forward.

Elon Musk (Founder Of Spacex, Tesla Motors And Contributor To Paypal): Musk, at 12 years old, taught himself to code and sold a game he made for $500. When he moved to Canada, he worked odd jobs including tending vegetables, shoveling out grain bins, and cleaning out gunk from a boiler room in a lumber mill.

In university, Elon sold computer parts to make extra cash and turned his 10 bedroom fraternity home into a nightclub on the weekends and charged a cover. Since then, he’s built several companies, including SpaceX, Tesla Motors, PayPal, and zip2.

Sara Blakely (Founder Of Spanx): She started her billionaire journey when she was 27 years old, out of her Atlanta apartment and revolutionized the way women look in their clothes. She also started the Sara Blakely Foundation to help women through education and entrepreneurship and later joined the ‘Giving Pledge’, a commitment to donate the majority of her wealth to help others who truly need it.

Warren Buffett (CEO Of Berkshire Hathaway): He’s an American investment wizard and businessman who started investing in stocks at 11 years old and real estate investing at 14 years old. He’s had a few businesses and grew Berkshire Hathaway into one of the most valuable companies in the world based on his ‘invest what you know’ mentality and strategically investing in undervalued businesses for the long term in many industries.

Guy Laliberté (Co-Founder And Former CEO Of Cirque Du Soleil): He started as a street performer playing the accordion, walking on stilts and eating fire. In 1987, he co-founded a circus troupe in Montreal and took a big risk moving it to Los Angeles which eventually led to it becoming the famous Cirque du Soleil.

In 2009, he became the first Canadian space tourist and his spaceflight was dedicated to raising awareness on water issues making it the first, in his words, ‘poetic social mission’ in space.

Oprah Winfrey (CEO Of Oprah Winfrey Network): Considered one of the most influential women in the world, she is an American media mogul, producer, talk show host, author and philanthropist.

She grew up in poverty and by the time she was fourteen, she suffered physical abuse, molestation, and the death of her first newborn. A few years later, she won a beauty pageant, got her degree in speech and performing arts and became an ABC news anchor.

Mark Cuban (Owner Of The Dallas Mavericks, Landmark Theatres, Magnolia Pictures And Chairman Of Axs Tv): Before his billionaire days, he learned to stretch his dollar by living of ketchup and mustard sandwiches, couch surfing, and living on the cheap. In university, he made extra cash teaching dance lessons and hosting disco parties.

He lived on the cheap for a long time in order to build and grow his businesses and investments into a multi-billion-dollar empire.

Jack Ma (Founder Of China Yellowpages And Alibaba): His mental toughness and resilience got him through many failed school and university exams. After graduating, he went on to dozens of rejections from jobs.

Before becoming rich, he was kidnapped on a business trip to Los Angeles, threatened with a gun, and held captive in Las Vegas before managing to escape. His mental toughness, resilience, extreme determination and passion to achieve his goals eventually paid off and he went on to build a massive internet empire.

Zhou Qunfei (Founder Of Lens Technology): When she was 16, due to financial hardship and a need to support her blind father, she dropped out of school to work as an operator in a watch glass company.

She learned the ropes of the glass making business by studying alone at night and relying on books to create different technologies. Now, her company supplies touchscreen glass to a quarter of all smartphones in the world. 

• Let your body do the talking. Body language and facial expressions can be just as important as your words. Your posture is key. 
• Be mindful of your tone of voice. You make others feel at ease if your voice is calm and/or friendly. 
• Be a good listener. How you listen is just as important as what you say. Leave any distractions alone and maintain eye contact from time to time. 
• Take a reality check. If you find your mind going to the opposite of confident thinking, stop and check the facts. 
• Smile. Smiling generally lightens your mood and makes other people respond more positively to you. 

Uranium was first used as a coloring agent in the manufacture of pottery. As early as 79 CE, naturally-occurring uranium oxide was ground up into a yellow powder and applied as a pottery glaze.

Martin Heinrich Klaproth discovered the element uranium in 1749, but uranium's radioactive significance was only unlocked in 1896 by physicist Henri Becquerel. Pure uranium is a silvery-grey radioactive chemical element.

• Uranium is energy-dense. In 2018, uranium powered nuclear reactors produced 2,700 terawatt-hours of ultra low-carbon electricity. One terawatt-hour of energy is equivalent to the annual energy consumption of 27,000 European citizens.
• Electricity production from nuclear energy is one of the cleanest forms of energy production, even when nuclear waste is taken into account. Nuclear waste storage is currently resulting in little mortality and illness, as the waste is contained within the grounds of the nuclear power plants themselves.

The dark triad of personality consists of narcissism (self-importance), Machiavellianism (strategic exploitation and deceit), and psychopathy (callousness and cynicism).

We are all at least a little bit narcissistic, Machiavellian and psychopathic.

The light triad of human nature consists of three distinct factors:

• Kantianism (treating people for who they are, not as means)
• Humanism ( valuing the dignity and worth of each person)
• Faith in humanity (believing in the fundamental goodness of humans)

The light triad is not simply the opposite of the dark triad. There is a little bit of light and dark in each of us.

A study revealed that the average person is leaning more toward the light triad than the dark in their everyday patterns of thoughts, behaviors, and emotions. Extreme malevolence is rare in the general population.

• In studies, the dark triad was positively correlated with being younger, male, motivated by power, immature defense style, selfishness.
• The dark triad was negatively correlated with life satisfaction, conscientiousness, agreeableness, values, compassion, empathy, a quiet ego, a belief in the good of people and self.
• The dark triad positively correlated with utilitarian moral judgment, assertiveness, and the strengths of creativity, bravery, and leadership. There was also a connection between the dark triad and curiosity.

• In studies, the light triad was associated with being older, female, less childhood unpredictability, higher levels of religiosity, life satisfaction, fulfillment with their relationships, acceptance of others, belief in the good of others and self, empathy, enthusiasm, having a quiet ego.
• Character strengths include curiosity, perspective, zest, love, kindness, teamwork, forgiveness, and gratitude.
• Persons scoring high on the light triad actively seek to grow and learn (where the dark side embrace and deprive). They reported more competence, and autonomy.
• The light triad was negatively correlated with the motives for achievement.
• They are potentially more open to exploitation and emotional manipulation from those who score higher on the dark triad.