THE CODE OF THE EXTRAORDINARY MIND by Vishen Lakhiani

• Words are powerful, as they influence how we see the world.
• You can therefore read this book in a few hours, or you can choose to spend days exploring and deep-diving into the full content. Access it from www.mindvalley.com/extraordinary.
• Getting rid of our Brules is like shedding old dirty clothing and putting on something fresh. It’s liberating. Extraordinary people tend to have an allergy to Brules.
• The world reflects your beliefs—so imagine what happens when you take on the beliefs of extraordinary minds.
• Your systems for living are your daily practices for getting on with life, from eating to working to parenting to making love.
• Most of us are trained by the Brules of the world to pursue the wrong goals. I think much of modern goal setting is absolute rubbish.
• Changing the world is tough.
• We’re all swimming in a massive sea of human beliefs, ideas, and practices. Some are beautiful and bring joy; others are unnecessary, limiting, and sometimes even crippling.
• The culturescape sets up rules on how to love, how to eat, how to marry, how to get a job. It establishes benchmarks to measure your self-worth.
• When you grow up, you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world.
• Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact. That is—everything around you that you call life was made up by people no smarter than you.
• But there’s a big difference between bending to life’s necessities and blindly accepting that you must live your life according to preconceived rules.
• One of the keys to being extraordinary is knowing what rules to follow and what rules to break. Outside the rules of physics and the rules of law, all other rules are open to questioning.
• Language allowed us to organize groups of people—to share news of dangers or opportunities.
• Language allowed us to preserve knowledge by passing it from person to person, parent to child, generation to generation.
• It’s difficult to overstate the power successive generations gained from literally not having to reinvent the wheel. Language gave rise to beautiful complexity on every level.
• So it seems that what language delineates, we can more easily discern. Our language shapes what we “see.”
• Our beliefs about the world and our systems for functioning in the world are all embedded in us through the flow and progression of culture from the minds of the people around us into our baby brains.
• Many of these beliefs and systems are dysfunctional, and while the intention is that these ideas should guide us, in reality they keep us locked into lives far more limited than what we’re truly capable of.
• We are not as independent and freethinking as we’d like to think we are.
• The world of absolute truth is fact-based. The world of the culturescape is opinion-based and agreement-based. Yet even though it exists solely in our heads, it is very, very real.
• For the convenience of being able to operate mindlessly in a complex world, we accept many of these culturescape constructs as true. The problem is—much of them are long past their expiration dates.
• For the most part there’s no rational basis to prove that what we’re doing is the right way or the only way to do things. Much of what you think is true is all in your head.
• Once you understand that the rules aren’t absolute, you can learn to think outside the box and live beyond limits imposed by the culturescape.
• The rules are very real in the sense that they actually govern how people and societies act, but very real does not mean very right.
• Safety is overrated; taking risks is much less likely to kill us than ever before, and that means that playing it safe is more likely just holding us back from the thrills of a life filled with meaning and discovery.
• The common thread between every extraordinary individual we’ll talk about in this book is that they all questioned their culturescape.
• Law 1: Transcend the culturescape. Extraordinary minds are good at seeing the culturescape and are able to selectively choose the rules and conditions to follow versus those to question or ignore. Therefore, they tend to take the path less traveled and innovate on the idea of what it means to truly live.
• The culturescape is designed to keep us safe. But as I’ve mentioned, safety is often overrated.
• The dips contain amazing learnings and wisdom that lead to sharper rises in the quality of life afterward.
• Life has a way of taking care of you no matter how dark it can sometimes feel—I promise.
• If you can’t win, change the rules. If you can’t change the rules, ignore them.
• You will find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.
• Who’s more foolish, the fool? Or the fool who follows him?
• There’s the physical world of absolute truth and the culturescape of relative truth. In the culturescape all the ideas we hold dear—our identity, our religion, our nationality, our beliefs about the world—are nothing more than mental constructs we’ve chosen to believe. And like all mental constructs, many are merely opinions we believe because they were drilled into us as children and accepted by the culture we grew up in.
