爱默生《论自助》|| 读书笔记

I remember when I was about years old, learning any subject that came my way eagerly in elementary school and one day we took a look at birds. Like many of my classmates I was shocked to hear how some birds would forcefully push their baby birds out of their nest, so they would learn to fly. They would either get the hang of it while falling through the air or they would hit the ground. I did not know just how similar my fate would be, but unlike mine, most of my classmates' lives would be very different. Their parents would buy them all they wanted, take care of them from head to toe. They would buy them the newest gameboy and pokemon cards. In return, these kids would yell at them, whenever they didn't get their way. The birthday gift they wanted wasn't the right color or perhaps it didn't have enough memory space. Their parents would drive them to school a few blocks away, give them a kiss, hug them and wave.

Meanwhile, here was I. I wished someone had cared for me at all, my reality was so far away from even resembling the ones of my peers. My training began early. I had to learn to fly, before I hit the ground. It wasn't pretty and it wasn't fun, to be frank, it was brutal, but while I've gotten used to facing the worst life has to offer, none of these spoiled kids I went to school with turned out great. They're the complete opposite of self-reliant... and even if I don't look back with a smile, I've got at least that going for me. Guys, I'm not hoping for empathy here. The last thing I care about is someone feeling sorry for me. That wouldn't change anything. What I do care about is offering you my perspective, hoping it proves valuable to you, whichever side of the story you personally see yourself. I don't know you and I won't judge you, but my reality is very simple. You're either pushed out of your nest forcefully, like I was, or you have to jump on your own. I'm sure it's really comfortable up there, I have no idea, but unless you strive for independence, you will never fulfill your true potential. You will never really be able to survive on your own and sooner or later life will push you into the abyss and then you'll regret not having taken action initially, on your own terms, but enough with the metaphors.

Self Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson is a short, potentially life-changing pamphlet. Emerson introduces the essay with a latin phrase. "Ne te quaesiveris extra" (Ne te quäsiveris extra) meaning - "Do not seek outside yourself" / "Look within." The ulimate form of self-mastery lies in searching for answers on your own, relying on nothing external. You think for yourself rather than sheepishly accepting other people's ideas. You value your individual experience over the knowledge gained from everything else. That's why reading isn't enough, you must apply what makes sense to you and learn from it first-hand. You value personal intuition, because you know, relying on general opinions, you would end up a frail, inept copy with no real self-worth. You know, the lack of conviction would not result in innovative ideas, but in accepting what you've been taught and identifying with it as a whole. In other words, you inevitably end up believing the nonsense of others. Their ignorance spreads over to you, if you don't make up your own mind. Idealy you form your opinion on lots of research from reliable sources, sticking to facts, logic and persuasive arguments. You're a unique, authentic individual who trusts his gut and understands the profound power of a built-in, bold and robust creative force. You understand that staying true to yourself, doing what you think is right, is a necessity for true happiness. You value authenticity and defend your stance in a world of mediocrity, in order to keep ahead.

Great. Now, let's dive deeper. Assume responsibility Taking responsibility gives you a sense of empowerment. The confidence that you are capable of shaping yourself, your life and the people close to you in your and their favor. Even when you're dealing with things outside your control, you trust in your faculties, you just know, whatever life throws at you, you're prepared and you're going to figure something out. See, when you fault someone else, you reject owning up to the situation, you expect someone else, who probably couldn't care less and is faulting you, to solve the problem. Most of the times they won't, because they don't assume responsibility, and that makes them a weak-minded person. So, to me, what you have to do is pretty obvious. Embrace accountablity, especially when you think of yourself as a leader. Self-reliance, taking full ownership, leading by example is the only way to true leadership.

Don't confuse management with leading. Having authority based on hierarchy doesn't make you a leader. When you're ahead of everyone and people are looking up to you, you take the blame, when things go wrong, you don't fingerpoint. Maybe Greg, the intern, is at fault for not doing his job right, but maybe you didn't do a good enough job explaining it to him and when you assume the latter. You focus on improving yourself, while being overly fair with Greg. Now, Greg sees and appreciates that. You didn't yell at him like an asshole, you treated him like a human being. Now, he's going to model you. Instead of thinking you didn't explain it to him well enough, he might think he didn't listen closely and he'll will pay extra attention it doesn't happen again in the future. This is not rocket surgery, yet every company I've worked for is full of so-called professionals who don't get this. They're not in the leadership business, they're in the do-this-because-I-told-you-business and they will suffer, because of it. And you might be thinking, well, that's not me, I'm not in a leadership a position. Yes, you are. All of us absolutely have to become great leaders in order to succeed and it starts with taking responsibility. It's just a matter of stepping up. Be informed Know your environment. Once you call the battlefield your home, you've gained a decisive advantage over the enemy. Whatever playground you're in, there are rules, there's a limited amount of resources, there's behaviour that leads to success and there's behaviour that leads to nowhere. The more you know, the more considerate your decision-making will be, because your personal intuition is backed by data.

