Category: Quotes

Nuggets from “The Almanac of Naval Ravikant” by Eric Jorgenson

Wealth

  • Seek wealth, not money or status. Wealth is having assets that earn while you sleep. Money is how we transfer time and wealth. Status is your place in the social hierarchy.
  • You’re not going to get rich renting out your time. You must own equity – a piece of a business – to gain your financial freedom.
  • You will get rich by giving society what it wants but does not yet know how to get. At scale.

Business & Profession

  • You’re not going to get rich renting out your time. You must own equity – a piece of a business – to gain your financial freedom.
  • Pick an industry where you can play long term games with long term people.
  • Play iterated games. All the returns in life, whether in wealth, relationships, or knowledge, come from compound interest.
  • Pick business partners with high intelligence, energy, and, above all, integrity.
  • Learn to sell. Learn to build. If you can do both, you will be unstoppable.

Specific Knowledge

  • Arm yourself with specific knowledge, accountability, and leverage.
  • Specific knowledge is knowledge that you cannot be trained for. If society can train you, it can train someone else, and replace you.
  • Specific knowledge is found by pursuing your genuine curiosity and passion rather than whatever is hot right now.
  • When specific knowledge is taught, it’s through apprenticeships, not schools.
  • Specific knowledge is often highly technical or creative. It cannot be outsourced or automated.

Leverage what you know best

  • Embrace accountability, and take business risks under your own name. Society will reward you with responsibility, equity, and leverage.
  • Fortunes require leverage. Business leverage comes from capital, people, and products with no marginal cost of replication (code and media).
  • Code and media are permissionless leverage. They’re the leverage behind the newly rich. You can create software and media that works for you while you sleep.
  • If you can’t code, write books and blogs, record videos and podcasts.Set and enforce an aspirational personal hourly rate. If fixing a problem will save less than your hourly rate, ignore it. If outsourcing a task will cost less than your hourly rate, outsource it.
  • Set and enforce an aspirational personal hourly rate. If fixing a problem will save less than your hourly rate, ignore it. If outsourcing a task will cost less than your hourly rate, outsource it.

Learning to be the Best

  • Judgement requires experience, but can be built faster by learning foundational skills.
  • Study microeconomics, game theory, psychology, persuasion, ethics, mathematics, and computers.
  • Become the best in the world at what you do. Keep redefining what you do until this is true.

The Success Mantra – Distilled From My All Time Favourite Book Reads

“Whatever you vividly imagine, ardently desire, sincerely believe and enthusiastically act up on must inevitably come to pass.” -Paul Meyer

The Success Mantra is a collection of time tested and proven principles, that I have attempted to summarise in this note, from some of my all time favourite books.

The following is a short brief on the 10 valuable Mantras of Success

1. Definiteness of Purpose

2. Mastering Self-Discipline

3. Positive Mental Attitude

4. Learning from Failure

5. Effective Communication

6. Building a Mastermind Group

7. Taking Action

8. Persistence and Determination

9. Continuous Learning and Growth

10. Giving Back and Serving Others

Applying these principles can help everyone unlock their true potential and achieve success in various facets of life.

1. Definiteness of Purpose:

The secret of success is constancy to purpose. – Benjamin Disraeli

Success begins with a clear and specific goal. Define your purpose and create a plan to achieve it. Without a definite purpose, you may drift aimlessly and struggle to find success.

2. Mastering Self-Discipline:

Discipline is Destiny. – Ryan Holiday

Self-discipline is crucial for success. Develop the ability to control your thoughts, emotions, and actions. By mastering self-discipline, you can stay focused, overcome obstacles, and persist in the face of challenges.

3. Positive Mental Attitude:

Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow. – Helen Keller

Cultivate a positive mindset. Your thoughts and beliefs shape your reality. Maintain a positive mental attitude, visualize success, and eliminate negative self-talk. A positive mindset attracts opportunities and helps you overcome setbacks.

4. Learning from Failure:

I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. – Thomas A. Edison

Failure is not permanent unless you allow it to be. Embrace failure as a learning opportunity and stepping stone to success. Analyze your failures, learn from them, and adjust your approach. Persistence and resilience are key to achieving your goals.

5. Effective Communication:

Communication – the human connection – is the key to personal and career success. – Paul J. Meyer

Develop strong communication skills. Learn to express yourself clearly, listen actively, and understand others. Effective communication builds relationships, inspires collaboration, and opens doors to new opportunities.