• Human beings are far less rational than we think. Many ideas we hold dear and cling to as “truth” fall apart under close inspection.
• We often take on ideas not through rational choice but through “social contagion”—the act of an idea spreading from mind to mind without due questioning.
• Ideas, memes, and culture are meant to evolve and change, and we are best served when we question them.
• Brule: A Definition A Brule is a bulls**t rule that we adopt to simplify our understanding of the world.
• Each of us lives by thousands of rules. When we aren’t sure what to do, we follow the example of those who came before us.
• Blindly following may be efficient, but it’s not always smart.
• When we look at them closely, we often find that Brules were imposed on us for convenience. To question and dissect these Brules is to take a step into the extraordinary.
• As you get on the path to the extraordinary, you must remember that within the culturescape there are no sacred cows that cannot be questioned. Our politics, our education and work models, our traditions and culture, and even our religions all contain Brules that are best discarded.
• These are the four areas in which I decided to eliminate a Brule from my worldview:
• 1. The college Brule
• 2. The loyalty to our culture Brule
• 3. The religion Brule
• 4. The hard work Brule
• In addition to saddling many young people with massive debt for decades, studies have shown that a college education really doesn’t guarantee success.
• College degrees as a path to a successful career may thus be nothing more than a mass societal Brule that’s fading away quickly.
• The core of a religion may be beautiful spiritual ideas. But wrapped around them are usually centuries of outdated Brules that few bother to question.
• A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation.
• When you love what you do, life seems so much more beautiful—in fact, the very idea of “work” dissolves.
• We absorb most beliefs uncritically as children during our extremely long maturity period.
• Our malleable brains as children make us amazing learners, receptive to every experience and primed to take any shape our culture decrees.
• The men and women of our tribe whom we see as authority figures, usually people we depend on in some way, are powerful installers of rules.
• Authority has proved to have an astonishing, and potentially dangerous, hold over us.
• We have a tendency to take on Brules because we want to fit in.
• As soon as we define ourselves by a particular view, even if it’s something that we genuinely agree with, we automatically become more likely to start taking on other beliefs of the party—even if these beliefs challenge facts and science.
• Some rules aren’t useful anymore or were never true to begin with. It’s time to uninstall what isn’t working.
• Our culturescape is filled with many ideas that are powerful because of the sheer number of people who believe in them.
• Some misfits will fail. But some will succeed, and when they do, they make a dent in a culturescape. And that’s when the misfit is labeled a visionary.
• Extraordinary people think differently, and they don’t let their society’s Brules stop them from advocating for a better world for themselves. Neither should you.
• Law 2: Question the Brules. Extraordinary minds question the Brules when they feel those Brules are out of alignment with their dreams and desires. They recognize that much of the way the world works is due to people blindly following Brules that have long passed their expiration date.
• We have to push our systems—internally and externally, personally and institutionally—to catch up. We do that by making the first move to uninstall Brules in our own minds and then exerting upward pressure on our social systems to evolve.
• Culture isn’t static. It lives and breathes, made by us in real time in the flow of life, meant to change as our world changes.
• Question 1: Is it based on trust and hope in humanity?
• Is the rule based on the idea that human beings are primarily good or primarily bad? If a rule is based on negative assumptions about humanity, I tend to question it.
• Always have faith and trust in humanity.
• Question 2: Does it violate the Golden Rule?
• The Golden Rule is to do unto others as you would want them to do unto you. Rules that elevate some while devaluing others are suspect as Brules—
• Question 3: Did I take it on from culture or religion?
• Is this a rule or a belief that the majority of human beings weren’t born into believing? Is it a belief in a particular way of life or a rule about a very particular habit, such as a way of eating or dressing? If so, it’s probably a cultural or religious rule.
• You do not have to dress, eat, marry, or worship in a manner that you disagree with just because it’s part of the culture you’re born into.
