The Best Minute: On happiness, focus, and blaming the wrong thing
2 QUOTES FROM OTHERS
I. Ignatius of Loyola on why we sin:
“[Sin is an] unwillingness to trust that what God wants for me is only my deepest happiness.”
II. Thomas Edison on the importance of focus:
“You do something all day long, don’t you? Everyone does. If you get up at seven o’clock and go to bed at eleven, you have put in sixteen good hours, and it is certain with most people, that they have been doing something all the time. They have been either walking, or reading, or writing, or thinking. The only trouble is that they do it about a great many things and I do it about one.
If they took the time in question and applied it in one direction, to one object, they would succeed. Success is sure to follow such application. The trouble lies in the fact that people do not have an object, one thing, to which they stick, letting all else go. Success is the product of the severest kind of mental and physical application.”
2 IDEAS FROM ME
I. Don’t blame not being good at something when it is follow-through, not skill level, that is the problem.
I’m not good at email
I’m not good at texting back
I’m not good at reading
I’m not good at arriving on time
Many of the typical things “we are not good at” are not things that require a lot of skill, they simply require the discipline of follow-through.
II. If you find yourself in a rut, try slightly altering your morning routine.
Get up a little bit earlier
Listen to something different on your morning commute
Change what you eat for breakfast
Oftentimes we look for drastic changes when small changes done consistently bring the biggest results.
1 INTERESTING FACT
Smaller animals tend to perceive time as if it is passing in slow motion.
This means that they can observe movement on a finer timescale than bigger creatures, allowing them to escape from larger predators. Insects and small birds, for example, can see more information in one second than a larger animal such as an elephant.
Source: BBC
1 QUESTION TO LEAVE YOU WITH
If I continue to put this off, what long-term impact will I not be able to recover from?
