adopting mentors

... I tell you, the real economics for you are that you should wear khaddar. You should spin and spin. Spin in order to make khaddar cheap. That is discipline for you. It will enable you to create your purity. Sit at the spinning-wheel calmly for half an hour and watch the transformation of your heart. I can quote to you instances of many men and women, of brilliant administrators, one of whom was a member in the Bombay Executive Council. He is as old as I am. He learnt spinning only a few months ago. He said: 'After I began spinning at the wheel, I have somewhat got rid of my insomnia. I returned from office tired, sometimes at midnight and, then, I was dozing, thinking of many problems which I did not want to think of. Now I sit at the spinning wheel and spin away. Immediately comes the all-refreshing sleep - the sleep of innocence.' Find out for yourselves what it can do. Find out what it cannot do. 

When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world. I found it was difficult to change the world, so I tried to change my nation. When I found I couldn't change the nation, I began to focus on my town. I couldn't change the town and as an older man, I tried to change my family. Now, as an old man, I realize the only thing I can change is myself, and suddenly I realize that if long ago I had changed myself, I could have made an impact on my family. My family and I could have made an impact on our town. Their impact could have changed the nation and I could indeed have changed the world.

Well, with the rise of identity defined almost solely through race, ethnicity, or gender, I think we’ve forgotten the identity that speaks when one is speaking to oneself. That is to say, one is more conscious of those things—class, race, age, sex—when one is in the presence of others. It’s the difference principle that makes you consciously say, I am black and you are white; I am old and you are young; I am a woman and you are a man. But when you’re by yourself you don’t need so powerfully to assert any one of those identities; when you speak to yourself, you rarely say, I, as a woman, am saying this to myself, or, I, as a sixty year old, am saying this to myself. You tend merely to say, I am saying this to myself, because in the absence of others you can be yourself without external reference. 

Once you understand the logic behind modern schooling, its tricks and traps are fairly easy to avoid. School trains children to be employees and consumers; teach your own to be leaders and adventurers. School trains children to obey reflexively; teach your own to think critically and independently. Well-schooled kids have a low threshold for boredom; help your own to develop an inner life so that they'll never be bored. Urge them to take on the serious material, the grown-up material, in history, literature, philosophy, music, art, economics, theology - all the stuff schoolteachers know well enough to avoid. Challenge your kids with plenty of solitude so that they can learn to enjoy their own company, to conduct inner dialogues. Well-schooled people are conditioned to dread being alone, and they seek constant companionship through the TV, the computer, the cell phone, and through shallow friendships quickly acquired and quickly abandoned. Your children should have a more meaningful life, and they can.

A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. 

If you spend too much time trying to find out what is good or bad about someone else, you'll forget your own soul and end up exhausted and defeated by the energy you have wasted in judging others.

Only eat when you're truly hungry, and stop when you're full.

Seven years when the inner critic and the fear of failure won out. What was missing from my life during those seven years was not just writing but everything writing practice gives me: daily bliss, meaning, a sense of self-expression and of accomplishment, but most importantly, let me say it again, daily bliss. Daily contact with something bigger than me. Daily grace. 

How to recognise the inner critic - It turns out we can recognize this voice as the inner critic…by picking up on a few clues >

• It is making a definite pronouncement, with very little evidence to back it up. It's interested in "the way things are." (This is always a red flag!)

• It's undertaking a premature evaluation of the question "Is it possible, or not?" rather than wondering, "What could be possible?" or, even better, "How can I make this possible?" 

• It's stuck, repetitive. No real action is inspired by it. 

• The energy behind the mental chatter is one of self-critique rather than self-care. 

• The intention is shutting down forward movement, rather than opening up problem solving. There's no searching for solutions or good ideas.

Multi-focusing is the process of pouring all your energy into one project for a short period of time and then switching to another project and focusing on only that. 

True focus is not learning how to schedule your tasks and organize your calender – it’s about triggering a desired result. A very simple way to start and remain in action is by reverse engineering your process. Start with your desired result and work backwards to uncover how it is you will get there. 

