The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time by Will Durant | Book Summary
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From the “Hundred Best Books” to the “Ten Greatest Thinkers” to the “Ten Greatest Poets,” here is a concise collection of the world’s most significant knowledge. For the better part of a century, Will Durant dwelled upon―and wrote about―the most significant eras, individuals, and achievements of human history. His selections have finally been brought together in a single, compact volume. Durant eloquently defends his choices of the greatest minds and ideas, but he also stimulates readers into forming their own opinions, encouraging them to shed their surroundings and biases and enter “The Country of the Mind,” a timeless realm where the heroes of our species dwell.
From a thinker who always chose to exalt the positive in the human species, The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time stays true to Durant’s optimism. This is a book containing the absolute best of our heritage, passed on for the benefit of future generations. Filled with Durant’s renowned wit, knowledge, and unique ability to explain events and ideas in simple and exciting terms, this is a pocket-size liberal arts and humanist curriculum in one volume.
If a man is fortunate he will, before he dies, gather up as much as he can of his civilized heritage and transmit it to his children. And to his final breath he will be grateful for this inexhaustible legacy, knowing that it is our nourishing mother and our lasting life. – Will Durant
“…humor is akin to philosophy for they are both viewpoints born of a large perspective of life.”
CHAPTER ONE: A Shameless Worship of Heroes
shameless: “Our democratic dogma has leveled not only all voters but all leaders; we delight to show that living geniuses are only mediocrities, and that dead ones are myths. … Since it is contrary to good manners to exalt ourselves, we achieve the same result by slyly indicating how inferior are the great men of the earth.”
“…for why should we stand reverent before waterfalls and mountaintops, or a summer moon on a quiet sea, and not before the highest miracle of all: a man who is both great and good? So many of us are mere talents, clever children in the play of life, that when genius stands in our presence we can only bow down before it as an act of God, a continuance of creation.”
“No, the real history of man is not in prices and wages, not in elections and battles, nor in the even tenor of the common man; it is in the lasting contributions made by geniuses to the sum of human civilization and culture.”
“And so with every country, so with the world; its history is properly the history of its great men. … Therefore I see history not as a dreary scene of politics and carnage, but as the struggle of man through genius with the obdurate inertia of matter and the baffling mystery of mind; the struggle to understand, control, and remake himself and the world. … I see men standing on the edge of knowledge, and holding the light a little further ahead; … Here is a process of creation more vivid than in any myth; a godliness more real than in any creed.”
“To contemplate such men, to insinuate ourselves through study into some modest discipleship to them, to watch them at their work and warm ourselves at the fire that consumes them, this is to recapture some of the thrill that youth gave us when we thought, at the altar or in the confessional, that we were touching or hearing God.”
“Let us change the icons, and light the candles again.”
CHAPTER TWO: The Ten “Greatest” Thinkers
“What is thought? It baffles description because it includes everything through which it might be defined. It is the most immediate fact that we know, and the last mystery of our being.”
“Thought and invention began: the bewilderment of baffled instinct begot the first timid hypotheses, the first tentative putting together of two and two, the first generalizations, the first painful studies of similarities of quality and regularities of sequence, the first adaption of things learned to situations so novel that reactions instinctive and immediate broke down in utter failure. It was then that certain instincts of action evolved into modes of thought and instruments of intelligence: what had been watchful waiting or stalking a prey became attention; fear and flight became caution and deliberation; pugnacity and assault became curiosity and analysis; manipulation became experiment. The animal stood up erect and became man, slave still to a thousand circumstances, timidly brave before countless perils, but in his precarious way destined henceforth to be lord of the earth.”
“If ideas do not determine history, inventions do; and inventions are determined by ideas. Certainly it is desire, the restlessness of our insatiable wants, that agitates us into thinking; but however motivated or inspired, it is thought that finds a way.”
“Perhaps…all history is a succession of inventions made by genius and turned into conventions by the people, a series of initiatives taken by adventurous leaders and spread among the masses of mankind by the waves of imitation. There is no doubt that at the beginning and summit of every age some heroic genius stands, the voice and index of his time, the inheritor and interpreter of the past, the guide and pioneer into the future. … But as we face the task of selecting these persons of the drama, about whom the play revolves, a dozen difficulties daunt us. What shall be our test of greatness? How, in the roster of human genius, shall we know whom to omit and whom to name?”
The Criteria: “Well, we shall be ruthless and dogmatic here; and though it break our hearts we shall admit no hero to our list whose thought, however subtle or profound, has not had an enduring influence upon mankind.”
- CONFUCIUS. A pupil having asked him should one return good for evil, Confucius replied: “‘With what then will you recompense kindness? Return good for good, and for evil, justice.” He did not believe that all men were equal; it seemed to him that intelligence was not a universal gift. … The greatest fortune of a people would be to keep ignorant persons from public office, and secure their wisest men to rule them.
- PLATO. Why do we love Plato? Because Plato himself was a lover…because he was alive every minute of his life, and never ceased to grow; such a man can be forgiven for whatever errors he has made. … How much of Plato’s Socrates was Socrates, and how much of it was Plato, we shall probably never know. Let us take Plato as implying both. … Here is an immortality of the soul which makes almost insignificant the passing of the flesh
- ARISTOTLE. Here is a circumnavigation of the globe such as no mind has accomplished since; here every problem in science and philosophy has its consideration, its illumination, and a defensible solution; here knowledge is brought together as if through a thousand spies, and coordinated into a united vision of the world. Here the phraseology of philosophy is born, and today it is hardly possible to think without using the mintage of Aristotle’s brain. Here are new sciences, founded with almost casual ease, as if these supreme creations of the human intellect were but the recreations of a philosopher; here it is that biology appears, and embryology, and logic. Not that no man had ever thought of these matters before, but that none had controlled his thinking with patient observation, careful experiment, and systematic formulation and results. Barring astronomy and medicine, the history of science begins with the encyclopedic labors of the tireless Stagyrite.
- SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS. “How long and dreary was that second adolescence of the conscious European mind! … What Dante did to the hopes and fears of the Catholic Renaissance, Aquinas did for its thought: unifying knowledge, interpreting it, and focusing it all upon the great problems of life and death. The world does not follow him now, preferring a doubting Thomas to a dogmatic one…
- COPERNICUS. But to the medieval world, whose whole philosophy had rested on the neighborly nearness of earth and God, on the constant moral solicitude of the Deity for man, this new astronomy was an atheistic blasphemy, a ruthless blow that seemed to overthrow the Jacob’s ladder which faith had built between angels and men. … With him modernity begins. With him secularism begins. With him reason makes its French Revolution against a faith immemorially enthroned, and man commences his long effort to rebuild with thought the shattered palace of his dreams. … With the Copernican revolution man was compelled to become of age.
- SIR FRANCIS BACON. Oh, the zest of those bright Renaissance days, when the poverty of a thousand years was almost forgotten, and the labor of a thousand years had made men richer and bolder, scornful of barriers and bounds! … “the man who rang the bell that called the wits together”; who sent out a challenge to all the lovers and servants of truth everywhere to bind themselves together in the new order and ministry of science; who proclaimed the mission of thought as no vain scholastic dispute, no empty academic speculation, but the inductive inquiry into nature’s laws, the resolute extension of the mastery of man over the conditions of his life; the man who mapped out as with royal authority the unconquered fields of research, pointed a hundred sciences to their tasks, and foretold their unbelievable victories; who inspired the Royal Society of Great Britain and the great Encyclopedieof France, who turned men from knowledge as meditation to knowledge as remolding power; who despised worship and longed for control; who overthrew the Aristotelian logic of unobservant reason and turned the gaze of science to the self-revealing face of nature; who carried in his brave soul, beyond any other man of that spacious age, the full spirit and purpose of the modern mind.
- SIR ISAAC NEWTON. …For it is to him who masters our minds by the force of truth, and not to those who enslave them by violence, that we owe our reverence.”
- VOLTAIRE. But which of us is original except in form? What idea can we conceive today that has not enjoyed, in one garb or another, a hoary antiquity of time? It is easier to be original in error than in truth, for every truth displaces a thousand falsehoods. … Voltaire, like Bacon, “lighted his candle at every man’s torch”; it remains that he made the torch burn so brightly that it enlightened all mankind. Things came to him dull and he made them radiant; things came to him obscure, and he cleansed and scoured them with clarity; things came to him in useless scholastic dress, and he clothed them in such language that the whole world could understand and profit from them.
- IMMANUEL KANT. For how can we know matter except through our senses?–and what is it then for us but our idea of it? Matter, as known to us, is but a form of mind. … It was Kant who labored best to rescue mind from matter;…The world heard him gladly, for it felt that it could live by faith alone, and did not love a science that merely darkened its aspirations and destroyed its hopes. … Apparently Kant had won the battle against materialism and atheism, and the world could hope again.
- CHARLES DARWIN. And then Darwin came, and the war waged anew. …it may well be that for posterity his name will stand as a turning point int he intellectual development of our Western civilization. If Darwin was wrong, the world may forget him as it has almost forgotten Democritus and Anaxagoras; if he was right, men will have to date from 1859 the beginning of modern thought. … For what did Darwin do but offer, quietly, and with a disarming humility, a world-picture totally different from that which had contented the mind of man before? … Copernicus had reduced the earth to a speck among melting clouds; Darwin reduced man to an animal fighting for his transient mastery of the globe. Man was no longer the son of God; he was the son of strife, and his wars made the fiercest brutes ashamed of their amateur cruelty.
CHAPTER THREE: The Ten “Greatest” Poets
“What is your test of greatness in a poet?” It is a sorry dilemma. … No; let me not pretend to do more here than to reveal my prejudices…
- HOMER. It seems unimportant and irrelevant that the tale as Homer tells it is not true…it is so well invented, and so vivaciously recounted, that if the facts were different, so much the worse for the facts. Beauty has its rights as well as truth;…these ancient epics are not complex in art or thought; they were addressed to the ear, not to the mind, and to the people, not to subtle lords; … Today we lead intricate and often introverted lives, in which action as the Greeks knew it is a rare exception, found chiefly in the press and gathered from afar; man is now an animal that stops and thinks. Therefore our literature is an analysis of motives and thought; it is in mental conflict that we find the profoundest wars and the darkest tragedies. But in Homer’s day life was action…
- DAVID. No matter who wrote them, or when; there they are, [the Psalms] the profoundest lyrics in literature, so vivid with ecstasy that even those who doubt all dogmas feel in the blood a strange response to their music still. It is true that they complain too much; that they echo or anticipate Job’s wonder why the just should suffer so while the ruthless prosper; that they conceive the deity in a narrow and nationalistic sense; that they beg too pugnaciously for the punishment of enemies; that they coax Jehovah with fulsome praise, reproach him for negligence…. Never was religious feeling so powerfully or so beautifully expressed; with language that remains, in English, a model of simplicity, clarity, and strength, and in Hebrew rings out in full organ tones of majesty; with phrases that are part of the currency of our speech (“out of the mouth of babes and sucklings,” “the apple of my eye,” “put not your trust in princes”);
- EURIPIDES. Here is all the power of Shakespeare, without his range and subtlety, but with a social passion that moves us as nothing in all modern drama can, except the dying Lear.
- LUCRETIUS. He is a strange man, this Lucretius, obviously nervous and unstable; … He is a dark pessimist, who sees everywhere two self-canceling movements–growth and decay, reproduction and destruction, Venus and Mars, life and death. All forms begin and have their end; only atoms, space, and law remains; birth is a prelude to corruption, and even this massive universe will thaw and flow back into formlessness:
- LI-PO. Legend, unsatisfied with a common end for so extraordinary a soul, told how he was drowned in a river while attempting to embrace the water’s reflection of the moon.
- DANTE. How slowly Europe recovered from her long nightmare of Roman degeneration and barbarian invasion! … he could describe hell later because he went through every realm of it on earth, and if he painted Paradise less vividly, it was for lack of personal experience. Perhaps the poem which he now began to write saved him from madness and suicide. Nothing so cleanses the dross out of a man as the creation of beauty or the pursuit of truth, and if the two are merged in one with him, as they were with Dante, he must be purified. “All hope abandon, ye who enter here!” … It would not have been medieval had it not been an allegory: our human life is always a hell, says the poet, until wisdom (Virgil) purges us of evil desire, and love (Beatrice) lifts us to happiness and peace. … People remarked that he was never known to smile.
- WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. …being asked why Shakespeare had written such plays, answered, “One must eat.” Such is fame. A man should never read his reviewers, nor be too curious about the verdict of posterity. … “all things are with more spirit chased than enjoyed” … love is never quite content; in its secret heart is a poisonous anxiety, a premonition of alienation and decay. “Love,” says Rosalind, “is merely a madness, and, I tell you, deserves a dark-house and a whip as madmen do.” …. He became through despair the greatest poet of all. What we like in him most is the madness and richness of his speech. His style is as his life was, full of energy, riot, color, and excess; “nothing succeeds like excess.”
