Most of us use our youth to amass wealth, which we use to care for our health in old age. We usually care better for our cars, toys and pets than our bodies. Your body is your only one; it is a temple and should be treated as one. You cannot fit a wheelchair in a Lamborghini. The Lamborghini is a metaphor for wealth, and if one does not prioritize one’s health in the process of amassing wealth, one will come to the truth eventually: Money will not make you happy. As Canadian-American actor and comedian Jim Carrey famously said, “I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.”
I recently joined a scabble club with many experienced and seasoned players. A typical game with these players involves 3-4 bingos per game. In Scrabble, bingo is a game wherein a player utilizes all seven tiles on the board in a single turn. These players understand their game, which is that “Scrabble is a numbers game and not a vocabulary game.” It is not the best speller or who knows the most vocabulary words that win, but the person who strategically places the tiles on the high-scoring positions on the board that wins. It is the same thing with life; it is not the fastest that usually wins in life but the most strategic. Life is a marathon, not a sprint; you need to pace yourself when running a marathon.
One of the habits of highly successful people is the art of visualizing what they aim to achieve in a day, season of life, and in their lifetime. They visualize their goals by using different strategies such as a vision board, mental visualization, and journaling. Celebrities such as Jim Carrey, Drake, J.K. Rowlings, Will Smith, Micheal Phelps, Tiger Woods, and Oprah Winfrey have all attributed visualization as a factor in their success. As the saying goes “Be careful what you ask for, you might get it.” Our subconscious mind doesn’t distinguish between fact, fiction, and reality. Research shows that 95% of our day is spent in the subconscious mind, we are on autopilot most of the time, thinking the same thoughts, ruminating on the same things, and making the same decisions.
Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. – Carl Jung
Motivational Speaker Les Brown often said, “Until You Handle It with Grace, It will Stay in Your Face.” Life will happen to us all at some point; the storm of life is never-ending as you either go through a storm, leave a storm or head to the next storm. Whatever will go wrong will eventually go wrong at the least expected time. The key to navigating the vicissitudes of life is to accept whatever happens to one in life radically, focus on what you can control, learn the lessons and keep moving forward towards achieving your life’s purpose. Everything in life is transient, impermanent and does not last forever. Don’t get bitter; get better; don’t let it lessen you; learn the lessons, and don’t get stuck with the mess; get the message.
Tall Poppy Syndrome refers to the idea that all flowers should be the same size and that if one grows too tall, it needs to be cut down.1 The Tall Poppy Syndrome 2 occurs when people are attacked, resented, disliked, criticized, or cut down because of their achievements and/or success. The tall poppy syndrome is a phenomenon that every successful person would eventually have to deal with as acquaintances, family, and friends begin to say things like you have changed,
Tall Poppy Syndrome (TPS), is a term referring to flowers that grow higher than others and are cut down to size so that they are the same height as the flowers around them.
As a financial consultant, Shawn Rochester helped his clients develop plans to dramatically increase their household cash flow, eliminate their debt, and set aside enough resources to maximize their income-generating assets during retirement. He also started Good Steward University, where he developed online courses to help Black Americans manage their resources based on a mindset and a set of actions focused on stewardship, ownership, and legacy. Within Good Steward University, Shawn developed a course called The Black Tax: The Incremental Cost of Being Black in America. The course was created based on reviewing 25 years of research on the cost of implicit bias on African-Americans.
This tax is insidious in many ways because it reduces Black Americans’ cash flow, thereby reducing our ability to leave a legacy for our children and their children.
In The Black Tax: The Cost of Being Black in America, founder of Good Steward LLC, Shawn Rochester, examines the various costs associated with being Black in America. He describes The Black Tax (which is the financial cost of conscious and unconscious anti-black discrimination), creates a massive financial burden on Black American households that dramatically reduces their ability to leave a substantial legacy for future generations.
From her time as a cofounder of Upright Citizens Brigade to her rise to fame on SNL and Parks and Recreation, Amy Poehler’s been improv-ing her way into our hearts for decades. Now she takes the stage at MasterClass to help you be ready for anything with her nine improv principles. Turn up your confidence, push past fear, and roll with whatever life throws your way with Amy’s “unlicensed therapy.”
Run for your life is a metaphor for taking initiative, betting on yourself, and trusting the process. We stay in toxic relationships, fail to set healthy boundaries, people please, and do not start or follow through with our wildest dreams because of the fear of what other people will say and the fear of failure. As American Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mary Oliver demanded, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” This is not a drill or a dress rehearsal; there are no do-overs. This is it, and you’ve got to run toward your purpose and mission in life. Run away from naysayers to find your yay-sayers, run towards a life filled with joy, tranquility, and a sense of wonder. As American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson observed “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to change you is the greatest accomplishment.” People pleasing, a lack of healthy boundaries and a fear of what other people would say about your life choices can get someone killed.