• Appreciate your culture, but let it flow and evolve. Don’t buy into the dogma that your culture’s way of prayer, dress, food, or sexual conduct must stay the same as it was generations ago.
• Question 4: Is it based on rational choice or contagion?
• Are you following a rule because it was installed in you during childhood? Is it benefiting your life, or have you just never thought about doing things differently?
• We follow a large number of dangerously unhealthy rules merely because of memetics and social conditioning.
• Question 5: Does it serve my happiness?
• Place your happiness first. Only when you’re happy can you truly give your best to others—in society, in relationships, in your family and community.
• Brules are powerful, and it can be hard to look squarely at the ones that have had the most influence over you.
• don’t let people tell you that you’re selfish and wrong to follow your own heart.
• The Brules of the father should not be passed on to the son.
• Since you’re deciding what rules you’ll follow, your life is up to you.
• Once you start to see the culturescape for what it is, something within you will begin to change. Rather than follow the status quo, you will start to make your own rules. You will start to question. And the more you question, the more your awareness will expand. The more your awareness expands, the more you will grow. And the more you grow, the more extraordinary your life will become.
• If you want to teach people a new way of thinking, don’t bother trying to teach them. Instead, give them a tool, the use of which will lead to new ways of thinking.
• But there are also techniques that can dramatically accelerate our performance.
• Consciousness engineering is an operating system for the human mind.
• Your models of reality are your beliefs about the world.
• Human society today runs on the accumulated beliefs of our forefathers: Our economic systems, definitions of marriage, the food we eat, our methods of schooling and work—these structures were created long ago by people in very different settings than what we live in today.
• The important thing to realize is that no matter what these beliefs are, they became true because we act and think in accordance with them. Thus, our beliefs truly do shape our world in a very real sense.
• You can use consciousness engineering to swap out old beliefs, swap in new ones, and take on new understandings of the world that might serve you better.
• Replacing outdated models of reality is essential.
• Change your accepted models of reality, and dramatic changes will happen in your world.
• When you realize that, you can swap out a bad or outdated model, swap in a healthier one, and gain incredible power to shift your world.
• Thus the single most effective model of reality you can adopt right now is the idea that your models of reality are swappable.
• Your habits, or systems for living, are how you put your models of reality into practice.
• If models of reality are the hardware of the human “machine,” systems for living are the software.
• The trick is recognizing what systems you’re running and doing enough self-checks to quickly identify the ones you need to upgrade.
• Law 3: Practice consciousness engineering. Extraordinary minds understand that their growth depends on two things: their models of reality and their systems for living. They carefully curate the most empowering models and systems and frequently update themselves.
• Our current models and systems have three limitations:
• 1.Our models of reality are programmed by the world we grew up in.
• 2.Our models of reality (good or bad) determine our systems for living. In short, bad beliefs create bad habits.
• 3.Our modern models and systems are lacking in conscious practices—we’re only just beginning to realize the power of our minds.
• Our Models of Reality Are Programmed by the World We Grew Up In
• Our definition of what is normal is nothing more than what is programmed into us.
• What we see as our culture is really nothing more than a quirk of history.
• Our culture wasn’t created by pure rational choice.
• Our Models of Reality (Good or Bad) Determine Our Systems for Living
• Our Modern Models and Systems Are Lacking in Conscious Practices
• Many of our models and systems are rooted in the purely physical aspects of life—what we eat, how we take care of our bodies, beauty regimens, and so on. But until recently, there’s been almost no innovation in the systems that improve the way our minds and spirits function.
• We’re physical beings, and we evolve our physical systems very fast.
• Humanity is flying way under its full potential simply because we do not educate for the whole or complete human being.
• Once you adopt a new model of reality that is superior to an older model, you can’t go back.
• Elon Musk was once asked in a Reddit.com Q&A: “How do you learn so fast?” He replied: “It is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree—make sure you understand the fundamental principles, i.e. the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang on to.”