I think more people should trust their gut, absolutely, but you need to have as much of the facts as possible first. Why do I value reading books so much? It's incredible information, at your disposal for the same price as a meal or two at a restaurant. Many authors spent their whole life thinking, researching, analyzing and reflecting on a certain subject, then writing it all down in a consumable, comprehensible way and you can get that for dollars. Outstanding, I'm baffled people don't read more and the ones who do... Speaking of behaviour that leads to nowhere. There's a scary amount of viewers who tell me they read a book a day, or I don't know, books every year. First of all, their definition of reading is quite interesting. They don't understand the meaning of being informed. They don't get what it's about. They're impressed by some Warren Buffet type story, where he picks up a stack of paper and says he read X amount of pages every day of his life. Then they try to emulate that. They focus on quantity, not quality. Instead of focusing on the content, they care more about what page they're on. I'm gonna make a bold statement here. Information that you can't apply, information that you don't have at your disposal when you need it, is worthless. Scanning through all the words in a book from front to back without any thought doesn't mean anything. Even worse when you're skimming it. Sure, you can say "you've read the book," but what's that worth? You don't start with a library, you start with a few books you're going to study profoundly. In my opinion you're never done reading a good quality book like the Laws of Power, you always go back to it, we're human, we tend to forget. Stop working out - you're losing muscle and strength, same here.

How many times have you watched your favorite movie? Every time I watch Fight Club I refresh my memory and I notice something new, I overlooked before. Same here. But if you only buy no-name BS from your local book store without any research on the author, then I'm not surprised you don't want to read it a second time. You want quality information. Books, among other products and services, are a great source, but like I said, being self-reliant, "You value your individual experience over the knowledge gained from everything else." Know where you're going You set goals for yourself. This is very important, you are pursuing your own objectives, not the ones your parents, your peers and the school system wants to pressure onto you. Since you're autonomous you don't rely on the validation of others on the decisions you make. And you think of a goal as a metaphor for one of the many destinations you will want to reach on your life's path. This is essential, because in order to come up with a gameplan you got to have the ending in mind. So, you determine the various tasks that you will do today, tomorrow, throughout the week and the one after, considering how those tasks will help you progress. Every few steps of the way you take a bit of time and reflect on how far you've come, how effective you've been and if you need to adjust your plan a little to push through barriers. Only a bad plan can't be changed.

Further more know how to set SMART goals. S-M-A-R-T. How you phrase your goals and what wording you use is very important in pursuing them successfully.

Specific: What exactly do you want to accomplish? e.g. I want to reach an audience of ' subscribers on YouTube.

Measurable: How will you evaluate the extent to which the goal has been met? Obviously, I reached the goal once I have ' subscribers. That's a number, so I can measure it easily. Just like "I want to lose pounds" or "I want run miles every morning." However, if my goal was, say, to "become a better boyfriend." That would be too vague. It's not nearly specific enough and it's not measurable. But if we said "I want to spend days of the week having fun with my girlfriend, even though I'm busy studying for my exams." Then that's measurable.

Achievable: Is it even possible? Can you even reach your goal? Unlike, "I want to achieve my (so-called) father's approval." That's not only impossible, it's also meaningless and I realized that at the age of . That's when I started to not care anymore and saught only my own acknowledgement. Not only was I harsh on myself and very critical of my accomplishments and failures, since I knew better than anybody else what I was capable of, I was also fair and the only single one, trustworthy judge to have the necessary awareness to critisize myself. Going back to this. ' Subscribers is definitely achievable. There's plenty evidence it can be done. It's not like "I want to walk on the moon" and even that could be done with some creativity, if you ask me.

Relevant: Does it fit into the bigger picture? Meaning, does reaching your goal help you progress, get ahead with all your other objectives? Well, the bigger picture for me, dear viewer, is to do something that hasn't been done before, atleast in the way, that I've thought hard and long about. A combination of v-log, documentary, podcast that includes things I'm very passionate about like history, travel, languages, food and psychology. These book summaries are step one. A big step, but only a starting point when I look at my blueprint for the things I want to achieve in life. We live once, so we might as well do our thing. So, yes, it's very relevant to what I'm trying to achieve in the grand scheme of things.