- JOHN KEATS. …I have loved the principle of beauty in all things, … “Here lies one whose name is write in water.”
- PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. No one was ever more completely or exclusively a poet. … But it exceeds all imagination to conceive what would have been the moral condition of the world if neither Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Calderon, Lord Bacon nor Milton had ever existed; if Raphael and Michelangelo had never been born; if the Hebrew poetry had never been translated; if a revival of the study of Greek literature had never taken place; if no monuments of ancient sculpture had been handed down to us; and if the poetry of the religion of the ancient world had been extinguished together with its beliefs. … Cor cordium–“heart of hearts.”
- WALT WHITMAN. …he would incarnate…his own rough country, his own dubious democracy, his own turbulent and growing time. What Homer had been to Greece, Virgil to Rome, Dante to Italy, Shakespeare to England, he was to be for America, because he dared to see in her, with all her faults, her material of song. “The originality of Leaves of Grass,” says a French Critic, “is perhaps the most absolute which has ever been manifest in literature.” Originality in first words:…masculine adjectives and nouns, plain blunt words, daringly raised from the streets and the fields to poetry…originality of form: no rhymes, except in occasional failures like “Captain, My Captain” … the vivid identification of himself with every soul in every experience.
CHAPTER FOUR: The One Hundred “Best” Books for an Education
If I were rich I would have many books, and I would pamper myself with bindings bright to the eye and soft to the touch, paper generously opaque, and type such as mend designed when printing was very young.
“Let me have seven hours a week, and I will make a scholar and a philosopher out of you; in four years you shall be as well educated as any new-fledged Doctor of Philosophy in the land.”
“Remember that we are not making a list of the absolutely best one hundred books, no list merely of the masterpieces of belles lettres; we are choosing those volumes that will do most to make a man educated.”
“the start is half the deed.”
“Read actively, not passively: consider at every step whether what you read accords with your own experience, and how far it may be applied to the guidance of your own life. But if you disagree with an author, or are shocked by his heresies, read on nevertheless; toleration of differences is one mark of a gentleman.” (67-8) “Why is our list henceforth historically arranged? First, because it is well to study history as it was lived and made…”
“Life without music, as Nietzsche said, would be a mistake.”
“And so the Revolution comes [after 1789], aristocracy is guillotined, art and manners droop, truth replaces beauty, and science remakes the world nearer to its head’s desire.”
“Apparently beauty is born in suffering, and wisdom is the child of grief. The philosophers of our parent-century were almost as unhappy as the composers…”
“It is always easier to love the weak than the strong; the strong do not need our loove, and instinctively we look for flaws in their irritating perfection; every statue is a provocation.”
“These are sad books, but by the time we reach the end of our list we shall be strong enough to face truth without anesthesia.”
Life is better than literature, friendship is sweeter than philosophy, and children reach into our hearts with a profounder music than comes from any symphony, but even so these living delights offer no derogation to the modest and secondary pleasures of our books.
“For these are friends who give us only their best, who never answer back, and always wait our call. When we have walked with them awhile, and listened humbly to their speech, we shall be healed of our infirmities, and know the peace that comes of understanding.”
CHAPTER FIVE: The Ten “Peaks” of Human Progress
(A Sketch of a Tableau of the Progress of the Human Spirit). “Given 100 years of liberated knowledge and universal free education,” he said, “and all social problems will, at the close of the next century, have been solved. . . . There is no limit to progress except the duration of the globe upon which we are placed.”
I have never ceased to marvel that a man so placed–driven to the very last stand of hope, with all his personal sacrifices of aristocratic privilege and fortune gone for nothing, with that great revolution upon which the youth of all Europe had pinned its hopes for a better world issuing in indiscriminate suspicion and terror–should, instead of writing an epic of despondency and gloom, have written a paean to progress.
“Search through all ancient Greek and Latin literature, and you will find no affirmatory belief in human progress. … It is a relatively new idea for men to have and to hold.”
Progress–A Definition: Let us provisionally define progress as “increasing control of the environment by life,” and let us mean by environment “all circumstances that condition the coordination and realization of desire.” Progress is the domination of chaos by mind and purpose, of matter by form and will.
And in assessing epochs and nations we must guard against loose thinking. We must not compare nations in their youth with nations int he mellowness of their cultural maturity, and we must not compare the worst or the best of one age with the selected best or worst of all the collected past. … each age and place calls for and needs certain brands of genius rather than others,… these stars did not all shine on the same night. Our problem is whether the total and average level of human ability has increased, and stands at its peak today.
Under the complex strain of city life we sometimes take imaginative refuge in the quiet simplicity of savage days, but in our less romantic moments we know that this is a flight-reaction from our actual tasks, that this idolatry of barbarism, like so many of our young opinions, is merely an impatient expression of adolescent maladaption, part of the suffering involved in the contemporary retardation of individual maturity.
A study of such savage tribes as survive shows their high rate of infantile mortality, their short tenure of life, their inferior speed, their inferior stamina, their inferior will, and their superior plagues. … The savage, however, might turn the argument around, and inquire how we enjoy our politics and our wars ,and whether we think ourselves happier than the tribes whose weird names resound int he textbooks of anthropology. The believer in progress will have to admit that we have made too many advances in the art of war, and that our politicians, with startling exceptions, would have adorned the Roman Forum in the days of Milo and Clodius. As to happiness, no man can say; it is an elusive angel. Presumably it depends first upon health, secondly upon love, and thirdly upon wealth. As to wealth, we make such progress that it lies on the conscience of our intellectuals; as to love, we try to atone for our lack of depth by unprecedented inventiveness and variety. Our thousand fads of diet and drugs predispose us to the belief that we must be ridden with disease as compared with simpler men in simpler days, but this is a delusion. We think that where there are so many doctors there must be more sickness than before. But in truth we have not more ailments than in the past, but only more money; our wealth allows us to treat and cherish and master illnesses from which primitive men died without even knowing their Greek names.
The Outline Of History: …certain great moments stand out as the peaks and essence of human history, certain advances which, once made, were never lost.
- SPEECH. …the slow development of articulate expression.
- FIRE. Fire made man independent of climate, gave him a greater compass on the earth, tempered his tools to hardness and durability, and offered him as food a thousand things inedible before. Not least of all it made him master of the night…
- THE CONQUEST OF THE ANIMALS. …there was a time when man was hunted as well as hunter, when every step from cave or hut was an adventure, and the possession of the earth was still at stake.
- AGRICULTURE. For civilization came through two things chiefly: the home, which developed those social dispositions that form the psychological cement of society, and agriculture, which took man from his wandering life as a hunter, herder, and killer, and settled him long enough in one place to let him build homes, schools, churches, colleges, universities, civilization. But it was woman who gave man agriculture and the home; she domesticated man as she domesticated the sheep and the pig. Man is woman’s last domestic animal, and perhaps he is the last creature that will be civilized by woman. The task is just begun: one look at our menus reveals us as still in the hunting stage.
- SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. Here are two men disputing: one knocks the other down, kills him, and then concludes that he who is alive must have been right, and that he who is dead must have been wrong–a mode of demonstration still accepted in international disputes. Here are two other men disputing: one says to the other, “Let us not fight–we may both be killed; let us take our difference to some elder of the tribe, and submit to his decision.” It was a crucial moment in human history! For if the answer was “No,” barbarism continued; if it was “Yes,” civilization planted another root int he memory of man: the replacement of chaos with order, of brutality with judgment, of violence with law.
- MORALITY. Here we touch the very heart of our problem–are men morally better than they were? So far as intelligence is an element in morals, we have improved: the average of intelligence is higher, and there has been a great increase in the number of what we may vaguely call “developed” minds. So far as character is concerned, we have probably retrogressed: subtlety of thought has grown at the expense of stability of soul; … We are a slightly gentler species than we were: capable of greater kindness.
We think there is more violence in the world than before, but in truth there are only more newspapers.
There is less brutality between men and women, between parents and children, between teachers and pupils, than in any recorded generation of the past. The emancipation of woman and her ascendancy over man indicate an unprecedented gentility in the once murderous male. Love, which was unknown to primitive men, or was only a hunger in the flesh, has flowered into a magnificent garden of song and sentiment, in which the passion of a man for a maid, though vigorously rooted in physical need, rises like incense into the realm of living poetry.
- TOOLS. These multiplying inventions are the new organs with which we control our environment … the airplane has its highest meaning for us: long chained, like Prometheus, to the earth, we have freed ourselves at last, and now we may look the eagle in the face.
The menial labor that degraded both master and man is lifted from human shoulders and harnessed to the tireless muscles of iron and steel; soon every waterfall and every wind will pour its beneficent energy into factories and homes, and man will be freed for the tasks of the mind. It is not revolution but invention that will liberate the slave.
- SCIENCE. …we progress only in knowledge, and these other gifts are rooted in the slow enlightenment of the mind. … Already in our day man is turning round from his remade environment, and beginning to remake himself.
- EDUCATION. More and more completely we pass on to the next generation the gathered experiences of the past. … We have not excelled the selected geniuses of antiquity, but we have raised the level and average of human knowledge far beyond any age in history …in the perspective of history the great experiment of education is just begun. … What will the full fruitage of education be when every one of us is schooled till twenty, and finds equal access to the intellectual treasures of the race? … Adolescence lengthens: we begin more helplessly, and we grow more completely toward that higher man who struggles to be born out of our darkened souls. We are the raw material of civilization.
Consider it not as the painful accumulation of facts and dates, but as an ennobling intimacy with great men. Consider it not as the preparation of the individual to “make a living,” but as the development of every potential capacity in him for the comprehension, control, and appreciation of his world. Above all, consider it, in its fullest definition, as the technique of transmitting as completely as possible, to as many as possible, that technological, intellectual, moral, and artistic heritage through which the race forms the growing individual and makes him human. Education is the reason why we behave like human beings. We are hardly born human; we are born ridiculous and malodorous animals; we become human, we have humanity thrust upon us through the hundred channels whereby the past pours down into the present that mental and cultural inheritance whose preservation, accumulation, and transmission place mankind today, with all its defectives and illiterates, on a higher plane than any generation has ever reached before.
- WRITING AND PRINT. …if one generation forgot or misunderstood, the weary ladder of knowledge has to be climbed anew. …it created that Country of the Mind in which, because of writing, genius need not die. … And now, as writing united the generations, print, despite the thousand prostitutions of it, can bind the civilizations. …and accumulation of technical knowledge and cultural creation; … Nothing but beauty and wisdom deserve immortality.
We need not fret, then, about the future. …Never was our heritage of civilization and culture so secure, and never was it half so rich. We may do our little share to augment it and transmit it, confident that time will wear away chiefly the dross of it, and that what is finally fair and worthy in it will be preserved, to illuminate many generations.
CHAPTER SIX: Twelve Vital Dates in World History
…the inclusion of dates in the text would make the story as accurate and dull as a good encyclopedia; that the transformation of dead data into living narrative would require some other disposition of dates than one that would infest with them every page of the tale.
… I should hardly be content to have my pupils know only twelve dates, and I presume that the choice of this baker’s number would not suggest an optimum, but rather a minimum–
…If, however, one is condemned to live on a mental desert island,…
- 4241 B.C.–THE INTRODUCTION OF THE EGYPTIAN CALENDAR. The implications of that calendar are endless…development of astronomy and mathematics,…it divided the year into twelve months of thirty days each, with five intercalary days at the end for roistering…
- 543 B.C.–THE DEATH OF BUDDHA. No other soul, I suppose, has ever been so influential. …in truth, Buddhism does not follow Buddha,…But Buddha means India, for the spirit of India lies in religion rather than in science, in contemplation rather than in action, in a fraternal gentleness rather than in the application of mathematics to artillery, or of chemistry to bombs. Life, said Buddha, is full of suffering; it can be made bearable only by doing no injury to any living thing, and speaking no evil of any man–or woman either.
- 478 B.C.–THE DEATH OF CONFUCIUS. Never has one man so written his name upon the face and spirit of a people as Confucius has done in China.
- 399 B.C.–THE DEATH OF SOCRATES. …when for the first time a whole civilization liberated itself from superstition, and created science, drama, democracy, and liberty, and passed on to Rome and Europe half of our intellectual and aesthetic heritage.
- 44 B.C.–THE DEATH OF CAESAR. …the death of Caesar standas as the door to the Golden Age of Rome.
