Ideas:
- We want results too soon and we are willing to cut corners to get there.
- It’s like building your house upon the sand or building your house upon the rock.
- Think of the strip malls in America. They are so ugly, they are mad of the cheapest materials. They all need to rebuilt eventually. They serve there purpose, but they never serve it well, and they never serve it for long.
- Think of the building of Europe. They are made from the best materials. They were made based of sound principles of aesthetics and proportion. These are beautiful, inspiring, alluring. They still serve there purpose.
- Think of a business that doesn’t have a good product. They have to work so much harder to sell it, and once it is sold they will almost never get a returning customer.
- A business that actually builds a very good product, will in time always win because they are building on sound principles.
- This is something I wish I would have noticed earlier in life. I thought everything was based on appearance. I remember in sports I almost felt I had to trick my coaches with fluke performances in order that I could be a starter. I wish I would have realized that you trick no one. The most competent people always find their way to where they need to be.
- I have tried to live my life on fluke appearances. I would think that waking up early one day would make me who i wanted to be. Because who I wanted to be then was so shallow. All I really wanted was to be the person who looked like they were working hard.
- But now I realize that substance and form are literally all that matter. Fluke performances don’t scale well. They can’t scale over in time, nor can they scale in size.
- You must really be able to do the things you are claiming you can do. If you say you can
- Alex’ quote about affirmations in the mirror.
- You can think about it with relationships. Some people will be so infatuated with the other that they will not present the truest version of their self. Eventually it always comes out though. It is a form of lying. And it it so useless to try to build a relationship on false premises.
- Emerson’s quote on how the greatest men are the one’s with the greatest faith in the laws of cause and effect and the laws of compensation.
- Reality is set up in a way where only truth survives. In time all falsehood with crumple because it simple does not have the substance or form to carry its own weight.
- Substance can support itself. Life can support itself.
- This is important to know. It’s importnat to know that you fool no one or no thing. That you will be exposed for everything that you are.
- The good news is you can change what you are through growth learning and experiences. And the other good thing is that you can choose the pace at which you live through these things. You can choose the pace at which you do the work.
- A really good way to think about all this is with a physique.
- Someone may not have the best physique yet. Mybe they’ve just begun working out. At the beginning they contort their body in the weirdest ways, they try to get the perfect angles, when they walk they are so self-conscious to always be flexing and looking muscular. As their physcique changes though and really does take on the form of a ripped person. They will become mindless of all these things. They will trust that their substance, that their form is sound, and that it is what it is. they will Know that they have nothing to do other than just exist and that light will do the rest of the work for them. They don’t have to worry about seeming muscualr. They are and can rest assured that it will come through.
- There is also the thought of feeling like you will have to act your way through life. Shakespeares quote is true to some extent. But ultimately its a very shallow existence. What we want most is to feel that we actually are what we are presenting. That is the most secure place to be in life.
- Finally, I can use the example of what Trevor and I talked about with relationships. You can appear insecure and the relationship will fail. You can fake that your not insecure and the relationship will last longer or you can actually be secure. That is the only way to actually build a firm foundation. The problem is to get to that place of security we both had to let our insecurity fail us. We both had to suffer its consequences. But the failure made us now actually more secure, and from here on out insecurity wont even be a concern. We wont be concerned with not appearing insecure or appearing insecure. We will just be secure and it will come through.
- This is the highest ideal. It is definitely the case that the most naturally and instictive people and the most charming and appealing. those people who live purely from their source of instinct. However, often our instincts at first can be very bad. but if you really invest in the growth of your charachter. You become unconcerned with outcomes, but just live truly. And you grow in virtue. What you are and all that you’ve lost with have jsut been to make you what you are and you’ll just be great. and then your instinctual acts with be coming from a soiurce that is great and real and solid and not from a weak or false source.