“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to change you is the greatest accomplishment.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
In Burn the Boats: Toss Plan B Overboard and Unleash Your Full Potential, American businessman Matt Higgins provides the blueprint he used to go from a desperate sixteen-year-old high school dropout caring for his sick mother in Queens, New York, to a shark on Shark Tank and the faculty of Harvard Business School.
Burn the Boats is about not becoming hesitant when your instincts don’t match what the world is telling you to do. The key to unlocking potential is to embrace your highest competitive advantage: you are the only one who has the full story of your life. YOU are the one subject about which there will never be a greater expert in the world.
Meditation is the journey from movement to stillness, from sound to silence. The need to meditate is present in every human being because it is a natural tendency of human life to look for a joy that doesn’t diminish, a love that doesn’t distort or turn into negative emotions. – Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
Meditation is a practice in which an individual uses a technique – such as mindfulness or focusing the mind on a particular object, thought, or activity – to train attention and awareness and achieve a mentally clear, emotionally calm, and stable state. 1 American Tibetan-Buddhist Pema Chodron observed, “Meditation is an invitation to notice when we reach our limit and to not get carried away by hope and fear. Through meditation, we’re able to see clearly what’s going on with our thoughts and emotions, and we can also let them go.” Meditation is one of the most consistent habits from reading about the highly successful people in the world.
The goal of mediation is not to get rid of thoughts or emotions. The goal is to become more aware of your thoughts and emotions and learn how to move through them without getting stuck. – Dr. P Goldin
I started meditating during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, and I have since made meditating a part of my self-care routine. As of this morning, I have meditated consistently for 697 days non-stop using the Calm Meditation app. Every morning, I meditate for at least 15-20 minutes by listening to the guided meditation of calm meditation instructors. My favourite guided meditations are Daily Calm with Tamara Levitt and Daily Jay with Jay Shetty. I often write out the meditation sessions I include in my daily blog. Meditation is one of the most transformative self-care routines I have stayed consistent with over the past three years, and it has helped me a lot during the dark and trying days that I have had to weather continuously.
In October 2022, I decided to shoot basketball for at least one hour every morning, and I have stayed consistent with the practice for at least 5-6 days weekly. My daily basketball shooting routine has taught me so much about failing and my relationship with failure. When shooting the basketball, one is bound to miss the shots multiple times inevitably, and the will to succeed eventually makes the basketball court a great place to learn about failing and persistence. My basketball routine is my attempt at developing a failure routine, and the more I practice on the court, the more I regulate my relationship with failure. Winston Churchill may be referring to basketball shooting when he said, “Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”
A Guru is a Sanskrit term which is derived from two words: Gu (“ignorance”) and ru “dispeller.” The guru is a dispeller of ignorance, all kinds of ignorance; thus, there are gurus not only for spiritual development but also for dancing, music, wrestling, and other skills. 1 A guru is synonymous with being a guide, mentor, expert, or master in a particular area of specialization. As author and educator James Thom once said, “Probably the most honest self-made man ever was the one we heard say: ‘I got to the top the hard way—fighting my own laziness and ignorance every step of the way.’” One of life’s great truisms is that “Everyone is trying to figure it.” No one has every area of their life figured out; the motivational speaker does not have their relationship intact, the fitness expert is struggling with their finances, and the celebrated movie star is battling with drug addiction.
“Probably the most honest self-made man ever was the one we heard say: ‘I got to the top the hard way—fighting my own laziness and ignorance every step of the way.’” – James Thom
In The Nuclear Effect: The 6 Pillars of Building a 7+ Figure Online Business, author Scott Oldford describes six pillars of sustainable growth, you will create the momentum your business needs to become an unstoppable force.
A buffer time is the extra time reserved between tasks, appointments, meetings or schedules to help manage unexpected interruptions, distractions, delays, transitions or disruptions. Your buffer time can help you complete more things, reduce stress/burnout, and improve productivity and focus. We all have buffer time we can deliberately use effectively during the day. I am often asked, “How can you read 100+ books yearly?”. One of the productivity hacks that has helped me become more productive is how I try to use the buffer time that presents itself daily. Here are some of the ways that I use buffer time to enhance my productivity daily:
I read from my Kindle while in traffic transition or waiting in line.
Listen to an audiobook while waiting in a queue or exercising in the gym.
Practice French flashcards while waiting to play in a volleyball or pickleball game.
A Taoist story tells of an old man walking along a riverbank. The river was swift, and powerful rapids led to a tall waterfall just downstream. Suddenly, the man stumbled and fell into the river and was swept up by the powerful currents.
Onlookers watched with horror, worried for the man’s life as he was carried downstream and over the edge of the waterfall. They rushed to the edge of the cliffs and peered down. To their astonishment, the old man stood on the rocky banks at the bottom of the falls. He was soaked from head to toe but unharmed and had an unassuming smile.