- ? B.C.–THE BIRTH OF CHRIST. This date the reader may place ad lib., since no man knows it. For us it is the most important date of all, because it divides all history in the West, gives us our greatest hero and model, provides us with that body of myth and legend which is now passion from the theological to the literary stage, and marks the beginning of that Christan age which seems today to be approaching its close. After us the deluge; God knows what a mess of occult faiths will in the present century replace the tender and cruel theologies that praised and dishonored Christ.
- D. 632 –THE DEATH OF MOHAMMED. There is no surety that the future is not theirs.
- 1294–THE DEATH OF ROGER BACON. This date is almost as good as any other to mark the first use of gunpowder…It was Roger Bacon who first definitely described the explosive that would revolutionize the world and offer to all pious statesmen a substitute for birth control. … Perhaps this is the most important date in the story of the fall of man; though some cynic might argue that a still more tragic event was the invention of thinking, the liberation of intellect from instinct, the consequent separation of sex from reproduction, and the abandonment of the perpetuation of the race to the selected morons of every land.
- 1454–THE PRESS OF JOHANNES GUTENBERG (AT MAINZ ON THE RHINE0 ISSUES THE FIRST PRINTED DOCUMENTS BEARING A PRINTED DATE. One hardly knows, today, whether printing does more harm than good, or whether the growth of knowledge and learning has not weakened character as much as it has stocked the mind–but let us try it a little further!
- 1492–COLUMBUS DISCOVERS AMERICA.
- 1769–JAMES WATT BRINGS THE STEAM ENGINE TO PRACTICAL UTILITY. This event inaugurated the Industrial Revolution…it was Watt’s stone that capped the arch and changed the world. …It transformed society and government by empowering the owners of machinery and the controllers of commerce beyond the owners of titles and land. It transformed religion by generating science and its persuasive miracles and inducing many men to think in terms of cause and effect and machines. It transformed the mind by substituting novel and varied stimuli, necessitating thought, for the old ancestral and domestic situations to which instinct had been adapted and sufficient. It transformed woman by taking her work from the home and forcing her into the factories to recapture it. It transformed morals by complicating economic life, postponing marriage, multiplying contacts and opportunities, liberating woman, reducing the family, and weakening religious and parental authority and control. And it transformed art by subordinating beauty to use, and subjecting the artist, not to a favored few with inherited standards of judgment and trained tastes, but to a multitude who judged all things in terms of power and cost and size. … All this and more–Capitalism, Socialism, the Imperialism that must come when industrialized nations need foreign markets and foreign food, the wars that must come for these markets, and the revolutions that must come from these wars. … Seventeen-sixty-nine stands for the whole modern age.
- 1789–THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. …the political signature to economic and psychological facts that had accumulated for centuries…that humanity is an interlude in biology, biology an interlude in geology, and geology an interlude in astronomy… all in all I consider it the peak of human history, greater even than Periclean Greece, or Augustan Rome, or Medicean Italy. Never had men thought so bravely, spoken so brilliantly, or lifted themselves to a greater height of culture and courtesy. …Yes, they had destroyed one France, but they had liberated another, not to speak of freeing America through their disciples, Washington, Franklin, and Jefferson.
We are all born within frontiers of space and time and, struggle as we will, we never escape from our boxes.
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The Great Mental Models by Shane Parrish | Book Summary
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The old saying goes, “To the man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” But anyone who has done any kind of project knows a hammer often isn’t enough.
The more tools you have at your disposal, the more likely you’ll use the right tool for the job — and get it done right.
The same is true when it comes to your thinking. The quality of your outcomes depends on the mental models in your head. And most people are going through life with little more than a hammer.
Until now.
The Great Mental Models: General Thinking Concepts is the first book in The Great Mental Models series designed to upgrade your thinking with the best, most useful and powerful tools so you always have the right one on hand.
This volume details nine of the most versatile, all-purpose mental models you can use right away to improve your decision making, productivity, and how clearly you see the world. You will discover what forces govern the universe and how to focus your efforts so you can harness them to your advantage, rather than fight with them or worse yet— ignore them.
What are Mental Models?
“When you learn to see the world as it is, and not as you want it to be, everything changes. The solution to any problem becomes more apparent when you can view it through more than one lens. You’ll be able to spot opportunities you couldn’t see before, avoid costly mistakes that may be holding you back, and begin to make meaningful progress in your life. That’s the power of mental models.”
On mental models:
“Mental models describe the way the world works. They shape how we think, how we understand, and how we form beliefs. Largely subconscious, mental models operate below the surface. We’re not generally aware of them and yet they’re the reason when we look at a problem we consider some factors relevant and others irrelevant. They are how we infer causality, match patterns, and draw analogies. They are how we think and reason.”
“A mental model is simply a representation of how something works. We cannot keep all of the details of the world in our brains, so we use models to simplify the complex into understandable and organizable chunks. Whether we realize it or not, we then use these models every day to think, decide, and understand our world.”
“Being able to draw on a repertoire of mental models can help us minimize risk by understanding the forces that are at play. Likely consequences don’t have to be a mystery.”
It all comes down to better contact with reality:
“In life and business, the person with the fewest blind spots wins. Removing blind spots means we see, interact with, and move closer to understanding reality.“
“Removing blind spots means thinking through the problem using different lenses or models. When we do this the blind spots slowly go away and we gain an understanding of the problem. We’re much like the blind men in the classic parable of the elephant, going through life trying to explain everything through one limited lens.”
“The more lenses used on a given problem, the more of reality reveals itself. The more of reality we see, the more we understand. The more we understand, the more we know what to do.”
“Understand the interconnections of the world, and see it for how it really is. This understanding allows us to develop causal relationships, which allow us to match patterns, which allow us to draw analogies. All of this so we can navigate reality with more clarity and comprehension of the real dynamics involved.”
“Better models mean better thinking. The degree to which our models accurately explain reality is the degree to which they improve our thinking.”
“We need to work hard at synthesizing across the borders of our knowledge, and most importantly, synthesizing all of the ideas we learn with reality itself.”
“Only by repeated testing of our models against reality and being open to feedback can we update our understanding of the world and change our thinking.”
Our failures to update from interacting with reality spring primarily from three things:
Not having the right perspective or vantage point: “We have a hard time seeing any system that we are in.”
Ego-induced denial: “Many of us tend to have too much invested in our opinions of ourselves to see the world’s feedback—the feedback we need to update our beliefs about reality.”
Distance from the consequences of our decisions: “The further we are from the results of our decisions, the easier it is to keep our current views rather than update them.”
Ultimately, the goal is to build a latticework of mental models in your head:
“The quality of our thinking is largely influenced by the mental models in our heads.”
“Exactly the same sort of pattern that graces backyards everywhere, a lattice is a series of points that connect to and reinforce each other. The Great Models can be understood in the same way—models influence and interact with each other to create a structure that can be used to evaluate and understand ideas.”
“Munger has a way of thinking through problems using what he calls a broad latticework of mental models. These are chunks of knowledge from different disciplines that can be simplified and applied to better understand the world. The way he describes it, they help identify what information is relevant in any given situation, and the most reasonable parameters to work in.”
“A latticework is an excellent way to conceptualize mental models, because it demonstrates the reality and value of interconnecting knowledge. The world does not isolate itself into discrete disciplines. We only break it down that way because it makes it easier to study it. But once we learn something, we need to put it back into the complex system in which it occurs. We need to see where it connects to other bits of knowledge, to build our understanding of the whole. This is the value of putting the knowledge contained in mental models into a latticework.”
The Map is not the Territory
“The map of reality is not reality. Even the best maps are imperfect. That’s because they are reductions of what they represent.”
About the map is not the territory mental model:
“In other words, the description of the thing is not the thing itself. The model is not reality. The abstraction is not the abstracted.”
“The only way we can navigate the complexity of reality is through some sort of abstraction.”
“Models are most useful when we consider them in the context they were created.”
“We must use some model of the world in order to simplify it and therefore interact with it. We cannot explore every bit of territory for ourselves. We can use maps to guide us, but we must not let them prevent us from discovering new territory or updating our existing maps.”
“We can’t use maps as dogma. Maps and models are not meant to live forever as static references. The world is dynamic. As territories change, our tools to navigate them must be flexible to handle a wide variety of situations or adapt to the changing times. If the value of a map or model is related to its ability to predict or explain, then it needs to represent reality. If reality has changed the map must change.”
In order to use a map or model as accurately as possible, we should take three important considerations into account:
Reality is the ultimate update: “We can and should update them based on our own experiences in the territory. That’s how good maps are built: feedback loops created by explorers.”
Consider the cartographer: “Maps are not purely objective creations. They reflect the values, standards, and limitations of their creators.”
Maps can influence territories.
The map is not the territory watch-outs:
“We run into problems when our knowledge becomes of the map, rather than the actual underlying territory it describes.”
“In using maps, abstractions, and models, we must always be wise to their limitations. They are, by definition, reductions of something far more complex. There is always at least an element of subjectivity, and we need to remember that they are created at particular moments in time.”
“A map captures a territory at a moment in time. Just because it might have done a good job at depicting what was, there is no guarantee that it depicts what is there now or what will be there in the future.”
Circle of Competence
“When ego and not competence drives what we undertake, we have blind spots. If you know what you understand, you know where you have an edge over others. When you are honest about where your knowledge is lacking you know where you are vulnerable and where you can improve. Understanding your circle of competence improves decision-making and outcomes.”
About the circle of competence mental model:
“Within our circles of competence, we know exactly what we don’t know. We are able to make decisions quickly and relatively accurately. We possess detailed knowledge of additional information we might need to make a decision with full understanding, or even what information is unobtainable. We know what is knowable and what is unknowable and can distinguish between the two.”
“Critically, we must keep in mind that our circles of competence extend only so far. There are boundaries on the areas in which we develop the ability to make accurate decisions. In any given situation, there are people who have a circle, who have put in the time and effort to really understand the information. It is also important to remember that no one can have a circle of competence that encompasses everything. There is only so much you can know with great depth of understanding. This is why being able to identify your circle, and knowing how to move around outside of it, is so important.”
“There is no shortcut to understanding. Building a circle of competence takes years of experience, of making mistakes, and of actively seeking out better methods of practice and thought.”
Three key practices needed in order to build and maintain a circle of competence:
Curiosity and a desire to learn: “Learning comes when experience meets reflection. You can learn from your own experiences. Or you can learn from the experience of others, through books, articles, and conversations. Learning everything on your own is costly and slow. You are one person. Learning from the experiences of others is much more productive. You need to always approach your circle with curiosity, seeking out information that can help you expand and strengthen it.”
Monitoring: “You need to monitor your track record in areas which you have, or want to have, a circle of competence. And you need to have the courage to monitor honestly so the feedback can be used to your advantage.”
Feedback: “You must occasionally solicit external feedback. This helps build a circle, but is also critical for maintaining one.”
Circle of competence watch-outs:
“It is extremely difficult to maintain a circle of competence without an outside perspective. We usually have too many biases to solely rely on our own observations. It takes courage to solicit external feedback, so if defensiveness starts to manifest, focus on the result you hope to achieve.”
“One of the essential requirements of a circle of competence is that you can never take it for granted. You can’t operate as if a circle of competence is a static thing, that once attained is attained for life. The world is dynamic. Knowledge gets updated, and so too must your circle.”
First Principles Thinking
“First principles thinking is one of the best ways to reverse-engineer complicated situations and unleash creative possibility. Sometimes called reasoning from first principles, it’s a tool to help clarify complicated problems by separating the underlying ideas or facts from any assumptions based on them. What remain are the essentials.”
About the first principles thinking mental model:
“First principles thinking identifies the elements that are, in the context of any given situation, non-reducible.”
“Reasoning from first principles allows us to step outside of history and conventional wisdom and see what is possible. When you really understand the principles at work, you can decide if the existing methods make sense. Often they don’t.”
“Thinking through first principles is a way of taking off the blinders. Most things suddenly seem more possible.”
“If we want to identify the principles in a situation to cut through the dogma and the shared belief, there are two techniques we can use: Socratic questioning and the Five Whys.”
Socratic questioning can be used to establish first principles through stringent analysis:
Clarifying your thinking and explaining the origins of your ideas: Why do I think this? What exactly do I think?
Challenging assumptions: How do I know this is true? What if I thought the opposite?
Looking for evidence: How can I back this up? What are the sources?
Considering alternative perspectives: What might others think? How do I know I am correct?
Examining consequences and implications: What if I am wrong? What are the consequences if I am?
Questioning the original questions: Why did I think that? Was I correct? What conclusions can I draw from the reasoning process?
The goal of the Five Whys is to land on a “what” or “how”:
“It is not about introspection, such as ‘Why do I feel like this?’ Rather, it is about systematically delving further into a statement or concept so that you can separate reliable knowledge from assumption. If your ‘whys’ result in a statement of falsifiable fact, you have hit a first principle. If they end up with a ‘because I said so’ or ‘it just is’, you know you have landed on an assumption that may be based on popular opinion, cultural myth, or dogma. These are not first principles.”