Time-bound: Basically, by when do you have to achieve your goals, with what frequency, in what time period? By the end of this year, st of December I want to have atleast ' subscribers. Not only do I want to achieve this, but I have to, because of outside pressure. If this illacertus thing doesn't catch any speed real soon, I would have to reconsider my plan of making this work. Time can be very cruel, but it can be your best friend, too, as we've seen in my video on Mastery, as we've seen when I put my word on the line that I would finish the laws series by the end of January, which made me work even harder. I feel like I'm constantly on Deathground and it's definitely got consequences on my mood, social life and energy levels, but at the same time that's why I'm so productive. Speaking of time-bound. I would rather condense a low intensity work life with little pay into a few high intensity years with the potential of substantial wealth. Not so I could buy expensive and meaningless material, but self-reliance. When you depend on getting your next paycheck, you live in constant fear and anxiety. I want to get that part of my life handled and I strongly believe, the right way to do it, is working hard and smart in order to provide value to you.

There you have it, you now know exactly how to set smart goals for yourself. I wonder why I've never learned this in school. You're lucky if you have. Lots of people fail, because they disregard these points when planning ahead. That's not the case for you anymore. You know precisely what you're trying to achieve. Make your own decisions As I've alluded to earlier, you are the best judge for what's the next, greatest possible step to take in your life. The self-reliant may ask for the opinion of others every once in a while in order to consider it, but generally they block out all the noise and distractions, weigh the pros and cons, assess and calculate the risk and then they come up with their own conclusion. They trust their gut, their own assessment of the situation. That gut feeling you have is an integrated sixth sense. Deep down in your heart you just know exactly what the right thing to do is. I've said this before, it doesn't really matter what choice you make, because you don't make the right or wrong choice. You make A choice and then you make that choice right. You're the one setting up the options, because you're self-reliant. By that I mean, you might ask yourself, should I try and become a professional snowboarder, which I'd really really love to do or should I become an author, which I really really love, as well? The answer might just be "I can combine both of these things and write books about my journey, documenting how I've become a pro snowboarder, what it takes and what I've learned from my failures and successes." There you go, that's a book I would buy. Especially since you're a master at your craft, you've gained all the right experiences and you know what you're talking about. Notice how both of those options were something our self-reliant example here is passionate about. He didn't ask himself whether he should go to university and study law, because his mother nags him about it. He doesn't even consider that, since it's the last thing he's interested in.

And look, this is just one example, you might want to go study a subject for a few years. Nothing wrong with that, especially when you want to be a doctor or an architect. Man, I would love to be an architect, but I don't love it enough to sacrifice the time and resources I would have to spend in order to become one. That's one of my personal decisions. I'm not going that route, I understand, it's not in my best interests, but that's me. If you take anything away from this video, let it be this. You make A choice and then you make that choice right. If you decide you want to do study law and become one of the best lawyers on earth, then you got to go all in. You will have to commit to the process and that's that, you're in it now. You're going to be the best lawyer this world has ever seen and by god, if your mother isn't proud of you then, she can do something else with her opinion, you don't care for you know yourself to the T and if defending the innocent people of crimes they haven't committed is your life goal, then may god help the ones who doubt you, for you are going to prove those non-believers wrong and the ones who believe in you right. But again, that does not really matter, their talking only serves as supplementary motivation. You'll show the world what you're made of. Pure fucking solid gold. I know some of you don't want me to swear, but by Zeus, make way for the men and women who take all of this to heart and set out on their true path, regardless of what anybody says or thinks. Don't you stay in their way for you will hurt yourself. In closing, I was going to say, good luck, but you don't rely on luck, you don't rely on hope, or an unexplainable turn of events that changes the game overnight. You don't need luck. You don't need anything for you already have everything you require. You know everything you need to know and if you don't know, even though you do know, you find out, so that you know, even though you already knew. Right? Exactly. And don't be too hard on yourself, learn from failure. The ones who never fail, never try.

"One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star." - Friedrich Nietzsche

You want your life to be chaotic. It wouldn't be as exciting otherwise. Great, now let's recap. You assume responsibility. You inform yourself. You know where you're going. You set S.M.A.R.T. goals & pursue them. You make your own decisions.

As always thanks for watching and subscribe for my upcoming synopsis on Extreme Ownership - How Navy Seals Lead and Win for more information on assuming responsibility and being a self-reliant badass.