I (Brendon Burchard) was one of those people. As a young man, I was the one drowning. When I was nineteen, I had become despondent and suicidal after a breakup with the first woman I ever loved. It was a very dark time. Ironically, what pulled me through the emotional wreckage at that point of my life was a car accident. My friend was driving when we flipped off the highway going about eighty-five miles per hour. We both ended up bloody and terrified but alive. The incident changed my life, giving me what I call “mortality motivation.”
I’ve written about my accident in my previous books, so I’ll just share what I learned: Life is precious beyond words, and when you get a second chance—and every morning, every decision, can be that second chance—take a moment to define who you really are and what you really want. I realized I didn’t want to take my life; I wanted to live. My heart had been broken, yes, but I still wanted to love. I felt I was given a second chance, so I wanted to make it matter, to make a difference. Live. Love. Matter. That became my mantra. That’s when I decided to change. That’s when I started looking for answers to live a more charged, connected, and contributing life.
When we try to deal with the difficult demands of today, what advice do we receive? The same thing we’ve been told for hundreds of years, perhaps with a few feel-good twists:
Work hard.
Be passionate.
Focus on your strengths.
Practice a lot.
Stick to it.
Be grateful.
No doubt, this is popular, positive, useful advice. It’s solid and it’s timeless. You can’t go wrong with this philosophy. And it certainly makes one hell of a commencement speech.
But is this advice adequate?
Do you know any hardworking people who have all these things going for them, yet they’re still not even close to the level of success and fulfillment they want in life?
Many of us feel a gap between our ordinary lives and the extraordinary lives we wish to have. Fifty years ago, perhaps, it was easier to navigate the world and get ahead. The baseline for success was more straightforward: “Work hard. Play by the rules. Keep your head down. Don’t ask too many questions. Follow the leader. Take time to master something that will keep you around here.”
Then, twenty years ago, the baseline began to shift. “Work hard. Break the rules. Keep your head up—optimists win. Ask questions of the experts. You are a leader. Hurry up and figure it out.”
Today, for many, the baseline feels distant, blurred, almost unknowable. Gone are the days when our work was predictable and the expectations of those around us were “fixed.” Change accelerated. Now everything feels chaotic. Your boss, lover, or customer always wants something new, now. Your work isn’t as simple or siloed as it used to be. And if it is, the odds are a computer or a robot will soon replace you. To compound the stress, now everything is connected, so if you mess up one thing, it messes up an entire network of other things. Mistakes are no longer private affairs. They are public and global.
I (Brendon Burchard) have been blessed to train millions of people worldwide on personal and professional development, and I can report that it’s a palpable feeling everywhere right now: People are tremendously uncertain about how to get ahead and which decisions are right for them, their families, and their careers. People want to scale up, but they’re wiped out. They’re working so hard, but they’re just not breaking through. They are driven, but they don’t always know exactly what they want. They desire to go for their dreams, yet they’re afraid they’ll be judged crazy or fail if they try.
Add to that the unrelenting tasks, the self-doubt, the unwanted obligations, the overwhelming choices and responsibilities—it’s enough to exhaust anyone. For too many, there is a sense that things will never get better and they’ll always be swimming in a churning sea of distractions and disappointments. If that sounds dire, it is. People are hopeful and ready to make a change, but lacking direction and the right habits they risk living unexciting, disconnected, unfulfilling lives.
Of course, many people are living happy, wonderful lives. But consistency is a problem. They may feel capable—even feel that they hit “peak performance” once in a while—but there’s always that steep cliff on the other side. And so people are tired of the ups and downs of peak performance. They’re wondering how to reach heightened and sustained growth and success. They don’t need just new tricks to get into better states and moods; they need real skills and methods for holistically advancing their lives and careers.
Short Life Advice From The Best In The World Timothy Ferriss 20171121
The only true voyage would be not to travel through a hundred different lands with the same pair of eyes, but to see the same land through a hundred different pairs of eyes. — Marcel Proust
About This Book
When Facing Life’s Questions Who Do You Turn To For Advice?
Four-time #1 bestselling author and podcast giant Tim Ferriss has tracked down more than 100 eclectic mentors to help him, and you, navigate life. Through short, action-packed profiles, he shares their secrets for success, happiness, and meaning. No matter the challenge or opportunity, something in these pages can help.
Introduction
Life punishes the vague wish and rewards the specific ask. After all, conscious thinking is largely asking and answering questions in your own head. If you want confusion and heartache, ask vague questions. If you want uncommon clarity and results, ask uncommonly clear questions.
