Notes

Link (Spotify)

• Vivek shocked by people’s loneliness – no family/friends or people to care for them when checking into hospital/dying 
• If you ask people their top priority is, they would likely say a person. But if you look at what society tells us is most important: all about your ability to acquire wealth, power, reputation/fame. But in reality what gives us the greatest joy and fulfillment in life is actually our relationships.
• When this doctor was talking to people at end of their life, a lot of what was talked about in those final days was not the promotions they received or how big their bonuses were. They didn’t talk about how many followers they had on Instagram or the number of friends they had. They talked about the quality of their relationships. They talked about the people they loved. They talked about the people they wish they spent more time with. They talked about the joy the people in their life brought them.
• Why is talking to someone on their final days insightful? Because it strips down a lot of the facades.
• Relates workplace to a family. People help each in other in a family because they feel a sense of commitment to one another
• Five minute exercise – once a week, one person shares photos unrelated to work for 5 minutes brought everyone closer together
• A real friend is someone who reminds you of who you are even when you forget.
• Emotions are a power, not a weakness
• How can you translate your negative AND positive emotions into positive actions?

Link Episode #125 (Spotify) | Link Episode #128 (Spotify)

• Sivers book — Anything You Want (you can get it for free by clicking this link, all chapters on his site)
• You are what you pretend to be
• He read Awaken the Giant Within at 19 (same as Tim)
• “The standard pace is for chumps”
• Relaxing for the same effort – bike story. You can recognize it when you feel the internal pain
• Respond to other people’s demands. No need to create demand
• Either hell yes or no
• Busy isn’t good.
• The first thing that comes to mind isn’t all that interesting. For example, “What’s the first painting that comes to mind?“ Mona Lisa. “What’s the first president that comes to mind?“ George Washington. The first thing that comes to mind doesn’t necessarily give any substance. To find out the substantive answer, maybe look for the third thing that comes to mind.
• Bike story (43 minutes vs. 45 minutes)
• Teach whatever it is you just learned, while you remember what it’s like to not know it. Once you get used to knowing it, you can’t imagine what it’s like to not know.
• Share your work online. If your work isn’t online, it basically doesn’t exist.
• Share the process and the residue of your work. People want to see how the sausage gets made.
• Release your creations sometimes after completion. That way the critiques won’t feel like they’re personal attacks, you’ll be more detached to the work.
• If more information was the answer, we’d all be billionaires with perfect abs. Just start running.
• When Derek went with his introverted nature, instead of trying to do extroverted things, it made him really happy
• Whatever idea you have, you need to argue against it… because everything sounds better in theory. 
  • So: Do little tests. Give yourself an exit plan in the chance you don’t like it. If you want to live somewhere new, try moving there for a month or two. If you want to try a new job, try it with the chance you’ll hate it.
• Was Robin Williams a “successful actor”? Your initial answer might be yes, but that would be to define success in terms of metrics from other people (external). Not happiness. Define success first by your inner game.
• If you only help yourself but help nobody else, then we’d call you happy, but wouldn’t call you a success
• If you want to be undeniably successful, you need to help yourself (master your emotions and actions) and help lots of people.
• Here’s what actually makes Derek Sivers happy: a quiet little place to live alone, working laptop, access to the Internet and books, enough money for food, good health, and good friends (everything past that is bullshit)
• Focus, Learn, Practice

Link (Spotify)

• The book Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines changed the course of his life. Dan Brown was originally a biology student – took an Eastern spirituality last semester of college
• Digital Dharma documentary worth checking out
• What is Awakening? It’s always right here. It is an infinitely limitless field of brilliantly lucid knowing awareness love and we don’t directly perceive or operate out of it because it’s clouded over by all the structures of mind that we get caught up in. The metaphor is the Sun. When the clouds part and the sun comes out, we say “The sun came out.” Is that correct? No. The sun is always shining day and night. We just couldn’t see it before. It’s clouded over by thought. It’s clouded over by the sense of self. It’s clouded over by constructions about time. It’s clouded over by how we localize consciousness.
• First we get caught up in thought all the time. We spend over half of our waking life caught up in thought and lost in thought. However there are long periods when you are absent of all thought activity. Where are you operating out of if you’re not operating out of thought? You backend your way into realizing your operating out of the Field of Awareness.
• When you go beyond thought, time, sense of self… and enter into the field of all-knowing, that’s Awakening.
• As soon as you’ve made it into a “thing” or “state,” you’ve missed the point.
• A baseball player cannot “think” about hitting a baseball. It happens too fast. You can’t “think” about entering the field of Awareness. As soon as you think about it, it is gone
• Instead of meditating, try concentrating on one object without any distraction.
• Navy SEAL Progression: 1. Balance the body through breath control training. 2. Concentrate – Keep your attention on that thing. 3. Visualization 4. Scan your environment and choose the next target (be aware of what’s going on, don’t get distracted by the next shiny thing).
• Visualization enhances motor performance (Throwing darts, shooting foul shots, putting golf ball). If you don’t have any experience with the sport, visualization doesn’t help at all. If you have experience with the sport, you can get a modest degree of change improvement with visualization.