Thought Experiment
“Thought experiments can be defined as ‘devices of the imagination used to investigate the nature of things.’”
About the thought experiment mental model:
“Thought experiments are powerful because they help us learn from our mistakes and avoid future ones. They let us take on the impossible, evaluate the potential consequences of our actions, and re-examine history to make better decisions. They can help us both figure out what we really want, and the best way to get there.”
“Thought experiments tell you about the limits of what you know and the limits of what you should attempt. In order to improve our decision-making and increase our chances of success, we must be willing to probe all of the possibilities we can think of.”
“Its chief value is that it lets us do things in our heads we cannot do in real life, and so explore situations from more angles than we can physically examine and test for.”
“Thought experiments are more than daydreaming. They require the same rigor as a traditional experiment in order to be useful.”
“One of the real powers of the thought experiment is that there is no limit to the number of times you can change a variable to see if it influences the outcome.”
Much like the scientific method, a thought experiment generally has the following steps:
Ask a question.
Conduct background research.
Construct hypothesis.
Test with (thought) experiments.
Analyze outcomes and draw conclusions.
Compare to hypothesis and adjust accordingly (new question, etc.).
A few areas in which thought experiments are tremendously useful:
Imagining physical impossibilities.
Re-imagining history.
Intuiting the non-intuitive.
Second-Order Thinking
“Almost everyone can anticipate the immediate results of their actions. This type of first-order thinking is easy and safe but it’s also a way to ensure you get the same results that everyone else gets. Second-order thinking is thinking farther ahead and thinking holistically.“
About the second-order thinking mental model:
“It requires us to not only consider our actions and their immediate consequences, but the subsequent effects of those actions as well. Failing to consider the second- and third-order effects can unleash disaster.”
“We don’t make decisions in a vacuum and we can’t get something for nothing. When making choices, considering consequences can help us avoid future problems. We must ask ourselves the critical question: And then what? Consequences come in many varieties, some more tangible than others. Thinking in terms of the system in which you are operating will allow you to see that your consequences have consequences.“
“Very often, the second level of effects is not considered until it’s too late. This concept is often referred to as the ‘Law of Unintended Consequences’ for this very reason.”
“Any comprehensive thought process considers the effects of the effects as seriously as possible.”
“High degrees of connections make second-order thinking all the more critical, because denser webs of relationships make it easier for actions to have far-reaching consequences.”
Two areas where second-order thinking can be used to great benefit:
Prioritizing long-term interests over immediate gains: “Being aware of second-order consequences and using them to guide your decision-making may mean the short term is less spectacular, but the payoffs for the long term can be enormous. By delaying gratification now, you will save time in the future.”
Constructing effective arguments.
Second-order thinking watch-outs:
“Second-order thinking, as valuable as it is, must be tempered in one important way: You can’t let it lead to the paralysis of the Slippery Slope Effect, the idea that if we start with action A, everything after is a slippery slope down to hell, with a chain of consequences B, C, D, E, and F.”
“Second-order thinking needs to evaluate the most likely effects and their most likely consequences, checking our understanding of what the typical results of our actions will be. If we worried about all possible effects of effects of our actions, we would likely never do anything, and we’d be wrong. How you’ll balance the need for higher-order thinking with practical, limiting judgment must be taken on a case-by-case basis.”
Probabilistic Thinking
“Probabilistic thinking is essentially trying to estimate, using some tools of math and logic, the likelihood of any specific outcome coming to pass.”
About the probabilistic thinking mental model:
“In a world where each moment is determined by an infinitely complex set of factors, probabilistic thinking helps us identify the most likely outcomes. When we know these our decisions can be more precise and effective.”
“Our lack of perfect information about the world gives rise to all of probability theory, and its usefulness. We know now that the future is inherently unpredictable because not all variables can be known and even the smallest error imaginable in our data very quickly throws off our predictions. The best we can do is estimate the future by generating realistic, useful probabilities.”
“Successfully thinking in shades of probability means roughly identifying what matters, coming up with a sense of the odds, doing a check on our assumptions, and then making a decision. We can act with a higher level of certainty in complex, unpredictable situations. We can never know the future with exact precision. Probabilistic thinking is an extremely useful tool to evaluate how the world will most likely look so that we can effectively strategize.”
Three concepts to know:
Bayesian thinking (or Bayesian updating): “Given that we have limited but useful information about the world, and are constantly encountering new information, we should probably take into account what we already know when we learn something new. As much of it as possible. Bayesian thinking allows us to use all relevant prior information in making decisions. Statisticians might call it a base rate, taking in outside information about past situations like the one you’re in … It is important to remember that priors themselves are probability estimates. For each bit of prior knowledge, you are not putting it in a binary structure, saying it is true or not. You’re assigning it a probability of being true. Therefore, you can’t let your priors get in the way of processing new knowledge. In Bayesian terms, this is called the likelihood ratio or the Bayes factor. Any new information you encounter that challenges a prior simply means that the probability of that prior being true may be reduced. Eventually some priors are replaced completely. This is an ongoing cycle of challenging and validating what you believe you know.”
Fat-tailed curves: “In a bell curve the extremes are predictable. There can only be so much deviation from the mean. In a fat-tailed curve there is no real cap on extreme events … The more extreme events that are possible, the longer the tails of the curve get. Any one extreme event is still unlikely, but the sheer number of options means that we can’t rely on the most common outcomes as representing the average. The more extreme events that are possible, the higher the probability that one of them will occur. Crazy things are definitely going to happen, and we have no way of identifying when.”
Asymmetries: “You need to think about something we might call ‘metaprobability’—the probability that your probability estimates themselves are any good.”
Two more ideas to know:
Orders of Magnitude: “Nassim Taleb puts his finger in the right place when he points out our naive use of probabilities. In The Black Swan, he argues that any small error in measuring the risk of an extreme event can mean we’re not just slightly off, but way off—off by orders of magnitude, in fact. In other words, not just 10% wrong but ten times wrong, or 100 times wrong, or 1,000 times wrong. Something we thought could only happen every 1,000 years might be likely to happen in any given year! This is using false prior information and results in us underestimating the probability of the future distribution being different.”
Anti-fragility: “We can think about three categories of objects: Ones that are harmed by volatility and unpredictability, ones that are neutral to volatility and unpredictability, and finally, ones that benefit from it. The latter category is antifragile—like a package that wants to be mishandled. Up to a point, certain things benefit from volatility, and that’s how we want to be. Why? Because the world is fundamentally unpredictable and volatile, and large events—panics, crashes, wars, bubbles, and so on—tend to have a disproportionate impact on outcomes.”
Inversion
“The root of inversion is ‘invert,’ which means to upend or turn upside down. As a thinking tool it means approaching a situation from the opposite end of the natural starting point.”
About the inversion mental model:
“Most of us tend to think one way about a problem: forward. Inversion allows us to flip the problem around and think backward.”
“Whatever angle you choose to approach your problem from, you need to then follow with consideration of the opposite angle. Think about not only what you could do to solve a problem, but what you could do to make it worse—and then avoid doing that, or eliminate the conditions that perpetuate it.”
Two approaches to applying inversion in your life:
“Start by assuming that what you’re trying to prove is either true or false, then show what else would have to be true.”
“Instead of aiming directly for your goal, think deeply about what you want to avoid and then see what options are left over.”
Psychologist Kurt Lewin’s process (force field analysis):
Identify the problem.
Define your objective.
Identify the forces that support change towards your objective.
Identify the forces that impede change towards the objective.
Strategize a solution! This may involve both augmenting or adding to the forces in step 3, and reducing or eliminating the forces in step 4.
Occam’s Razor
“Simpler explanations are more likely to be true than complicated ones. This is the essence of Occam’s Razor, a classic principle of logic and problem-solving.”
About the Occam’s razor mental model:
“Named after the medieval logician William of Ockham, Occam’s Razor is a general rule by which we select among competing explanations. Ockham wrote that ‘a plurality is not to be posited without necessity’—essentially that we should prefer the simplest explanation with the fewest moving parts. They are easier to falsify, easier to understand, and generally more likely to be correct.”
“Occam’s Razor is not an iron law but a tendency and a mind-frame you can choose to use: If all else is equal, that is if two competing models both have equal explanatory power, it’s more likely that the simple solution suffices.”
“Occam’s Razor is a great tool for avoiding unnecessary complexity by helping you identify and commit to the simplest explanation possible.”
Why are more complicated explanations less likely to be true?
“Take two competing explanations, each of which seem to equally explain a given phenomenon. If one of them requires the interaction of three variables and the other the interaction of thirty variables, all of which must have occurred to arrive at the stated conclusion, which of these is more likely to be in error? If each variable has a 99% chance of being correct, the first explanation is only 3% likely to be wrong. The second, more complex explanation, is about nine times as likely to be wrong, or 26%. The simpler explanation is more robust in the face of uncertainty.”
Occam’s razor watch-outs:
“One important counter to Occam’s Razor is the difficult truth that some things are simply not that simple.”
“Simple as we wish things were, irreducible complexity, like simplicity, is a part of our reality. Therefore, we can’t use this Razor to create artificial simplicity. If something cannot be broken down any further, we must deal with it as it is.”
Hanlon’s Razor
“Hanlon’s Razor states that we should not attribute to malice that which is more easily explained by stupidity.”
About the Hanlon’s razor mental model:
“Failing to prioritize stupidity over malice causes things like paranoia. Always assuming malice puts you at the center of everyone else’s world. This is an incredibly self-centered approach to life. In reality, for every act of malice, there is almost certainly far more ignorance, stupidity, and laziness.”
“Hanlon’s Razor demonstrates that there are fewer true villains than you might suppose—what people are is human, and like you, all humans make mistakes and fall into traps of laziness, bad thinking, and bad incentives.”
“This model reminds us that people do make mistakes. It demands that we ask if there is another reasonable explanation for the events that have occurred. The explanation most likely to be right is the one that contains the least amount of intent.”
“By not generally assuming that bad results are the fault of a bad actor, we look for options instead of missing opportunities.”
“Hanlon’s Razor, when practiced diligently as a counter to confirmation bias, empowers us, and gives us far more realistic and effective options for remedying bad situations.”
Hanlon’s razor watch-out:
“As useful as it can be, it is, however, important not to overthink this model. Hanlon’s Razor is meant to help us perceive stupidity or error, and their inadvertent consequences. It says that of all possible motives behind an action, the ones that require the least amount of energy to execute (such as ignorance or laziness) are more likely to occur than one that requires active malice.”
Bonus: 4 Supporting Ideas
- Three Buckets of Knowledge
2. Falsifiability
3. Necessity and Sufficiency
4. Causation vs Correlation - Three Buckets of Knowledge:
“The larger and more relevant the sample size, the more reliable the model based on it is.”
Peter Kaufman says:
“Every statistician knows that a large, relevant sample size is their best friend. What are the three largest, most relevant sample sizes for identifying universal principles? Bucket number one is inorganic systems, which are 13.7 billion years in size. It’s all the laws of math and physics, the entire physical universe. Bucket number two is organic systems, 3.5 billion years of biology on Earth. And bucket number three is human history, you can pick your own number, I picked 20,000 years of recorded human behavior. Those are the three largest sample sizes we can access and the most relevant.”
- Falsifiability:
“Falsification is the opposite of verification; you must try to show the theory is incorrect, and if you fail to do so, you actually strengthen it.”
“Science requires testability.”
“The idea here is that if you can’t prove something wrong, you can’t really prove it right either.”
“A good theory must have an element of risk to it—namely, it has to risk being wrong. It must be able to be proven wrong under stated conditions.”
“Applying the filter of falsifiability helps us sort through which theories are more robust. If they can’t ever be proven false because we have no way of testing them, then the best we can do is try to determine their probability of being true.”
Karl Popper says:
“A theory is part of empirical science if and only if it conflicts with possible experiences and is therefore in principle falsifiable by experience.”
“If observation shows that the predicted effect is definitely absent, then the theory is simply refuted.”
- Necessity and Sufficiency:
“We often make the mistake of assuming that having some necessary conditions in place means that we have all of the sufficient conditions in place for our desired event or effect to occur.”
“What’s not obvious is that the gap between what is necessary to succeed and what is sufficient is often luck, chance, or some other factor beyond your direct control.”
“In mathematics they call these sets. The set of conditions necessary to become successful is a part of the set that is sufficient to become successful. But the sufficient set itself is far larger than the necessary set. Without that distinction, it’s too easy for us to be misled by the wrong stories.”