• Everything you study in personal growth will either be a model (a new belief about money, for example) or a system (say, a new exercise or diet routine).
• When you think of your life and where you want to grow, think holistically. Too many people live lives lacking in balance.
• Education should not stop after you graduate from college.
• What you know you believe is much smaller than what you don’t know you believe.
• LESSON 1: Our models of reality lie below the surface. Often we do not realize we have them until some intervention or contemplative practice makes us aware.
• Much of growing wiser and moving toward the extraordinary is really about becoming aware of the models of reality that you carry with you without realizing it.
• When a model of reality changes, the way you operate in the world changes, too.
• LESSON 2: We often carry disempowering models of reality that we inherited as far back as childhood.
• LESSON 3: When you replace disempowering models of reality with empowering ones, tremendous changes can occur in your life at a very rapid pace.
• The meaning-making machine never sleeps.
• We add meanings to every situation we see and then carry these meanings around as simplistic and often distorted and dangerous models of reality about our world. We then act as if these models are laws.
• When we swap in optimized models that work better, we dramatically improve our lives.
• The placebo effect, as it’s generally known, can be so powerful that all modern drugs have to be tested against a placebo before they are released to the public.
• Our beliefs about our bodies seem to have an uncanny impact on how we experience our bodies—for good or bad.
• Law 4: Rewrite your models of reality. Extraordinary minds have models of reality that empower them to feel good about themselves and powerful in shifting the world to match the visions in their minds.
• Each disempowering model of reality we have is really nothing more than a Brule we’ve set up for ourselves—and, like any Brule, it should be questioned.
• Under the age of nine, we’re particularly susceptible to making false meanings and then clinging to them as disempowering models of reality.
• While we work to clear our own limiting models, it’s crucial to also make sure that we’re not saddling our children with models that are disempowering.
• There are always opportunities to help others develop new beliefs and get rid of old, destructive ones.
• Why questions corner a child and put the child on the defensive. For one thing, the child is emotional, and even many adults can’t answer why in the grip of emotion.
• What questions allow you to get to the root of the problem and work to heal it faster.
• Take a few minutes and think of three to five things you’re grateful for today:
• Think about a quality or an action of yours that made you proud today.
• Human beings can function as logical beings and as intuitive beings. When we use both capabilities, we’re priming ourselves for extraordinary results.
• I do not believe you can foretell the future, but I do believe in gut instinct in decision making.
• Creative visualization is a practice of shifting beliefs by meditating and then visualizing your life as you want it to evolve. It’s based on the idea that the subconscious mind cannot differentiate between a real and imagined experience.
• Mind-body healing involves the conscious practice of certain mindfulness or visualization techniques to heal certain aspects of yourself.
• Most of us are told to work hard. Few of us are encouraged to work happy.
• This culture of happiness at work significantly helps reduce the immense stress of racing to build a fast-growing company.
• In short, happiness and work need to go hand in hand.
• It is possible to be spiritual but not religious.
• Humanism is the idea that we do not need religion in order to be good.
• Is my model of reality absolute or relative truth?
• While some things in the world are absolute truths (they hold true for all human beings across every culture—
• many things are only relative truth: They’re done differently by different cultures,
• Brules are made to be broken.
• Know that whatever your culture trained you to believe, the vast majority of human beings probably do not believe.
• The best advice is often to listen to your heart and intuition.
• Even what we take to be absolute truth today may not always be a truth in the future.
• Does this really mean what I think it means?
• I believe the best thing we can do with outdated models of reality is to let them go gracefully.
• When enough people challenge the Brules and adopt optimal models, you have evolutionary progress of the human race.
• Constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.
• It’s all about finding and hiring people smarter than you, getting them to join your business and giving them good work, then getting out of the way and trusting them. You have to get out of the way so you can focus on the bigger vision. That’s important, but here is the main thing: You must make them see their work as a mission.
• A system for living is a repeated, optimized pattern for getting things done.
• Most of us are using systems that have long become obsolete.