In his book Focus, Leo Babauta divides all work-related activities into three categories: Creating, Connecting and Consuming. Connecting involves activities like responding to emails, tweeting and social media, replying to comments, etc. Consuming is any activity that involves research, absorbing, learning. This could mean reading books, blogs, watching movies, listening to podcasts, and so on. Connecting and Consumption activities can be combined, but should never be combined with Creating. 

“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people. Unfortunately, that’s too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.” 

You don't need a life plan. You don't need motivation, self-confidence, peer support or even luck. All you need is the willingness to take the most obvious step - then repeat the process again and again, regardless of how you feel. Try it. Happiness comes from seeing the results of your efforts. You don't need it before you start.

Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.

A collection of data is not information. 

A collection of information is not knowledge. 

A collection of knowledge is not wisdom. 

A collection of wisdom is not truth.

Fear makes us lose our awareness. It can make us cowards as well.

We believe what we want to believe. 

Don't float for too long. Choose something that you like, that you're curious about, and follow it. 

Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny. And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it's all over. 

Your noble friend will not accept pretension but will gently and very firmly confront you with your own blindness. Such friendship is creative and critical; it is willing to negotiate awkward and uneven territories of contradiction and woundedness. 

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. 

We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves to be like other people. 

Why should I give them my mind as well? 

Don't ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. 

To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.

...we create continuously before us the road we must journey upon.

There is no exercise better for the heart than reaching down and lifting people up.

If you have a limit, perhaps it's worth embracing. 

Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day.

Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is richness of self.

Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power.

…the lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and becomes a host, and then a master. 

You can have your excuses or you can have your dreams. But you can’t have both.

You wouldn’t judge a bee for leaving the flower, after it gets the nectar, would you? Of course not. It got what it came for, why on earth would it stick around? 

Whether you’re starting at zero or at -10, building a toolbox of confidence rituals will help. It’s a matter of practicing your rituals on a regular basis, and of course testing and tweaking to find the practices that work best for you. My tools include the ones I mentioned earlier, like taking mini-risks, practicing gratitude, keeping a tally of my small wins, taking on leadership roles, being assertive, standing and moving the way a supremely confident person would stand and move (i.e. body language), and just taking action on my goals. I also immerse myself in the words of mentors who keep me feeling inspired. Daily doses of podcasts, a few minutes of reading or a YouTube video is enough. However, it’s important not to get stuck only consuming information without taking action, because it’s the latter that will really have an impact on how you feel about yourself. Having a group of people in your daily life who believe in you is monumentally important. I cannot stress this enough. The best way to create and maintain the confidence to live a multipotentialite lifestyle is by surrounding yourself with those who are doing the same. 

Leadership is scarce because few people are willing to go through the discomfort required to lead. This scarcity makes leadership valuable. If everyone tries to lead all the time, not much happens. It’s discomfort that creates the leverage that makes leadership worthwhile.

Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody else expects of you. Never excuse yourself. Never pity yourself. Be a hard master to yourself-and be lenient to everybody else.

Self-discipline is the ability to make yourself do what you should do, when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not.

If you're lonely when you're alone, you're in bad company.

The person in life that you will always be with the most, is yourself. Because even when you are with others, you are still with yourself, too! When you wake up in the morning, you are with yourself, laying in bed at night you are with yourself, walking down the street in the sunlight you are with yourself.What kind of person do you want to walk down the street with? What kind of person do you want to wake up in the morning with? What kind of person do you want to see at the end of the day before you fall asleep? Because that person is yourself, and it's your responsibility to be that person you want to be with. I know I want to spend my life with a person who knows how to let things go, who's not full of hate, who's able to smile and be carefree. So that's who I have to be. 

The voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. 