- Causation vs Correlation:
“We notice two things happening at the same time (correlation) and mistakenly conclude that one causes the other (causation). We then often act upon that erroneous conclusion, making decisions that can have immense influence across our lives.”
“Confusion between these two terms often leads to a lot of inaccurate assumptions about the way the world works.”
“Whenever correlation is imperfect, extremes will soften over time. The best will always appear to get worse and the worst will appear to get better, regardless of any additional action. This is called regression to the mean, and it means we have to be extra careful when diagnosing causation.”
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The Gospel of Wealth by Andrew Carnegie | Book Summary
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The Gospel of Wealth Summary provides key takeaways, review, quotes and author biography of Andrew Carnegie’s book regarding wealth. Andrew Carnegie could be long gone. But, his views about wealth still hold.
Andrew Carnegie was one of the wealthiest men in the USA. Hence, his open support for the capitalist model is simple to understand. Carnegie was a Scottish immigrant to America. He collected colossal fortune especially in the steel sector in the late 1800s. Carnegie Steel Co. was more than $400mn in today’s dollar when it sold. He devoted his remaining life to noble causes. The North American Review published his essay in 1889. Though short, this essay is full of Carnegie’s wisdom and vision.
Carnegie felt that law of competition is a capitalist society’s base. Hence, he said, just some rivals can – and must – control wealth. This isn’t a politically correct idea in today’s world. But, Carnegie encouraged the wealthy to accept their duty toward society. He practiced what he talked. In his lifetime, he gave over $350mn to many causes. This included setting up many libraries and Carnegie Mellon University. His ideas of charity and capitalism are rooted in using the dollar for a good purpose. Therefore, we recommend this book The Gospel of Wealth to all of you.
“THE PROBLEM OF OUR AGE IS THE PROPER ADMINISTRATION OF WEALTH.”
This Summary Will Help You Learn
- Why Carnegie thought that wealth distribution is the base of capitalism,
- How the competition law impacts a capitalist society, and
- Why and how the rich must leave a lasting legacy.
Take-Aways
- The real value of money relies on its proper distribution.
- Law of competition forms the base of capitalism.
- Despite its faults, capitalism forms favorable economic situations for society.
- Capitalism forms a difference between the rich and the middle class.
- It’s certain that most wealth falls with the few.
- The rich must follow a humble lifestyle and have a positive social image.
- Wealthy people must help their fellow beings.
- Proper oversight is needed; else recipients will mishandle charity.
- Random acts of donation are often ineffective. They don’t benefit the full society.
- Donors should play an active part in the proper use of their resources.
The Gospel of Wealth Summary
Capitalism as a Vehicle for Growth
Economic development and growth are necessary for a capitalist society. An ideal system forms a line between the rich and poor. Industry leaders do their duties by creating business opportunities. These produce profit and offer employment for ordinary people. Financial success allows leaders in other areas to enjoy luxuries. These luxuries are beyond the access of the working class. But, this isn’t a negative situation. Instead, such difference shows economic growth. In a capitalist system, the quality of goods/services is better. Plus, the prices are lower, and hence things are affordable for everyone. Some people may go back to the days of more equality among people. But, going back to those days will only be damaging.
Today’s working class can access necessities. These things were luxuries for even the prosperous 100 years ago. Sadly, economic growth comes at a considerable price. This is especially true in interpersonal relations. The growing gap between employee-employer becomes a ground for mistrust. An executive can’t have excellent relationships with all his workers especially when it’s a massive operation with thousands of people. Hence, workers become just names and faces. And so, both sides are unable to understand the problem of the other. Thus, the ultimate result is damaging to interpersonal relations.
The Law of Competition
The competition law forces employers to be careful about the expenses. Hence, salaries become a primary source of conflict between employee-employer. The law of competition has these flaws. But, rejecting its highly positive sides will be short-sighted. For future growth, competition is key. No other system can promote the growth of business this much. An individual may suffer in the process. But, society as a whole reaps the benefits. The ones who accept it will bloom. And, the ones who don’t accept this will fail.
The competition law builds an environment which develops leaders who have great skills. They know that profitability is the right measure of growth, especially in a free market economy. Capitalism allows great people to attain excellent results. This is the opposite of a communist society where individual growth isn’t encouraged. Capitalism, supported by competition, is better than communism.
This system enables all people to find their economic status. It appreciates the spur of individualism in every person. Also, it doesn’t support artificial limits which can stop growth. The system may not be perfect. But, it rewards people who are capable and motivated.
Distribution of Wealth
Capitalism offers excellent chances to nearly all members of society. But, only a few are lucky to have the means to collect wealth. Such people have just three practical options for distributing their extra wealth. These are:
- Leave a legacy for their family members on their death.
- Fund organizations and projects to benefit society.
- Distribute resources all through their lives.
History is proof that heirs mishandle legacies. European royal families gave their estates to the eldest male child. Even if his lavish ways of living ensured the destruction of the money, this behavior raises the question if parents must give their wealth to children. Of course, a parent won’t make his child live in poverty. Because ensuring a decent life for a child is a parental duty. Still, there’s a chance that parents do a disservice by giving millions to their kids. This’s especially true for children who can’t fend for themselves. Or those who don’t have any charitable goals. Hence, parents should teach their kids a sense of responsibility. And, also by giving them proper education.
There’s the second scenario as well. That is people, leaving their wealth for public consumption. Here, they give up the chance to do charity while being alive. Sadly, those left in charge don’t use the wealth for society’s best interests.
The rich have the power to sponsor things from which society can benefit.
Higher Taxes May Help
Higher taxes are a suitable means of discouraging the rich from hoarding money. They’ll also encourage wealthy people to allocate their resources while they’re alive. And, not waiting for others to do so once they die. People who collect money but don’t use for society aren’t worthy of admiration. The community won’t appreciate this. It’ll feel that they left their money because they can’t take it to their grave.
For Society’s Benefit
The best way of allocating surplus is ensuring that it benefits maximum people. The primary goal is to create a system which invests wealth in noble causes. This is more desirable than the less effective traditional approach. In the old method, donors allocate small sums to society over many years. In the absence of clear direction and control, money may not be appropriately used. People may end up spending it on unnecessary things.
Samuel J. Tilden was former governor of New York. He gave $5mn to build a free library in NYC. This’s a great example of how to spend one’s fortune for society’s benefit. A library opens the world’s treasure contained in books for all. But, Tilden would’ve been more praised, if he did this when he was alive. This way there wouldn’t have been the legal controversy and delay.
Wealthy people should identify and be thankful for their gift. They have the chance to help their fellow beings. The power to make other people’s lives better is a rare gift. And no one should waste this.
The mandate for the Wealthy
The mandate for the rich is apparent. Live a humble life without any fanfare. Provide sensibly for your family. And see all extra money as a way of helping society. The rich are just acting as a “trustee and agent” for their poor fellow beings. Wealthy people should find the best way to use their assets for society’s benefits.
Of course, there’s no universal definition of indulgence. Hence, one can’t identify whether a rich person is leading a life of luxury. One can’t even tell the level to which a person works within his sensibility. But, public sentiment is a mediator of good taste. It could be in matters of lifestyle, dressing or behavior. A person showing his money prefers appearance over substance. Also, he doesn’t see charity seriously. In this sense, the public’s judgment is often right.
Sensible Charity
The random distribution of donation is a big hurdle in society’s growth. There’s a dire need for wise advice and administration. Otherwise, donors waste millions on the unworthy and drunken. Randomly donated money increases the problems it should be removing. The money you give drunkards will not bring any change to their lives. Instead, they’re likely to misspend it. Giving charity may make people feel good about themselves. It may also stop beggars from being a nuisance for some-time. But, the same amount invested in a worthy cause will have a more significant impact.
The primary goal of the charity is benefitting people who want to improve their life. But, they don’t have the means to do so. In a few cases, otherwise, hard-working people are struck with bad luck. Hence, they want temporary financial help. In most cases, though, donors must donate to those whose intentions are genuine. And not to those who are just seeking a handout. So, if you wish to give, find where your money is going.
Follow people who build infrastructure which helps societal growth. For example, books, libraries, etc. help people to grow their mental and physical skills. Museums please the senses and elevate the society by large.
“NOT EVIL, BUT GOOD HAS COME… FROM THE ACCUMULATION OF WEALTH BY THOSE WHO HAVE HAD THE ABILITY AND ENERGY TO PRODUCE IT.”
Solving the Problem
The proper allocation of money has many benefits. It leaves the wealthy free to continue collecting wealth. Plus, it assures the rich that they won’t have to compromise their individuality. Instead, society trusts them to act on behalf of the deprived. Hence, the rich will use their powers to manage the society’s wealth for the larger good.
Millionaires should realize that there’s no pride in dying rich. The wealthy who don’t donate when they’re alive will die unsung. Applying this “gospel of wealth” will help the humankind. It will also mend the gap between the poor and the rich.
The Gospel of Wealth Quotes
“The problem of our age is the proper administration of wealth.”
“Not evil, but good has come… from the accumulation of wealth by those who have had the ability and energy to produce it.”
“Individualism, Private Property, the Law of Accumulation of Wealth and the Law of Competition… are the highest result of human experience.”
“The price which society pays for the law of competition, like the price it pays for cheap comforts and luxuries, is also great; but the advantages of this law are also greater still than its cost.”
“It is to this law that we owe our wonderful material development.”
“Upon the sacredness of property civilization itself depends – the right of the laborer to his hundred dollars in the savings bank, and equally the legal right of the millionaire to his millions.”
“What is the proper mode of administering wealth after the laws upon which civilization is founded have thrown it into the hands of the few?”
“By taxing estates heavily at death the State marks its condemnation of the selfish millionaire’s unworthy life.”
The rich “have it in their power during their lives to busy themselves in organizing benefactions from which the masses of their fellows will derive lasting advantage.”
“There is no mode of disposing of surplus wealth creditable to thoughtful and earnest men… save by using it year by year for the general good.”
“Of every thousand dollars spent in so-called charity today, it is probable that nine hundred and fifty dollars is unwisely spent.”
“In bestowing charity, the main consideration should be to help those who will help themselves.”
“No man is… to be thanked by the community to which he only leaves wealth at death. Men who leave vast sums in this way… would not have left it at all had they been able to take it with them.”
The Excellence Habit by Frank Satire | Book Summary
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The Excellence Habit: How Small Changes In Our Mindset Can Make A Big Difference In Our Lives by Frank Satire
The Excellence Habit is biography of an idea, and the idea is simple. The main source of success is excellence, and excellence depends more on our internal circumstances. Grit, determination, and the discipline to put in the hard work as a matter of habit, and not a matter of need, are crucial.
The Excellence Habit is a reminder that we are the owners of our success. There are no magic formulas, shortcuts, or secret sauce. We will learn from many, yet the most important steps, we need to take on our own. Over the course of our adult life, it is always us, who have the most power. We will not always be in control and nobody is. But we can choose to maximize our effect on this planet, on our loved ones and on our personal fulfillment by building an Excellence Habit.
The Excellence Habit also examines the distinction between success and excellence. Success is achieving high goals. Excellence is doing the right thing, even when not driving towards any goal. It is a small mindset shift, which will produce big results. Excellence can and will lead to success. Success, on the other hand, can be the biggest enemy of excellence. More often than not success is measured in social influence, recognition and wealth. For those practicing it faithfully –
Excellence is its own biggest reward!
What Is Being Said In Detail:
The Excellence Habit has five chapters titled One, Two, Three, Four, Five.
The first chapter teaches us about the three rules of excellence:
The Iceberg Principle. The majority of our effort is invisible to the eye, but we still need to keep on working on our excellence. Because all of that work (process) will pay off in the future in unexpected ways.
The Law Of Not Selling Out. The law states that we need to “stick to our guns” no matter what. And by “guns,” the author means standards, core values, beliefs, and principles.
The Journey Mindset. Excellence is a journey and we need to stick to the path that might lead us to unexpected places. But if we follow The Law Of Not Selling Out while having The Journey Mindset, the end result will still be aligned with who we are and what we believe in.
The second chapter teaches us about:
The Tennis Ball Effect. We can control our thoughts, actions, and response to any situation we find ourselves in. But once “the ball hits the net and goes up in the air,” we’re no longer in control. Focus on what you can control.
The Broken Window Of Our Soul. The power of context is usually bigger than we give it credit. Create an environment that helps you with excellence and you will increase your odds.
Wiping Out Our Inner Graffiti. It’s about reframing our mindset to “I belong here” and making sure we’re working on our psychological wellbeing.
Changing Our Bodies To Change Our Minds. Small tweaks to your body language can increase your confidence and affect your mind positively (power poses).
The third chapter talks about:
Rewriting Our Story. Start telling yourself a story that will help you achieve excellence. It will help out with changing your mindset.
