In The Wealth Money Can’t Buy: The 8 Hidden Habits to Live Your Richest Life, Canadian writer Robin Sharma shares a framework he learned from his private advisory clients: financial prosperity is only one of the eight forms of wealth. The Eight Forms of Wealth learning model is based upon eight hidden habits used by the world’s wealthiest people to lead a life of purpose and meaning. They include:
In Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius’ book Meditations 1, which is a set of personal writing and ideas on Stoic philosophy, he observed in book 7:
“Nothing happens to anyone that he can’t endure. The same thing happens to other people, and they weather it unharmed—out of sheer obliviousness or because they want to display “character.” Is wisdom really so much weaker than ignorance and vanity?
Things have no hold on the soul. They have no access to it, cannot move or direct it. It is moved and directed by itself alone. It takes the things before it and interprets them as it sees fit.
In a sense, people are our proper occupation. Our job is to do them good and put up with them.
But when they obstruct our proper tasks, they become irrelevant to us—like sun, wind, animals. Our actions may be impeded by them, but there can be no impeding our intentions or our dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting.
The impediment to action advances action.
What stands in the way becomes the way.
‘Good fences make good neighbors.’ – Robert Frost.
We teach people how to treat us, knowingly or unknowingly. We allow people to treat us unfairly because they are our childhood friends, family members or the only friends we have. It is tough setting boundaries for our closest family members and long-time friends because it is not easy but at some point, one has got to draw the line. By setting healthy boundaries, we can have a mutually beneficial relationship, but we fear and don’t want to rock the boat; hence, we enable the drama queens and the chaos kings in our lives. Life is too short to be spending it with energy vampires, even if they are family members; you’ve got to protect your sanity.
We know our friends during adversity, and our friends know us during prosperity.
Love is a verb, an action word, a behaviour, not a role. Blood is thicker than water, but love is thicker than blood. The older I get, the more I believe less of what anyone says; I only believe your actions. You can say you are my friend, but we can’t confirm that until the chips are down and everyone needs to step up. As Maya Angelou famously said, “When people show you who they are, believe them the first time”. Most of us don’t heed the advice of Maya; hence, we give people the benefit of the doubt all the time. In the end, they get the benefit, and we are stuck with the doubt
People are usually who they’ve shown themselves to be in the past. Stop acting surprised when they behave as they always have.
Courage is an inner resolution to go forward despite obstacles; Cowardice is submissive surrender to circumstances. Courage breeds creativity; Cowardice represses fear and is mastered by it. Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency ask the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience ask the question, is it right? And there comes a time when we must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right. – Dr. Martin Luther King Jnr.
When Steve Jobs was 20, he co-founded Apple with his childhood friend Steve Wozniak. Within 10 years, the company had grown into a $2 billion company with over 4,000 employees. At 30, he was fired from the company due to a power struggle with the company’s then-CEO, John Sculley, and its board of directors. It was a devastating experience. He felt rejected, but he still was in love with his craft, so he decided to start over again. In his 2008 StanfordUniversity Commencement Speech 1, noted that getting fired from Apple was the best that could have happened to him then:
I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
This habit took me a while to figure out, but I am steadily developing a routine around my personal grooming. It is fast becoming one of my favourite daily routines. Grooming (preening) is the art and practice of cleaning and maintaining parts of the body. 1 Like most people, the first thing I do after waking up is brush my teeth and bathe. After which, I cream my body and comb my heart; that was it for me until recently. After getting some results in my fitness regimen routine through habit stacking, I experimented with going deeper into my grooming using the same approach.
My New approach to personal grooming
Somedays are going to be more challenging than the others. You might be so broke or in debt that checking your bank account has become a chore. You might be feeling shitty because you can’t seem to conquer the addiction or the harmful habit, such as gossiping or complaining about others. You might not like the job you are presently in, or you feel stuck in a toxic relationship. You might be in a codependent relationship wherein you are dependent on others to solve your issues for you. Life can be tricky sometimes; whatever will go wrong will eventually go wrong.
When the going gets tough, we all have a choice to forgive ourselves, bounce bank and keep it moving. Every mess has a message, and everything that might lessen us also has a lesson in it. Whatever you might be going through right now, no matter how tough it seems, you have the agency to turn it around. It is going to be a dog fight, you are going to fall down multiple times, relapse, your emotions are going to get the best of you. You are going to doubt yourself, people are going to doubt you, and the naysayers are going to be loud in your heart, but you have to, at some point, take personal responsibility for your life.
Joy (n.) is derived from Old French joie “pleasure, delight, erotic pleasure, bliss, joyfulness” (11c.), from Latin gaudia “expressions of pleasure; sensual delight,” plural of gaudium “joy, inward joy, gladness, delight; source of pleasure or delight,” from gaudere “rejoice,” from PIE root *gau- “to rejoice” (cognates: Greek gaio “I rejoice,” Middle Irish guaire “noble”). Joy is an emotion that we can feel viscerally in our souls when experiencing it. Joy is synonymous with delight, glee, happiness, elation, gladness and peace of mind. We know it when we feel it. You optimize for joy and protect your peace of mind by trusting your joy. Most of us nurture unhealthy relationships and lifestyles just because they are all we’ve ever known or done. When you trust your joy, you gravitate towards what makes you happy and set healthy boundaries for whatever drains your energy.
Lose the battle but win the war.