The essence of education is not to transfer knowledge; it is to guide the learning process, to put responsibility for study into the students’ own hands. It is not the piecemeal merchandising of information; it is the bestowal of keys that allow people to unlock the vault of knowledge on their own. It does consist of pilfering the intellectual property amassed by others through no additional effort of one’s own; it would rather place people on their own path of discovery and invention.

Natural Order 

Two hundred years ago, a wealthy patron commissioned Japanese Zen monk and artists Sengai to produce a work of Calligraphy. Sengai wrote, “A parent dies, a child dies, then a grandchild dies.” The patron was furious that he’d been offered this simplistic and obvious message, but Sengai gently rebuffed his complaints. “There can be no greater happiness”, he said, “than to live a life that follows the natural order of things."

If you celebrate your differentness, the world will, too. It believes exactly what you tell it—through the words you use to describe yourself, the actions you take to care for yourself, and the choices you make to express yourself. Tell the world you are one-of-a-kind creation who came here to experience wonder and spread joy. Expect to be accommodated. 

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost. 

Let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow. 

When I write I am trying to express my way of being in the world. This is primarily a process of elimination: once you have removed all the dead language, the second-hand dogma, the truths that are not your own but other people's, the mottos, the slogans, the out-and-out lies of your nation, the myths of your historical moment - once you have removed all that warps experience into a shape you do not recognise and do not believe in - what you are left with is something approximating the truth of your own conception. 

A decision without trade-offs isn't a decision. The art of good decision making is looking forward to and celebrating the trade-offs, not pretending they don't exist.

The law is what we live by. Justice is sometimes harder to achieve. 

Before we set our hearts too much upon anything, let us first examine how happy those are who already possess it. 

He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has. 

If you want to feel rich, just count the things you have that money can't buy. 

Whatever the level is, excellence can always exist at that level. Each form requires its own level of intelligence and passion. 

A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. 

My life is for itself and not for a spectacle. 

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. 

...he touched the secret of the matter, who said of love, "All other pleasures are not worth its pains" 

If I am to be fallen into love, I will. And if as a result I will appear to be stupid, disillusioned, and of poor judgment, I will. And I would be damned if I cared what other people think. For I would rather be thought of as all of these things, than not love. If in loving, I become the naked woman on the horse, I will ride that horse with my head held high. This is my spirit. I am unbreakable. 

When you look for a man- what you want to look for is a man with the heart of a poor boy and the mind of a conqueror. 

Observing and commenting, it is a piece of cake. Experiencing and sharing, that is a piece of work. 

If you want to forget something or someone, never hate it, or never hate him/her. Everything and everyone that you hate is engraved upon your heart; if you want to let go of something, if you want to forget, you cannot hate. 

I'm worried that students will take their obedient place in society and look to become successful cogs in the wheel - let the wheel spin them around as it wants without taking a look at what they're doing. I'm concerned that students not become passive acceptors of the official doctrine that's handed down to them from the White House, the media, textbooks, teachers and preachers. 

You will never be entirely comfortable. This is the truth behind the champion - he is always fighting something. To do otherwise is to settle. 

Don't let your special character and values, the secret that you know and no one else does, the truth - don't let that get swallowed up by the great chewing complacency. 

You have to not care whether they approve of your or not,” she said when I called. “We do what we do to express ourselves, not to coincide with what others like. You’re lucky if they like anything you do. 

People often say that motivation doesn't last. Well, neither does bathing - that's why we recommend it daily. 

Empty pockets never held anyone back. Only empty heads and empty hearts can do that. 

I once had an art instructor say, ‘If it didn’t have to be pretty, what would you draw?' 

Beauty should be quiet enough so you can take it or leave it. When a thing is self-consciously made to be beautiful(as though beauty was the total aim) it never seems to work, and it becomes futile and knickknacky. There has to be some purpose and usefulness about the creating. 

The meaning of life is happiness, and happiness is found when we serve others. 

What students get from a good teacher is not instruction. What they get is a demonstration of someone’s view of life…you teach a way of perceiving the world. 

Facts not fear