Addicted To Excellence. If you’re a high-achiever, frame your tasks as tasks and you will be motivated. If you’re an under-achiever, frame them as fun and you’ll be more motivated to do them.
The N-Effect. The N-Effect reduces our motivation with the increase of total competitors. So if you want excellence, try to frame the tasks as if you have no competition (competing only against myself as an example.)
The fourth chapter is about:
“Move Your Own Cheese” For Organizations. As a big organization, cultivate and establish entrepreneurial habits (speed, agility, failing fast and small).
Design, Build, Launch, Survive! How to stay agile and entrepreneurial with your business (start-up) once size, investors, and problems start to appear. (Focusing on excellence and core values).
People Matters. Treat people like they make a difference and they will make a difference.
And the last chapter is about:
Drivers of Our Behavior And Resistance. Usually, we think that the grass is greener on the other side. So when we are here, all we want is to be there. You need to push through this (human) bias of thinking that it’s always better over there. It’s just “Resistance,” as Steven Pressfield would call it.
Trouble And Resistance. To fight trouble and resistance, we need to find our authentic life, the thing that brings our joy in our life and is in true harmony with the world.
Resistance And Exile. When we make great progress and go on a hero’s journey, we eventually need to come back. And this return home doesn’t feel like home. Everything is the same, yet we’re different. And this feeling of exile is what stays. We need to find a way to deal with these different kinds of exiles (fear of success, exile in our daily lives that come with change, etc.).
The “I Could Have Been Somebody” Regret. You are still enough as you are. Keep plowing ahead, making the best out of what you have. Make small changes that can have large (positive) effects on your life and the life of people around you. Stay strong, move forward, don’t look back to earlier plans.
Most Important Keywords, Sentences, Quotes:
Excellenceology
“A life worth living is spent outside your comfort zone!” became Marco’s favorite sentence and a maxim he strives to apply relentlessly to this day.
…during our honeymoon at a new job, this blind belief is rewarded. We bust our chops, we get recognized, and we get a pat on the back. It is this pat on the back that changes our attitude from blind belief to justified belief. Our idea that hard work pays off is proven correct, so we place more trust in the system. When what we think is true turns out to be true, we trust ourselves all the more. And we never revisit our comfortable adult choice.
Our decision-making is guided, and more often than not misguided by habits, which are based on biases. We build habits centered on irrational beliefs.
Professional success is mostly about achieving ever-higher business goals. In most cases, we measure success against the amount of social influence, recognition, and money we obtain. Success is about results. Excellence, on the other hand, is about the process.
What did we learn? What did we teach? In a way, excellence is a lot more than success and it is a lot more personal.
Greeks had the concept of arête, which translates to outstanding “fitness for purpose.” It appears in the works of Aristotle and Homer, and it basically means excellence of any kind.
The Greek goddess that personified arête was called Harmonia.
The need for continuous change is at the center of the idea of the Excellence Habit, and it also might be the hardest one to accept. In pursuit of this fundamental idea I will take you on a journey over the skies of New York to learn how supreme excellence saved a damaged airplane full of passengers. I am going to introduce you to three fascinating principles I call The Iceberg Principle, The Law of Not Selling Out, and The Journey Mindset. We will revisit the famous Princeton Theological Seminary experiment to examine how the Good Samaritan relates to the power of context.
I will tell you more about Amy Cuddy, and how she was able to wipe her inner graffiti and change her inner context to succeed. I will take you on a trip with the founder of Phunware, a successful tech start-up in Austin, to understand how to build an Excellence Habit in an organization and make it stick.
Chapter One
Poor person a hundred years ago, we would likely call them unfortunate. Back then, we would describe them as someone who did not have enough fortune, who was not lucky enough. Nowadays, we would not be surprised to hear someone at the bottom of society called a loser. I think we can all agree that there is a big difference between unfortunate and a loser. As a society, we have evolved to believe less in God and more in ourselves. We are in the driver’s seat of our lives, and, therefore, we own both success and failure. On a personal level, this has made it more difficult to feel good about our current level of success. By accepting the idea that we could achieve anything, we have increased the pressure on ourselves to do it. Paradoxically, this makes it more difficult to reach our goals.
Excellence, therefore, is a function of the people who choose it, the preparation itself, and the principles, which apply to this preparation. And when excellence happens, it is because all these agents of change have converged. These agents of change I call the Iceberg Principle, the Law of Not Selling Out, and the Journey Mindset.
Expressed: “No one knows the right answer, no one knows precisely what will happen, no one can produce the desired future, on-demand.”
Sometimes adversity will disguise itself in the form of success, or worse— the desire for success.
Chapter Two
In 1969, Stanford psychologist Philip Zimbardo arranged for two cars with no license plates to be placed unattended in the Bronx, New York, and Palo Alto, California. Within minutes of its abandonment, the car in the Bronx was attacked. The first vandals were a family: a father, a mother, and a young son. They took the car’s battery and radiator. Within twenty-four hours that car was stripped of everything of value. Then, the windows were smashed in, upholstery ripped apart, and the neighborhood kids started using it as a playground. At the same time, the car in Palo Alto remained untouched for more than a week. Then, Zimbardo deliberately took a hammer and smashed it. Soon after, people in Palo Alto also joined in the destruction.
This experiment was used to examine what is known in criminology as the broken windows theory. Undesirable events like these can occur in any civilized community when the sense of mutual regard and civility are lowered by actions that suggest indifference. In other words, when a broken window is left broken, soon after someone will smash a second one, and in a short time, the property will be vandalized. In an article in 1982, criminologists James Wilson and George Kelling argued that crime is the inevitable result of the disorder.
By 1994, the graffiti and fare-beating initiatives produced a drastic reduction in crime in the subway. The key lesson from these events is that the power of context is greater than we usually assume. We are more than just sensitive to changes in our environment. We are delicately fine-tuned to them. And, even minor changes to our context can alter our oath to excellence in ways we could not have foreseen.
Just as with our external circumstances, our internal state can have “broken windows.” From childhood trauma and bad experiences to poor habits and wrong choices, we carry with us the luggage of our inner circumstances. And just as with the broken windows theory in criminology, we are exquisitely sensitive to minor changes in our internal context. Without noticing, we can be affected by a smell, a tune on the radio, or an old poster. An odd thought could pop up during a meeting at the office, and then we find ourselves drifting for fifteen minutes and missing important information.
What do you tell yourself when your core identity is taken away from you?
Chapter Three
Every person who has ever achieved deliberate change first made up their minds that they wanted to change.
Oscar winners pointed out in their acceptance speech that the award was an impossible dream? So, if we want to deliberately build a more fulfilling life, we need to start imagining it first.
It becomes necessary to have a second look at how we motivate ourselves. When some of us have difficulties getting motivated at work, then it is time to examine more closely what kind of achiever we are. The motivational dynamics we rely on may not be the best fit.
When the number of total competitors we are about to face reduces our motivation to compete, we have the N-Effect.
Chapter Four
Within two weeks of this conversation, Taffy had figured out what the problem had been and made the experiment work. The results became the foundation of his dissertation. He ended up with six publications out of this and became one of the most productive graduate students to come out of that university. It all happened because he was pushed to look back, question why something wasn’t working, and figure out how to make it work.
Even in a successful business, developing multiple shots on a goal can increase the odds of greater success.
“If you don’t have a healthy ego, you probably shouldn’t be an entrepreneur. It is not a question of whether the company will stumble, but when and how badly. This requires entrepreneurs to be confident and aggressive as business people.”
When we started Phunware, the consensus was that we were trying to boil the ocean, ultimately, not going to build anything. What Knitowski says about communications is significant. Never take money from people and then forget to communicate openly and regularly. Leaders should do this monthly, even though most management teams do not
When you communicate openly, candidly, and transparently, then everyone is on the same sheet of paper and everyone can be part of the potential solution when tough times surface.
When month after month you communicate and you really are not asking for help, when you do actually ask for help, you’ll be amazed at the people willing to fight with you, to get you through those challenges.
For a lot of companies, start-ups are a lot like making sausage. You don’t always want to see what goes into making the sausage, but you always want it to taste good at the end.
It’s the equivalent of Murphy’s Law for startups and it’s not about being pessimistic. Rather, it is about being an experienced optimist and preparing for whatever the market may throw at you.
Do they answer to their boss, or to the customer? Do they feel accountable to each other?
“When you treat people like they make a difference, they will make a difference.”
Chapter Five
“When I was here, I wanted to be there. When I was there, all I could think of was getting back to the jungle.”
The truth is—there is no here versus there. With time we realize that here is the only place we can be. And we can choose to be present here and now, or let our minds drift. Now, the yearning to be someplace better is perfectly normal. It is almost universal and it does have its positives, too. The desire to improve our lives is a major motivational force. But which of the many roads do we take? And how do we reconcile this choice with our vision for ourselves?
What I am getting at is the concept of Resistance.
Fear of rejection. In the process, he got famous, got a book deal, and got published. We, too, can face our Resistance and then follow the clues. To do this, we need to become aware of the many manifestations of Resistance. We need to be brutally honest with ourselves and to leave our comfort zones. This means doing things we are not very good at. Or, not good at, yet. And, this means doing them now. There is no better time than now. We will never be ready. If we reach “ready,” this means we are comfortable. The point of this is to move outside of our comfort zone and learn to be productive, while there. Then do it again, and again, and again. Until we build it into a habit. That would be an Excellence Habit.
Get in trouble? They are still searching for their authentic life. There may be a lot of stress or none. They could own millions or be penniless. Married with kids or alone. And, they get in trouble. They are still looking for their cheese. Or they found the cheese, and it is too big and scary. “How am I going to write a movie script? Sell it and convince the studio to hire me in the leading role? Who am I? Sylvester Stallone?” He was a nobody, too, when he did all these things. So, instead of doing the work, we play around.
Ray Bradbury, the author of Fahrenheit 451, had a “Don’t Think!” sticker above his typewriter. It helped him focus on doing his work. My sticker says “Don’t Look!” We can’t find what we are searching for with our eyes. Our eyes are for looking at the world around us, at the Universe. What we want is inside of us. Sometimes, it is relatively easy to find and sometimes it is buried deep. Our authentic life emerges when we do what brings true joy, helps others, and is in true harmony with the world.
In his seminal work The Hero With The Thousand Faces, mythologist Joseph Campbell argues that all stories we tell follow the same blueprint. From Cinderella, to Mad Max, to The Bridges of Madison County, or Mission Impossible 8.
But the world doesn’t know what this feels like. Often the world doesn’t even notice. The hero might spend the rest of her days without anyone ever knowing what she’d lived through. This is exile. Deafening silence takes over after the thrill of the adventure. Everyday life is back after walking on the moon. The hero deals with the unsettling sensation of being back, but not really being home.
All: “Hey, look at me for a moment! I’ve got a great piece of work here!” There is a natural awkwardness that comes with an act like this. We resist raising our hand. Our work should speak for itself. Well, even Shakespeare had to raise his hand and promote his first works to get noticed. So, raise your hand. And while imagining a better future, let’s also imagine a better self. Unless we give our power away, we are in charge of creating our future. Let’s find out our inner graffiti and wipe the walls clean. Let’s fix the broken windows inside, and create a mental context that matches the tasks ahead. When we start spending time on improving the small things inside, the big things in our way don’t look that big anymore. We are not perfect and will never be. However, the reason to pursue excellence is not perfection. Excellence is about being the best we can be and living our best life.
We can find ourselves thinking, “I could have been somebody better!” If you ever get to a moment like that, I want to say to you, “Don’t be that, tiger!” Keep the chin up and stay with a positive attitude.
Build it with excellence and build excellence as a habit.
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The Metabolism Reset Diet by Alan Christianson | Book Summary
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The Metabolism Reset Diet: Repair Your Liver, Stop Storing Fat, and Lose Weight Naturally by Alan Christianson
Are you exhausted of tiring diets that don’t work and never finish? Do you consider dieting a regular difficulty against cravings, hunger, and calories?
If that is the case, help yourself and stop tormenting yourself. Probably, your diet isn’t working and it may even be destroying your health. The majority of fad diets encourage unhealthy, short-term weight-loss by limiting the fuel as well as the nutrients that your body requires. These diets are counterproductive since they usually worsen the actual issue– your metabolism.
Fortunately, there’s a new means to improve your health and remove those unnecessary inches for good, and it doesn’t include counting calories or using hours at the gym daily. The secret is to revamp your metabolism by detoxing your liver in order for it to work well again.
Our contemporary, high-intake, extremely processed diets put so much stress on our livers. They have a tendency to become clogged with waste that hinders them from processing energy well. This book talk about an easy program to wake up your liver’s natural healing powers and cleanse it of that whole mess.
