The Way To Love
Anthony De Mello
Summary
From one of my favourite authors, how to add love in your life and learning to love yourself first
Rating: 4/5
Notes
There is only one cause of unhappiness - false beliefs in your head that you never question
Most people don’t know how unhappy they are - like the man in the dream who has no idea he’s dreaming
There is not a single moment in your life when you do not have everything you need to be happy
What makes you happy or unhappy is not the world or people around you but the thinking in your head
To be happy, you must first understand how you’ve been programmed
Almost every negative emotion you experience is the direct outcome of an attachment
To be genuinely happy, there’s one thing you need to do - get deprogrammed, get rid of those attachments
Your negative feelings about a person are not caused by them but you’re programming
An attachment is a state of clinignt hat comes from the fake belief that something or someone is necessary for your happiness
You must choose b/w your attachments and your happiness. You cannot have both
Ask yourself: where did your attachments come from?
Nothing or person outside of you has the power to make you happy or unhappy
Society has put these layers in your mind and let other people like politicians and experts do your thinking for you
Don’t hold onto ideas of someone because you judge them based on a label
To break out of this prison of the mind; first notice you’re in a prison then spend hours just observing your ideas, habits, attachments and fears with no judgments
Spend time really observing things around you then quietly observe how your mind reacts
The unaware life is not worth living
Change is only brought by awareness and understanding
Love is to be found only in fearlessness and freedom
Put your ideas and formulas aside as you dare to look at 3everything around you without fear and without formulas and it won’t be long before you see
Stop seeing people as good and bad or saints and sinners and begin to see them as unaware and ignorant
‘Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you’ - Luke 6:27
The cause of all of your irritations is not someone else but you
Every idea distorts reality and is a barrier to seeing reality
If you get caught up in the judgments of people around you, you are eating the fruit of tension, insecurity and anxiety because today when they call you beautiful, you are elated but tomorrow they’ll call you ugly and you’ll be depressed
Become too busy with the task of living to care about what others think, whether you are special or not. Only then you’ll become fearless and free
The first act of love is to see this person or object, this reality as it truly is
What you are so enamored with is in your head so let go
The orchestra is within you and you carry it wherever you go. The things and people outside you merely determine what melody the orchestra will play. But when nothing else is around, the orchestra will play music of its own
Every painful event contains in itself a seed of growth and liberation
As long as your happiness is caused or sustained by something or someone outside of you, you are still in the land of dead
Insecurity does not lie outside of you but within your programming that was taught by other insecure people when you were young and impressionable
When you resist death, you resist life
To think clearly, one must drop everything one has learned and achieve the mind of a child that is innocent of past experiences and programming
The most painful act is in the act of seeing. But it is in the act of seeing that love is born
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Make Something Wonderful
Steve Jobs
Summary
The life of Steve Jobs in his own words
Rating: 5/5
Notes
Make something wonderful and put it out there
‘You appear, have a chance to blaze in the sky, then you disappear’
When you’re a stranger in a place, you notice thing you don’t otherwise (Jobs after India trip)
Whenever you start with nothing, always shoot for the moon. You have nothing to lose.
You never achieve what you want without falling on your face a few times
Never be afraid to fail. You never achieve what you want without falling flat on your face a few times
We are never taught to listen to our intuitions, to develop and nurture them. But if you do pay attention to these subtle insights, you can make them come true
Creativity equals connecting previously unrelated experiences and insights others don’t see
Believe that some of what you follow with your heart will come back and make your life richer. And it will. And you will gain even firmer trust on your instincts and intuitions
Make your avocation your vocation. Make what you love your work.
The journey is the reward. The reward isn’t in the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, it’s in crossing the rainbow
To find A+ talent, if experienced, look at their track record and results
The world we know is a human creation and we can push it forward
The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do (read whole ad ‘here’s to the crazy ones)
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act but a habit - Aristotle
Hire people better than you are
You can’t plan to meet the people who will change your life
It’s impossible to connect the dots looking forward, but they make sense looking backwards so you have to trust the dots will somehow connect in your future
Everything around you that you call life was made up by people no smarter than you
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