Play the Long Game (idiom) 1: to plan and do things that will help you to be successful far into the future, rather than only thinking about the present or near future. Life is a marathon that requires playing a long game. Being successful in this game involves starting with the end in mind, knowing your why, and working on your plan. One of the most essential lessons from finishing multiple marathons is that your outcome is somewhat predictable. As the marathon chart below shows, a certain amount of minutes per mile must be run to finish at one’s intended finish time. We play the way we train; if you cannot do it during training, executing it on game day will be hard. When you play the long game, you plan your pace and not go too hard at the start.
Your parents were right “Birds of the same feather flock together”, and “If you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas”. These are some of the cautious statements parents give to their children on the importance of choosing their friends, relationships and associations. Parents know viscerally because they know in hindsight how the right or wrong association shaped their lives. As the saying goes, “You are the total of the five people you spend the most time with.” You cannot outperform your inner circle as they calibrate your baseline and, ultimately, your threshold. Two of the most crucial relationship decisions we all must make include choosing a life partner and the choice of work. You will spend at least two-thirds of your life with your partner and at work. The company you keep is essential in how far you go in life, so choose wisely.
It is ok to falter on your goal streak, get distracted and wander for a bit but don’t get lost. It is easy to get distracted in a world where technology, gadgets and streams of data and information are always fighting for our attention. Getting lost in the sea of data on social with the somewhat elusive allure for virality, popularity, and influence can be very tempting. We all get lost in this bubble once in a while but remember why you started this in the first place, the algorithms are not optimized to allow you find your purpose, so wander with care and don’t get lost.
“Though you cannot go back and make a brand-new start by You can start now, and make a brand-new end.“
Every day is an opportunity to start over again with new vigour, making thousands of tiny choices that can lead to sustainable excellence and greatness. We are all given 24 hours, 1,440 minutes and 86,400 seconds to begin afresh, realign our priorities and live our values to the best of our abilities. Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift that is why it is called the present. Today is the tomorrow you looked forward to yesterday, seize the day and make today count. Excellence is ultimately achieved by making every single day a masterpiece by showing up daily and doing your very best. Embrace the gift of starting over daily and taking baby steps toward achieving your goals.
In Steven B. Sample‘s book The Contrarian’s Guide to Leadership, he observed that “the average person suffers from three delusions; we believe we are good drivers, good listeners, and think we have a good sense of humour.” We think we are good listeners, but we are always waiting to respond instead of deliberately listening. Listening is one of the most challenging skills that I am always battling to harness. I love sharing my thoughts on subject matters, especially the ones I am passionate about. I am learning to think and take a breath before speaking nowadays and ask myself, “Is it worth it?”. It’s tough to master the skill but I believe with time, I will master my listening skill.
The things that are easy to do are also easy not to do.
Author Jim Rohn often said “Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines, practiced every day; while failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day. It is the accumulative weight of our disciplines and our judgments that leads us to either fortune or failure.” How you do one is thing is mostly how you do everything. Most things that make a considerable effect in our long term growth are usually easy but they are often not easy to do. It is easy to reduce your screen time but it is not easy to feel left out due to the fear of missing out. It is easy to read a book but the challenge is staying consistent and finishing the book. It is easy to go to the gym but the hard part is staying consistent with the practice.
“Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines, practiced every day; while failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day. It is the accumulative weight of our disciplines and our judgments that leads us to either fortune or failure.” – Jim Rohn
Self-disclosure is a process of communication by which one person reveals information about themselves to another. The information can be descriptive or evaluative, and can include thoughts, feelings, aspirations, goals, failures, successes, fears, and dreams, as well as one’s likes, dislikes, and favorites. 1. One key pattern associated with the development of a close relationship among peers is sustained, escalating, reciprocal, personalistic self-disclosure (Arthur Aron et al 1987). 2 There is a very thin line with the appropriate self-disclosure needed at the beginning of nurturing an intimate relationship and oversharing.
I am very passionate about most things I am engaged in, which always gives me joy to want to share. I always want to share what I am learning, strategies that are working for me, like my fitness regimen, meditation practice, self-discipline identity, books I am reading and goals I am trying to achieve. After reading up and connecting some dots from personal experience, I have concluded that I need to reduce this tendency to overshare or become vulnerable with people who have not earned that trust or reciprocated that vulnerability. When I share some of these so-called insights of mine or goals achieved, like running multiple marathons a year or reading 100 books a year, I usually feel that my intentions are not understood. I am beginning to feel that most people might feel I am bragging or think I am claiming moral righteousness when I say I don’t use social media anymore.
The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials. – Lin Yutang
The traditional “To-Do list” is a list of activities and tasks one needs to complete. It is a tool I use religiously as I journal what I intend to do daily as a blueprint for getting things done. I have found the to-do list to be very useful for achieving goals. I recently came across the “To-Stop” list concept while reading management consultant Marshall Goldsmith’s book, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There. The to-stop list is a list of activities that can be professional, behavioural, or personal and need to be stopped or delegated to others. As the Chinese writer and philosopher Lin Yutang once quipped, “Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.”
When creating a to-stop list, one of the key questions is, “Does this activity or relationship bring me joy?” If it does not bring you joy or it has stopped being fun engaging with the tool, activity or task, then it is a prime candidate for the to-stop list. The list can include anything from bad habits, toxic relationships, unhealthy choices, behavioural quirks or default activities. Some things I am considering for my to-stop list include my tendency to want to add too much value, speaking more than I listen, oversharing and being too vulnerable with people who have not earned my trust. Some other things I want to stop doing include stop complaining, gossiping, watching YouTube when I am supposed to be studying in the evening, and arguing. The list is exhaustive, but the first step to changing is acknowledgment.