• Good software is constantly being updated.
• Yet when it comes to our systems for living—our internal software—we run systems that are highly suboptimal.
• When you optimize your systems for living, you can experience exponential growth in areas that truly matter to you.
• Extraordinary people don’t just have extraordinary models of reality. They strive to ensure that their systems for living—that is, DOING what they do in the world—are well defined, structured, and continuously optimized.
• A set point is a level of performance that you do not allow yourself to slip below.
• Too many of us are so busy doing that we never step back and think about how we’re doing. Or why we’re doing it. I call this the do-do trap.
• Awareness is the essence of discovery.
• Every now and then, stop doing and gather some research.
• The important thing is to remember to study and invest in learning about how to improve your systems for living.
• Want to jump-start your progress? Aim to read one book a week.
• Reading is an easy and excellent way to boost your refresh rate. But you should also consider online courses, masterminds, networking groups, and seminars.
• The more you seek opportunities to learn and then apply your learnings, the faster your refresh rate.
• A set point is simply a bare-minimum threshold you establish for yourself that you promise you will not go below. A set point differs from a goal. Goals pull you forward, while set points help you maintain what you have. You need both.
• You can establish set points for anything important to you. And here’s a secret: You can use set points not only to prevent or reverse slipping but also to improve over time.
• Make sure that your set points are absolutely achievable.
• Read one book per month on career issues.
• Most people slip with age. But when you apply non-negotiable set points, you grow with age.
• Setting the bar too high is just punishing; it’s unrealistic that you’ll make all of that progress in one giant leap. Turning up the heat just a little bit allows you to regain some momentum without setting yourself up to fail.
• Law 5: Upgrade your systems for living. Extraordinary minds consistently spend time discovering, upgrading, and measuring new systems for living applied to life, work, heart, and soul. They are in a perpetual state of growth and self-innovation.
• You’re not supposed to hate your work or dread your day.
• Sometimes from the crappiest situations, opportunity arises.
• Stop postponing your happiness. Be happy now. Your thoughts and beliefs do create your reality, but only when your present state is joyful.
• Have big goals—but don’t tie your happiness to your goals. You must be happy before you attain them.
• How you engage with the present moment will direct your life.
• Be happy in the now.
• All the truly great people I know have this beautiful happiness associated with pursuing their goals. Indeed, I think it’s the only way to truly attain your goals—to be happy as you make the long, sometimes difficult climb toward great visions.
• So, no matter where you are in your life today, you must remember this lesson: Your happiness cannot be tied to your goals. You must be happy even before you attain them. Doing so will make life joyous and full of play and bring your goals to you faster than ever.
• We shouldn’t do things so we can be happy. We should be happy so we can do things.
• Your happiness will accelerate your movement toward your goals, but it should not be tied to them. The best thing you can do to meet your goals is to find a life balance that allows you to be happy now. Integrate practices into your daily routines that allow you to feel content and focus on the journey, not the destination.
• Develop an exciting vision for your future.
• Extraordinary people intend to leave a mark on the world.
• Extraordinary minds pay little attention to the infectious “wants” of the culturescape. Instead, they create their own goals.
• Law 6: Bend reality. Extraordinary minds are able to bend reality. They have bold and exciting visions for the future, yet their happiness is not tied to these visions. They are happy in the now. This balance allows them to move toward their visions at a much faster rate while having a ton of fun along the way. To outsiders, they seem “lucky.”
• If you can choose any model of reality you want and accept it as true—why not choose a model that suggests that you can literally bend reality to your wishes?
• We’re here in this brief span of time to be happy together.
• Science is showing us that one of the key things that lets us function optimally in the world is our ability to control our happiness level.
• Happiness can improve performance at your job.
• Good attitudes yield better results.
• Happiness may help kids learn.
• Parenting is highly meaningful, even though it’s also highly demanding and requires personal sacrifices that go against short-term happiness.
• We don’t generally spend too long at the very top or the very bottom of our emotional spectrum.