Fortunately, this is a skill you can develop. No book can give you all of the answers, but this book can train you to ask better questions. Milan Kundera, author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, has said that “The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything.” Substitute “master learner” for “novel,” and you have my philosophy of life. Often, all that stands between you and what you want is a better set of questions.
The 11 questions I chose for this book are listed below. It’s important to read the full questions and explanations, as I shorten them throughout the rest of the book. Let’s take a look at each, and I’ll explain why they appear to work. My explanations get shorter toward the end, as many of the points carry over or apply to all questions.
It is likely that most of what you currently learn at school will be irrelevant by the time you are 40…. My best advice is to focus on personal resilience and emotional intelligence.
Yuval Noah Harari is the author of the international bestsellers Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind and Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. He received his PhD from the University of Oxford in 2002 and is now a lecturer in the Department of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Yuval has twice won the Polonsky Prize for Creativity and Originality, in 2009 and 2012. He has published numerous articles, including “Armchairs, Coffee, and Authority: Eye-witnesses and Flesh-witnesses Speak About War, 1100-2000,” for which he won the Society for Military History’s Moncado Award. His current research focuses on macro-historical questions: What is the relation between history and biology? What is the essential difference between Homo sapiens and other animals? Is there justice in history? Does history have a direction? Did people become happier as history unfolded?
What is the book (or books) you’ve given most as a gift, and why? Or what are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life?
Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. I think it is the most prophetic book of the 20th century, and the most profound discussion of happiness in modern Western philosophy. It had a deep impact on my thinking about politics and happiness. And since, for me, the relationship between power and happiness is the most important question in history, Brave New World has also reshaped my understanding of history.
Never let a good crisis go to waste. It’s the universe challenging you to learn something new and rise to the next level of your potential.
Kristen Ulmer is a master facilitator who challenges norms around the subject of fear. She was a mogul specialist on the U.S. Ski Team and later became recognized as the best female big-mountain extreme skier in the world, a status she held for 12 years. Known for enormous cliff jumps and you-fall-you-die descents, she was sponsored by Red Bull, Ralph Lauren, and Nikon. Her work on fear has been featured on NPR and in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Outside magazine, and others. Kristen is the author of The Art of Fear: Why Conquering Fear Won’t Work and What to Do Instead.
What purchases of $100 or less has most positively impacted your life in the last six months (or in recent memory)?
[As background], my mom was the youngest of nine kids. Her dad was a raging alcoholic and the family had a simple existence as tenant farmers. She grew up with severe money issues. They are so solidified that, at age 83, she still washes and reuses Ziploc bags and eats around moldy food. And … I am my mother’s daughter. I am frugal as hell, which is okay—it helped me become a self-made millionaire—but I think it holds me back from going to the next level financially at this point.
So, whenever I feel bad, I make a point to do something nice for other people. Either I stand outside the movie theater looking for someone who seems like they could use a break and I pay for their movie tickets, or I leave a $50 tip on a takeout burrito. Not only does it make other people feel good, it makes me feel good, and it also impacts my life in one other way that’s not so obvious. Spending money like this is my subtle attempt to break free from my lineage and resolve my inherited money issues.
Our brains, our fear, our sense of what’s possible, and the reality of “only” 24 hours in a day give us preconceived notions of what is humanly possible.
Robert Rodiguez is a director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer, editor, and musician. He is also the founder and chairman of El Rey Network, a new genre-busting cable network. There, he hosts one of my favorite interview-format shows, The Director’s Chair. While a student at the University of Texas at Austin, Robert wrote the script for his first feature film while he was a paid subject in a clinical experiment at a drug research facility. That paycheck covered the cost of shooting over two weeks. The film, El Mariachi, went on to win the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival and became the lowest-budget movie ever released by a major studio. He went on to write, produce, and direct many successful films, including Desperado, From Dusk Till Dawn, the Spy Kids franchise, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, Frank Miller’s Sin City, Machete, and others.
In the last five years, what new belief, behavior, or habit has most improved your life?
I finally found a strategy that really helps me stay focused while doing a major task that I’m not very enthused to do. It’s not just that I’d put it off; it’s that whenever I tried to do it, ten other more enjoyable and often equally worthwhile distractions would pop into my head that would send me off track. That was the biggest challenge. Those distractions were just as important as my major task, so I’d be justified in running off and doing those first. But my major task would remain untouched, turning itself into a chore to even think about. Now what I’ll do is sort of a more efficient method, similar to a Premack [a motivational system where a more-preferred activity can be used to reinforce a less-preferred activity] or a rewards system, but with a more concrete strategy.