This program is known as the Metabolic Reset Diet – it is the new, sensational diet cleanse formed by the famous physician Dr. Christianson and his team at Integrative Health. Based on proof from clinical trials comprising tens of thousands of participants, Dr. Christianson has formed a program that doesn’t just help you shed weight alone but also heal your liver and take back charge of your health.
Therefore, what are you waiting for? You have the ability to turn back the clock on aging, improve your health, and feel better than you’ve felt in years.
Chapter 1 – A healthy metabolism is a secret to quick and sustained weight loss.
How is it possible that everybody you see around appears to consume a lot than you and still ends up very much slimmer? What is it those people are doing right that you’re not?
If you believe what diet fads and health media are preaching, you might believe that your difficulties with your weight as well as your own health are your own fault.
Unfortunately, people that are overweight usually get social messages that they’re not doing something right. These people are told: you eat a lot! You don’t work out well! You’re not attempting hard enough!
However, you’ve been directed to believe a lie. Individuals that are naturally thin are not more disciplined than you, neither do they consume more than you. Their edge is not superior will-power – it’s their metabolism.
The term metabolism gets thrown around so much; however, what does it actually mean?
It’s really very easy. Metabolism only means the manner way your body reacts to incoming fuel –this means your main calorie sources like fats and carbohydrates.
If your metabolism is healthy, incoming fuel either becomes burned instantly for energy, or it’s converted into short-term storage to be used later on. Our metabolism is extremely beneficial since we never use precisely the right quantity of fuel at any one time. By storing additional fuel at mealtimes, and burning it afterward, our metabolisms smooth the release of energy all through the day.
When your metabolism isn’t functioning well, your body is not able to utilize incoming fuel for energy and is obliged to put it into long-term storage –meaning body fat. That signifies that you’ll gain weight; however, it also signifies that you’ll suffer from chronic fatigue as well as other health illnesses since your body isn’t receiving energy from the fuel you consume.
This the reason why diets that focus only on limiting calorie consumption miss the actual issue– the manner your body handles those calories. It doesn’t mean if you consume a high-calorie diet if your body is able to burn the majority of it for energy.
However, what can be done about your metabolism? It is either you are born with a good metabolism or a bad metabolism, right?
That is not true! This is another myth about weight loss. As a matter of fact, your metabolism isn’t set, and there are some easy steps to take in order to encourage it to get more active again.
The solution isn’t an extreme, self-denying diet. The solution is in the liver. In order to understand the reason why let’s examine this remarkable organ.
Chapter 2 – The liver is essential to our health.
The liver is an organ that is unjustly underrated. We wonder at the ability of the brain; we’re zealous about the heart, but the liver? We barely give think twice. Still, behind the scenes, the liver’s running the entire show.
As a matter of fact, no other organ is as vital for your body’s health. The reason is that the liver is far from a one-trick pony – it has so many various functions and plays a part in the majority of your body’s vital systems like the circulatory, immune and digestive. The liver affects all things such as blood pressure, metabolism, muscle strength, and body weight, to mention only a few.
Therefore, when your liver is in poor health, you’re going to feel it.
The four most vital roles that the liver does are filtration, protection, storage, and conversion. Let’s examine the reason why these are very vital for our health.
First of all, the liver is the body’s filter. Similar to the filter in an aquarium, the liver controls the fluid in our bodies to make sure our insides stay an optimal surrounding for life to flourish. That entails cleaning the blood of toxins and providing it with vital nutrients that our organs require.
Averagely, the liver cleanses the body’s whole supply of blood nearly once a minute. Also, if it slacked off even a bit, it would make the brain to stop working as a result of over-toxicity – which can occur, unfortunately, to individuals with extreme liver disease.
However, don’t worry. The liver is a really robust organ and well accustomed to guard us against toxins and other undesirable invaders that go into the body via the foods we consume. The liver is enclosed in special immune cells known as Kupffer cells, which engulf pathogens and chemical debris, neutralize them, and convey warning signs to the remaining of the immune system.
However, the liver does beyond just protecting us from toxins. Assuming the body was a house, the liver is its pantry then. The whole nutrients that come from the food we consume, like fuel, minerals, vitamins as well as other valuable substances, get repackaged and stored in the liver for later on.
But, we can’t get the whole nutrients our bodies require from the food we consume. Luckily, the liver saves us once again. The liver doubles as a factory that develops the nutrients we can’t derive from our food, like a lot of essential amino acids.
Because the liver plays a role in a lot of the body’s essential functions, illnesses of the liver are usually the root cause of several other chronic diseases. Therefore, keeping a healthy liver isn’t only about shedding weight; it’s about maintaining a generally healthy body.
Chapter 3 – A clogged liver causes a slow metabolism.
The majority of the diet fads entail removing a key food group from your diet that is supposedly the source of your entire issues. Normally, this food group is one of your calorie sources – fats, proteins, ketones, or carbs– all of which, at one point or the other, has been chosen as the villain in the narrative.
However, there’s an explanation as to why diet fads don’t work. It’s simple to see the reason when you think that your body eventually breaks down all calorie sources into the exact thing – acetyl – which is the most basic fuel that the body burns for energy.
If your body requires energy, then it’ll burn this acetyl instantly. If the body wished to store the fuel for later on, then it’ll keep it in the liver and muscles.
If it then gets stored in the liver, it’ll be repackaged into either one of two kinds of fat: glycogen or triglycerides. Both glycogens, as well as triglycerides, are short-term fats. They’re essentially fats in purgatory; they’re waiting to either be burned for energy immediately or sent off to be kept long-term as body fat.
Therefore, here’s the key distinction between a healthy and an unhealthy liver: A healthy liver will burn the majority of these short-term fats for energy, whereas an unhealthy liver will keep the majority of it as body fat, leading to weight gain.
However, how does a liver get unhealthy?
Well, consider that a healthy liver requires a good quantity of both glycogen and triglycerides. The reason is that, in order to regain energy from triglycerides, the liver has to burn some glycogen. Consider triglycerides as blocks of wood and glycogen as a tinder that assists to start the fire.
The issue is, it’s very much easier for the liver to make triglycerides than glycogen. When we constantly consume a high-fuel diet, the liver can become clogged up with triglycerides, leaving no space for glycogen. Because the liver requires glycogen to burn triglycerides, the liver loses the capacity to rid itself of the backlog of triglyceride fat.
This causes what’s known as a fatty liver syndrome. This signifies that the liver is really loaded with fat, that when new fuel goes in for processing, the liver is enforced to send it out to be kept as body fat.
This is efficiently the meaning of slow metabolism. Your body is not able to use the fuel you utilize for energy and is enforced to keep it into long-term storage.
In this situation, it doesn’t mean how few calories you eat– you’re going to have so many problems shedding losing weight. However, fortunately, the liver can be repaired. We’ll examine how in the following chapter.
Chapter 4 – You can aid encourage your liver’s natural ability of regeneration.
The liver’s significance to our health is shown in our language. The term liver derives from the exact root as the term life. This is not a coincidence. For a very long time, the liver has been respected for one amazing feature – its power to regenerate.
Extraordinarily, about 80% of the liver can regrow if it gets damaged. All thanks to this ability, people that are healthy can donate more than two-thirds of their liver to a person in need, and the remaining will grow back in a situation of months!
This should give you hope. Provided the appropriate conditions, your liver can heal itself. The Metabolism Reset Diet is made to offer those conditions.
The first thing that can be done to assist in minimizing the stress that our high-fuel diets put on the liver.
The actual cause of why a fatty liver finds it hard to clean itself is that we eat new fuel faster than the liver can break down old fuel. This is the reason why, on the Metabolism Reset Diet, restricting calorie intake is really vital. The liver can just process a lot in one day; therefore, it’s vital that we reduce additional work for the liver so it has an opportunity to deal with its backlog.
Provided these jives with other calorie-restriction diets. However, this isn’t sufficient. Also, your liver requires nutrients to do its processes. You may possess a lot of energy in store in the form of body fat; however, your body can’t essentially access it if it doesn’t possess the tools to do that.
Sadly, individuals who partake in extremely restrictive diets can deny their liver of the nutrients that it requires. This entails that although they’re barely eating and feel starved, they can add on weight since their body is not able to utilize their fat storages for energy.
The solution is to consume a lot of the foods that give the nutrients your liver requires. That entails providing the body with healthy quantities of micronutrients, fiber, protein, and phytonutrients, which all help liver function.
The following foods are particularly rich in liver-aiding nutrients: soy, fish, grapes, papaya, turmeric, radishes, onions, garlic, and tomatoes. They all have an abundance of nutrients that assist the liver break down its stores of fat.
However, how are you meant to consume a nutrient-rich diet and minimize fuel consumption? In the following chapter, you’ll know how the Metabolic Reset Diet defeats this struggle.
Chapter 5 – A meal replacement is more efficient compared to food-group restriction.
Different from most diets, the Metabolic Reset Diet doesn’t need the restriction of any certain food group. As a matter of fact, consuming a variety of foods is healthy, because it provides your body with various types of nutrients.
What the Reset actually needs is meal replacement. That implies substituting some of your solid meals with protein shakes.
This is what your day-day meal plan would appear like on the diet: you would drink a protein shake for breakfast and drink another protein shake for lunch, for your dinner you’ll eat a hearty meal, and in between, you can consume as much veggie snacks as you want. That’s it! It’s that easy.
Therefore, why should you replace meals with protein shakes?
As a matter of fact, the weight of proof in support of the two-shake-a-day diet is, honestly, staggering. Likened to standard food-restriction diets, the two-shake diet has been confirmed to yield faster weight-loss and a more decline in liver fat. A research of 90 obese adults discovered that individuals on the two-shake diet lost nearly double as much weight as individuals eating three solid meals per day.
The reason protein-shake diets are really effective is that they make it really simple to get big amounts of protein while lessening other calorie sources.
This is vital since, of the whole calorie sources, protein has the utmost positive impact on helping the liver and enhancing metabolism. Protein has the actual beneficial capacity to act in place of glycogen to aid burn triglyceride fats. Protein as well contains essential amino acids that further help the liver in breaking down fats.
Apart from protein, the other vital food group that plays a huge role in the Reset is resistant starch in foods such as potatoes, legumes, and bananas. Resistant starch is a kind of carbohydrate that’s difficult for your body to digest. That’s good since your body eventually ends us absorbing just nearly 50% of the calories you eat from resistant starch, which implies less stress on your liver.
Resistant starch is good for the Reset diet since it assists to burn body fat, stabilize energy levels, and help digestive health by feeding good bacteria in your gut.
The last part of the diet is the limitless veggie snacking. That’s correct; there’s no boundary on how much vegetables you can consume. The reason is that vegetables give high levels of nutrients to your body and phytonutrients for your gut flora while having small quantities of fuel.
The good thing about the Metabolic Reset Diet is that you just have to follow it for four weeks. After that, you can continue with a normal diet of solid food and maintain your reduced weight and increased energy with quite a small effort.
Chapter 6 – Sleep as well as exercise helps the liver recover during the cleanse.
It’s not only your diet that has an effect on the health of your liver. Sleep as well as exercise play a huge role also. By making a few basic adjustments to your sleep and exercise routines, you can strengthen the outcomes of the diet cleanse.
Let’s start with your sleep routines. Sleep isn’t frequently talked about in relation to weight loss, still, a lot of experts believe that sleep affects your shape much more than diet as well as exercise do.
When you’re sleeping, your liver actually gets a hard-earned rest; however, it definitely doesn’t go off. During times of a long deep sleep, your liver is preoccupied with rebuilding the glycogen supply that it burned in the day, and also keep on to burn stored fat.
Also, sleep assists to minimize your stress levels. Proof suggests that stress as well has an effect on your metabolism since the stress hormone cortisol prevents your liver from burning fat. Sleep hinders your body from releasing cortisol – which is the way your body compensates you for having adequate rest.
Due to these reasons, and for your own well-being, it’s vital to attempt and have a full night’s sleep each night. That implies getting about seven to eight hours – no excuses.
Exercise is vital for your metabolism as well. That definitely doesn’t come as a surprise to you. However, what might come as a surprise to you is that it’s possible to do a lot of exercises.
Studies reveal that for individuals with sluggish metabolisms, a lot of exercises can be counterproductive since it puts additional strain on the liver, which needs to process the whole additional fuel your body burns. If your liver is already finding it hard to provide the whole energy you require, this additional stress can make situations worse.
Yet, some exercise is vital. If you do not do any workout, then it is possible for your body to tap into your muscle tissue as a source of fuel. You don’t wish for this to occur since, although you might she weight, it hinders your body from burning body fat. By doing some light workout, you can boost your liver to produce glycogen and essentially recruit your muscles as an additional spot to store fuel.