• Studies show that each of us has a particular level of happiness that we tend to return to after things happen, good or bad.
• Perhaps no single exercise leads to as big a happiness boost as the practice of gratitude—so much so that gratitude is getting significant notice in research and scientific circles.
• Apparently gratitude leads to giving, which in turn boosts the happiness and gratitude of others.
• Tying happiness to the attainment of some future goal is like trying to catch up to the horizon. It’s always going to be one step beyond your reach.
• Even in tough times, you can look back and see how far you’ve come, how much you’ve learned, and the support you’ve received along the way. Paying attention to the “reverse gap” is a perfect exercise in gratitude and is far more likely to give you a boost of happiness than striving for happiness in the future.
• I believe every day should begin and end with gratitude.
• Remember that hurt people, hurt people. Those who hurt others are doing it because at some level, at some time, they were hurt, too.
• UNFUCKWITHABLE: When you’re truly at peace and in touch with yourself. Nothing anyone says or does bothers you and no negativity can touch you.
• When you learn to truly forgive, you become unfuckwithable.
• The Dalai Lama once said: To be happy, make others happy. Giving is the path for doing this.
• Giving happiness to others is hugely powerful, lifts up both giver and receiver, and it’s easy, because happiness is contagious.
• Giving is a powerful system for bringing bliss into your life.
• Be merciless with your kindness.
• Law 7: Live in Blissipline. Extraordinary minds understand that happiness comes from within. They begin with happiness in the now and use it as a fuel to drive all their other visions and intentions for themselves and the world.
• Goal setting is an absurd practice that I gave up long ago. It simply is too dangerous when done without the right training.
• The biggest of these Brules is the idea that you need to map out your life to move you toward some ridiculous idea called a career.
• Better to have a short life that is full of what you like doing than a long life spent in a miserable way.
• Too many of us pursue goals we think will make us happy—only to wake up one day in our forties, wondering what on earth happened to us as we find ourselves stuck in uninspiring, boring, stagnant lives.
• There is a fundamental flaw in our modern system of goal setting: With our minds clouded by Brules, we confuse the means and the end.
• End goals are the beautiful, exciting rewards of being human on planet Earth.
• Means goals are the things that society tells us we need to have in place to get to happiness.
• Scary is a good thing because it means you’re pushing your boundaries—that’s how you take steps toward the extraordinary.
• Excitement signifies that your goal is genuinely close to your heart—not something you’re doing to please someone else or to conform to society’s Brules.
• Something interesting happens when you give your mind a clear vision. Whether the goal is a means goal or an end goal—your mind will find a way to bring it to you.
• End goals help you step off the treadmill of the ordinary and get on a trajectory toward the extraordinary.
• Means goals usually have a “so” in them. Means goals don’t stand alone but are stepping-stones to something else. They’re part of a sequence.
• Many means goals are cleverly concealed Brules.
• End goals are about following your heart. Time flies when you’re pursuing them. You may work hard toward these goals, but you feel it’s worth it.
• Working on the end goal itself recharges you—it doesn’t drain you.
• End goals are often feelings.
• We need to feel that daily life holds wonder and excitement to sustain our happiness—which fuels our movement toward our goals.
• Growth deepens our wisdom and awareness.
• Growth makes life an endless journey of discovery.
• What we give is the special mark we can make on the world.
• Remember to focus on end goals—choosing learning opportunities where the joy is in the learning itself, and the learning is not merely a means to an end, such as a diploma.
• Law 8: Create a vision for your future. Extraordinary minds create a vision for their future that is decidedly their own and free from expectations of the culturescape. Their vision is focused on end goals that strike a direct chord with their happiness.
• Talking openly about your dreams and end goals helps to make them a reality. It’s rare that people confide their dreams—or even admit them to themselves.
• Meaningful gestures need not be expensive; they simply need to be genuine.
• Something amazing happens when you set big, beautiful end goals. Your brain latches on to what you’re seeing and feeling. It goes to work, hacking its way toward your goals.