6. Building a Mastermind Group:

When a group of intelligent men work in the spirit of Harmony, they will provide much more thought energy than a that of one intelligent man. – Napoleon Hill

Surround yourself with like-minded individuals who support and challenge you. Create a mastermind group of individuals who share similar goals and values. Collaborate, exchange ideas, and leverage collective knowledge and resources.

7. Taking Action:

A dream becomes a goal when action is taken toward its achievement – Bo Bennett

Success requires taking consistent and purposeful action. Avoid procrastination and indecision. Break down your goals into actionable steps and take immediate action. Progress comes from consistent effort and perseverance.

8. Persistence and Determination:

The most essential factor is persistence – the determination never to allow your energy or enthusiasm to be dampened by the discouragement that must inevitably come. – James Whitcomb Riley

Success rarely comes overnight. Develop persistence and determination to overcome obstacles and setbacks. Stay committed to your goals, even when faced with challenges. Success often comes to those who refuse to give up.

9. Continuous Learning and Growth:

Successful men, never stop acquiring specialized knowledge related to their major purpose, business, or profession. – Napoleon Hill

Commit to lifelong learning and personal growth. Acquire new knowledge, develop new skills, and stay updated with industry trends. Embrace a growth mindset and seek opportunities for self-improvement.

10. Giving Back and Serving Others:

When you’re in a position to have gotten so much, the gift at this point is giving back. – Paul Stanley

True success involves making a positive impact on others. Find ways to contribute to society and help others succeed. By serving others, you create a ripple effect of positivity and attract success into your own life.

Man’s Search For Meaning

“If you have a why to live, you can bear almost any how.”
– FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” – Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor Emil Frankl was an Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist, philosopher, writer, and Holocaust survivor. In 1942, just nine months after his marriage, Frankl and his family were sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. His father died there of starvation and pneumonia. In 1944, Frankl and the surviving members of his family were transported to Auschwitz, where his mother and brother were murdered in the gas chambers. His wife died later of typhus in Bergen-Belsen. Frankl spent three years in four concentration camps.
The author loses everything that he has when they bring him to the camp. Soldiers separate him from his wife, brother, sister and parents. For a long time, he didn’t even know if they were alive or not. Soldiers confiscated the scientific works he had been working on all his life and destroyed them.
After losing everything including his purpose of life, how can a man continue to live without losing hope?

Meaning of Life

“The meaning of life is to give life meaning.”
Viktor Frankl was the founder of logotherapy, a school of psychotherapy that describes a search for a life’s meaning as the central human motivational force.
Meaning in life according to Frankl ; can be of three kinds.
  1. The first being a higher purpose or calling, something you feel you have been put on this earth to achieve.
  • The second is love, love for your partner, spouse, children, family, friends, and all those who matter.
  • The last is suffering. Suffering is an unavoidable part of human existence and it is upto man to find meaning in his own suffering.
These are the three ‘roots of meaning.’ that can bring hope and guide anyone through a difficult period in life.

1. Pursue a Life Task

“Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated. Thus, everyone’s task is unique as his specific opportunity to implement it.”
There would be a task that you and only you can complete. A piece of work that required your unique experiences, knowledge, and skills.

2. Love

“The more one forgets himself—by giving himself to another person to love—the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself.”
According to Frankl ‘Love’ has little to do with just the feeling of being in love and more about doing things to help others succeed. “Love” is the act of recognizing the potential in those who matter you you and supporting them actualize that potential. When you lack meaning, find someone you can elevate.

3. Suffer Bravely

“(By) accepting the challenge to suffer bravely, life has a meaning up to the last moment, and it retains this meaning literally to the end.”
You can use your imagination to overcome suffering. Take this incident (from Frankl’s experience)-
While walking in the cold while being beaten by a Nazi guard, he recalls a man whispering to him, “If our wives could see us now! I do hope they are better off in their camps and don’t know what is happening to us.” Instead of worrying about the man’s comment, this prompted Frankl to retreat into his imagination. He pictured his wife and her smile.
“Life is Now – The Meaning of Life is in this Moment.” – Jayesh Tekchandaney
Life is made up of many stories which are scripted in the Now. Life is like a movie; it’s ultimate meaning can only be known in its conclusion. But each still in the movie has an inherent meaning of its own. It is up to us to make each frame and still meaningful to the best of our ability.

Logotherapy

“When we are unable to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
Logotherapy guides one to find their purpose and meaning in their lives. This meaning differs by individual and can change from hour to hour.
Meaning can be found in even the smallest of details. So, don’t spend all your waking hours searching for an all-encompassing meaning of life. Instead, search for meaning in everyday tasks and in the relationships you have with your friends and family.