• Extraordinary minds are not content to merely be in the world. They have a calling, a pull, to shift things.
• To truly be a great warrior in the world, you must step past your fears.
• Unfuckwithable: A Definition When you’re truly at peace and in touch with yourself. Nothing anyone says or does bothers you and no negativity can touch you.
• Law 9: Be unfuckwithable. Extraordinary minds do not need to seek validation from outside opinion or through the attainment of goals. Instead, they are truly at peace with themselves and the world around them. They live fearlessly—immune to criticism or praise and fueled by their own inner happiness and self-love.
• A good end goal is something you have absolute control over. No object or person can take it away from you.
• When your goals change, your means of attainment change. A good goal can open up new and innovative ways of reaching it.
• Too many people stay stunted in their growth because of fear of loss—but when you go deep enough with this exercise, you realize that there is no loss. Happiness is completely within your control, and when you have nothing to lose, you’re free to think and dream boldly.
• Replacing fear with courage is one of the key components of being unfuckwithable.
• But your happiness should not be attached to the completion of your goals. The feeling you get from completing those goals you can learn to generate now. When you realize this, the fear of loss disappears.
• Be bold. Act fearlessly. And be happy—now.
• There is nothing more attractive than a person who loves himself or herself so deeply that their positive energy and love spill over to others and to the world.
• When you look back at the formative experiences of your life—whether they are the most painful or the most positive—you’re likely to find your meaning-making machine running on high. Someone’s words or actions influenced you in some way, and you created a meaning around them.
• Every time you give someone the power to build you up with praise, you’re also unknowingly giving that person the power to destroy you with criticism.
• Talking to yourself in the mirror is like speaking directly to your own soul—especially when you’re gazing at yourself in the eye.
• The next time you feel an apparent urge to lose your cool, or you feel judged, insulted, or hurt by a loved one, remember to be present. This quick mental hack to autocorrect your mental state can instantly pull you out of stress and anxiety and return you to happiness in the now.
• Focus on the rising and falling of your breath for ten seconds whenever you feel tense, rushed, or distracted.
• Knowing we are ENOUGH gives us the courage to do MORE, do BETTER, do our BEST. When we learn to be unfuckwithable, the biggest fears that hold so many back no longer bother us. We boldly pursue big dreams and goals.
• The problem with most people is that their problems aren’t big enough.
• The most extraordinary people in the world do not have careers. What they have is a calling.
• A calling is your contribution to the human race. It’s something that helps us leave the planet better for our children.
• When your work becomes a calling, the old model of work disappears.
• She defines work in three ways:
• 1. A JOB is a way to pay the bills. It’s a means to an end, and you have little attachment to it.
• 2. A CAREER is a path toward growth and achievement. Careers have clear ladders for upward mobility.
• 3. A CALLING is work that is an important part of your life and provides meaning. People with a calling are generally more satisfied with the work they do.
• Finding your calling starts with identifying your end goals.
• Sometimes you have to destroy a part of your life to let the next big thing enter.
• Kensho is growth by pain. Satori is growth by awakening.
• Once you’ve had a satori moment, the stuff that used to scare you or hold you back is left in the dust. You’ve leveled up and can operate on a whole new plane.
• Behind every problem, there’s a question trying to ask itself. Behind every question, there’s an answer trying to reveal itself. Behind every answer, there’s an action trying to take place. And behind every action, there’s a way of life trying to be born.
• The universe doesn’t care who’s going to change the world. It just wants someone who’ll seize the idea and run with it.
• I found the models below to be consistent in every person I interviewed for this book. Each is a unique approach to living, and each leads to the other:
• 1. Extraordinary people feel a unique connectedness and kinship to all life.
• 2. Extraordinary people are open to intuitive insights they attain through this connection.
• 3. Extraordinary people allow their intuition to lead them to a vision that pulls them forward.
• 4. As extraordinary people serve this calling, the universe blesses them with luck.
• Happiness is the fuel for intuition. When you’re stressed or fearful, you shut intuition down.
• Too many people trap themselves in the chains of realistic goals because they refuse to see beyond the HOW. Don’t worry about the HOW. Start with the WHAT and the WHY.
• A mission provides the fuel that keeps us going. Without a mission, work is a four-letter word. With a mission, work dissolves.
• Law 10: Embrace your quest. Extraordinary minds are motivated by a quest or calling—a drive to create some positive change in the world. This drive propels them forward in life and helps them to gain meaning and make a meaningful contribution.
• Brule 1: You Have to Be an Entrepreneur
• Many of the most important people in the world today are not entrepreneurs. Many leading scientists, engineers, and innovators who are changing the world are doing it as employees at large, well-run, mission-driven organizations.
• Entrepreneurism is a means goal, not an end goal. The end goal is usually living a life of purpose, combined with the experiences that freedom and money can bring.
• Extraordinary people focus on whatever actions they need to take to move their mission forward.
• Don’t get stuck in the entrepreneur-versus-employee model. Bottom line: Entrepreneurship is not a goal in itself. It is the side effect of having the right end goals.
• Brule 2: The Career Myth
• Too often, people pursue careers solely for money or titles. Both can be dangerous to your long-term happiness.
• Is your company a humanity-plus or a humanity-minus company?
• You don’t have to save the world. Just don’t mess it up for the next generation.
• Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
• People who radiate this energy are magnetic because they’re living meaningful lives and helping others do the same.
• Your true greatness comes when you focus not on building a career but on finding your quest.
• When the universe calls on you, even if you don’t know the exact path to success—take a baby step.
• Baby steps are more powerful than you think.
• Transcendence is the act of going beyond the physical world to embrace that which cannot be seen.
• There are thousands of different styles of meditation, but they all fall into one of two categories: meditation methods derived from monastic practices and meditation practices designed for the modern human being.
• All meditation is beneficial, but unless you’re a monk, you don’t want to meditate like one. It’s inefficient and slow. Many of these practices are still rooted in dogma and haven’t been updated for centuries.
• Do not think that you must clear your mind in order to meditate. This is one of the biggest myths about meditation.
• Forgiveness is like a muscle: The more you flex it, the stronger it gets.
• We live in two worlds. There’s the world of absolute truth—the things we can all agree on (fire is hot)—and the world of relative truth—the ideas, models, myths, and rules we’ve developed and passed from generation to generation.
• Relative truths aren’t true for all human beings, yet we tend to live by them as if they’re absolute truths.
• Many of us live according to outdated rules imposed on us through the culturescape. I call them Brules. A Brule is a bulls**t rule that society adopts to simplify its understanding of the world. To question the Brules is to take a step into the extraordinary.
• Think of consciousness engineering as an operating system for the human mind—one that you control. Your models of reality are like the hardware: They’re your beliefs about yourself and the world. Your systems for living are like the software: what you do to “run” your life—from your daily habits to how you solve problems, raise your kids, make friends, make love, and have fun.
• Our internal models of reality, or our beliefs about ourselves, are hugely powerful. But our external models—what we believe about the world—are just as powerful.
• Extraordinary minds are always looking to discover and refresh their systems for living.
• Once you refresh your systems for living, use non-negotiable set points to prevent backsliding and progress toward even higher levels of achievement.
• We pay far more attention to systems for taking care of our bodies than to systems that take care of our mind and spirit.
• Happiness is not some amorphous state outside of your control. It’s a trainable skill.
• Focusing on the good things that have already happened in our lives provides instant happiness in the now.
• Letting go of grudges and anger is the single most powerful conduit to a relaxed, powerful state of mind. Like happiness, forgiveness is a trainable skill.
• Pursuing end goals accelerates our momentum toward the extraordinary.
• Extraordinary minds are full of energy and are prepared to take on the world to manifest their bold goals and visions. If you want to do the same, you must step past your fears.