Therefore, while on the cleanse, you must make an attempt to find a balance between light workout and rest. A good method to accomplish that balance is by going on regular short walks or doing day-day micro-workouts, like short five- to ten-minute stretching or cardio exercises.
The Metabolism Reset Diet: Repair Your Liver, Stop Storing Fat and Lose Weight Naturally by Alan Christianson Book Review
Your liver is the core of your health since it affects all the other organs in your body. The liver cleans your blood, builds and keeps the nutrients that your other organs require, and protects your body against illness. Also, it’s directly accountable for your metabolism, which affects your weight as well as your energy levels. Therefore, if you wish to look and feel better, then accept this easy formula: a healthy liver implies an active metabolism, which eventually, leads to a healthy body overall.
Develop a meal plan.
Therefore, you’ve been told the science behind the diet, you could do with a metabolism boost, and you want to try it out now. Now what? Now, you have to develop a meal plan for the following four weeks. Don’t stress; the entire hard work has been done for you already. All you need to do is go to the website themetabolismresetdiet.com to discover an excess of resources like progress trackers, recipes, grocery lists, and more. There, you will as well find an active community of like-minded individuals who’ll be glad to offer you any additional advice or support that you require.
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The 100 Absolutely Unbreakable Laws of Business Success by Brian Tracy | Book Summary
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Overview
Human potential expert Brian Tracy has applied many laws of effective self development to the field of business and created a fascinating and easily understandable guide that can enhance both your personal and professional life. He explains each of the 100 laws in theoretical detail and then applies them to various aspects of business, career enhancement, creativity and financial reward. These laws are from Tracy’s speaking and consulting experience throughout the world.
Some of these laws may sound unusual or even controversial when you first read them. Eventually many people will agree that these laws are similar to laws of physics, mathematics, mechanics or electricity. They are neutral, neither positive nor negative. These laws are indifferent to your personal beliefs, preferences or desires. Besides describing the laws, Tracy provides tips for how you can apply that specific law to your own life.
One of the basic concepts expressed throughout the book is that if you do what other successful people do, you will get the results that other successful people get. And if you don’t, you won’t. Generally, you are successful in business and in life to the degree to which you find out what works and then apply that principle whenever and whenever it is appropriate to get a particular result. This book is designed to give you ideas and strategies that have been proven to work.
Key ideas
The Laws of Life (Numbers 1-5)
This section’s laws include: the Laws of Cause and Effect, Belief, Expectations, Attraction and Correspondence. These first five laws are called the Laws of Life because they’re so basic, and because they form the foundation for the rest of the laws. The Laws of Life are based on the idea that if you change the quality and focus of your thinking, you change the quality of your life. Tracy believes that all of the other laws in this book are logical extensions of these first five laws. Here is a brief summary:
The Law of Cause and Effect – Everything happens for a reason, for every effect there is a specific cause. This law is similar to the ‘Law of Karma’ in the East and the passage ‘as you sow, shall you reap,’ from the bible.
The Law of Belief – Whatever you truly believe will become your reality. Believe you will succeed, and you ultimately will; believe you will fail and you probably will.
The Law of Expectation – Whatever you expect will happen as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Expect good things from yourself and others, and that’s what you will get. Expect very little, or expect negativity, and you will get that, too.
The Law of Attraction – You are a living magnet and will attract the people, situations, and circumstances that are in harmony with your most dominant thoughts. Tracy describes how a person’s thoughts are powerful and can penetrate almost any barrier. Other people can pick up on your intentions nonverbally.
The Law of Correspondence – Your outer world is a reflection of your inner world; it corresponds with your dominant patterns of thinking. As part of the exercises for this law, Tracy asks readers to visualize and imagine that their business and career were perfect in every respect. Then look to see what changes you need to make in your thinking to create an inner world in such a way that it is consistent with what you want to experience on the outside.
The Laws of Success (Numbers 6-19)
Tracy defines success as being happy with what you’ve got. Success in not necessarily determined by material possessions or accomplishments. Anyone can enjoy success simply by reaching the point where they are perfectly content with their life in most respects. Achievement of success comes from continuous, persistent effort in the pursuit of your goals. First, you must be honest and very clear about what you want and what it will look like when you have achieved it. Here is a brief summary of the Laws of Success:
The Law of Control – You feel good about yourself to the degree to which you feel that you are in control of your own life.
The Law of Accident – Life is a series of random occurrences and things just happen by accident. To make the most of this law, Tracy recommends that you take action immediately to assert control over the situations in your life that are causing you to feel trapped and frustrated.
Law of Responsibility – You are completely responsible for everything you are and for everything you become and achieve. Greater progress in your life is possible only to the degree to which you accept a higher level of responsibility in that area.
Law of Direction – Successful people have a clear sense of purpose and direction in every area of their lives.
The Law of Compensation – You are always fully compensated for whatever you do, positive or negative. Once again, this is similar to the Law of Karma from Eastern philosophy.
Law of Preparation – Effective performance is preceded by painstaking preparation. Your level of preparation is immediately evident to those around you.
The other Laws of Success cover service, applied effort, overcompensation, forced efficiency, decisions, creativity, flexibility and persistence.
The Laws of Business (Numbers 20-33)
One of the fundamental ideas in this section is that a company or business must always continue to learn, grow, innovate and improve. Fully 80 percent of new businesses close down or disappear within the first two years of start-up, and many large, established companies go bankrupt or are taken over by other organizations each year. To be successful in business, it is essential to understand the principles that guide other successful businesses.
The Law of Purpose – The purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer. Profits are a measure of how well the company is fulfilling its purpose.
The Law of the Customer – The customer always acts to satisfy his or her interests by seeking the very most, and best at the lowest possible price. Customers are both demanding and ruthless; they reward highly those companies that serve them best and allow those companies that serve them poorly to fail. Proper business planning always begins with the customer as the central focus of attention and discussion.
The Law of Quality – The customer demands the very highest quality for the very lowest price. Quality is what the customer says it is and is willing to pay for. Quality includes both the product or service and the way that it is sold, delivered, and maintained.
The Law of Specialization – To succeed in a competitive marketplace, a product or service must be specialized to perform a specific function and be excellent at satisfying a clearly defined need of the customer. Continually ask yourself: Who is our customer? In what ways could our product or service be modified or improved so that it satisfies even more of the special needs of a larger number of customers?
The other Laws of Business here include: the laws of organization, customer satisfaction, obsolescence, innovation, critical success factors, the market, differentiation, segmentation, concentration and excellence.
The Laws of Leadership (Numbers 34-45)
Leadership is the most important single factor in determining business success or failure. People have studied leadership for thousands of years, and the subject has never been studied as much as it is now, with more than 5,000 books, articles and commentaries on the market offering ideas and theories on what makes a good leader.
Leadership emerges in response to situations that require the very best you have to offer. Everyone is a potential leader, as long as they develop and execute effective leadership qualities. Here are some samples from this section:
The Law of Integrity – Great business leadership is characterized by honesty, truthfulness, and straight dealing with every person, under all circumstances. Transformational leadership is the ability to motivate, inspire, and bring people to higher levels of performance.
The Law of Courage – The ability to make decisions and act boldly in the face of setbacks and adversity is the key to greatness in leadership. Leadership is not the absence of fear, but the control and mastery of fear.
The Law of Power – Power gravitates to the person who can use it most effectively to get the desired results. Good leaders use power to advance the interests of the organization rather than themselves. Power is often dependent on your ability to influence people over whom you have no direct control or authority. Becoming indispensable to your organization and focusing on the results that are expected of you are keys to gaining and keeping power.
Other laws in this section include the laws of realism, ambition, optimism, empathy, resilience, independence, emotional maturity, superb execution and foresight.
The Laws of Money (Numbers 46-58)
One of your major goals in life should be financial independence where you don’t have to worry about money anymore. People worry more about money than just about anything else. Financial security is the number-one concern because your very survival depends upon it. Any threat to your security, real or imaginary, can cause you tremendous stress. You become free of these fears when you achieve a certain level of financial security and create a system to protect it.
According to Tracy, money tends to flow toward people who respect it and value it and are capable of doing worthwhile things with it that benefit others. In this section of the book, he explains a variety of laws related to the creating, investing and savings of money. Here are samples:
The Law of Capital – Your most valuable asset, in terms of cash flow, is your physical and mental capital, your earning ability. Your most precious resource is your time. One of your best investments is to increase your personal equity through mental and emotional capital, through training and self development.
The Law of Time Perspective – The most successful people in any society are those who take the longest time period into consideration when making their day-to-day decisions. Be aware of long-term consequences of your actions. Self-discipline is the most important personal quality for assuring long-term success.
Sacrifice in the short term is the price you pay for security in the long term.
The Law of Investing – Investigate before you invest. Tracy recommends that you should spend at least as much time studying a particular investment as you do earning the money to put into that particular investment. Investing your money carefully and allowing it to grow at compound interest will eventually make you rich.
The other laws in this section include: the laws of abundance, exchange, saving, conservation, Parkinson’s, three, compound interest, accumulation, magnetism, and accelerating acceleration.
The Laws of Selling (Numbers 59-72)
We all make our living selling something to someone. We are paid on the basis of how well we sell ourselves, our ideas, and our products and services to others. Former U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower once said, the art of leadership is getting people to do what you want them to do and to think of it as their own idea. An essential message in this section is to be sure that what you’re selling is the right product or service for you to be selling to the right customer, the kind of customer you enjoy working with.
The Law of Sales – Nothing happens until a sale takes place (production, wages, taxes, etc.) Eighty percent of sales are closed after the fifth call or after the fifth closing attempt. Unfortunately approximately 50% of salespeople quit after the first call or to ask for the sale.
The Law of Need – Every decision to purchase a product of service is an attempt to satisfy a need or relieve a dissatisfaction of some kind. Before selling anything to anyone, the salesperson must be clear about the need he or she is attempting to satisfy.
Law of Persuasion – The purpose of the selling process is to convince customers that they will be better off with the product than they would be with the money necessary to buy the product. Proof that other people similar to the customer have purchased the product builds credibility, lowers resistance, and increases sales.
Law of Perverse Motivation – Everyone likes to buy, but no one wants to be sold. The quality of the trust bond that exists between you and your customers must be strong. See yourself as a teacher with a willing and able student, eager to learn.
Other laws in this section include: the laws of determination, problems, security, risk, trust, relationships, friendship, positioning, perspective, and advance planning.
The Laws of Negotiating (Numbers 73-87)
Your ability to get along with others is perhaps the most important skill you can develop to be successful in business and in life. Part of this skill is the ability to negotiate successfully. The best negotiators are those who can consider both the short and long-term factors, and find ways to make the final agreement acceptable to the other party (win-win). This section has laws related to both the strategy of negotiation and the motivations behind it.
The Universal Law of Negotiating – Everything is negotiable. Every price was set by someone and can therefore be changed by someone. They are a best-guess estimate of what the customer will pay.
The Law of Four – There are generally four main issues to be decided upon in any negotiation; everything else is dependent on these. Of the four main issues, one will be the main issue and three will be secondary issues.
The Law of Anticipation – Eighty percent or more of your success in any negotiation will be determined by how well you prepare in advance. Check your assumptions; incorrect assumptions lie at the root of most mistakes. Write down everything that you think may be of concern to the other side. You can then start to see where you are strong or weak and what you can offer.
The Law of Greater Power – The person with the greater power, real or imagined, will get the better deal in any negotiation. Tips- appear indifferent, suggest your item is in scarce supply, look as if you have the power to make decisions. Appear to be willing to walk away if the deal is not good.
Other laws in this section include, the laws of futurity, win-win or no deal, unlimited possibilities, timing, terms, authority, reversal, desire, reciprocity, walk away, and finality.
The Laws of Time Management (Numbers 88-100)
Successful people have the ability to be well organized and manage time effectively. Everything you are today and everything you become in the future will be determined by the way you think and the way you use your time.
The Law of Clarity – The clearer you are about your goals and objectives, the more efficient and effective you will be in achieving them. Write down ten goals that you would like to achieve in the coming year. Ask yourself what one goal, if you were to accomplish it, would have the greatest positive impact on your life.
Law of Posteriorities – Before you start something new, you must discontinue something old. You must continually ask yourself, what activities in your life you can cut back on, delegate, or discontinue to free up more time for your most important activities.
The Law of Competence – You can increase your efficiency and your effectiveness by becoming better and better at your key tasks. This law helps you identify your most valuable skill that could propel you forward, along with your weakest skill that may be holding you back.
Other laws in this section include the laws of priorities, most valuable asset, planning, reward, sequentiality, leverage, timeliness, practice, time pressure and single handling.
Final notes
According to Brian Tracy, what matters more than anything, is that you take action on at least one idea that can help you immediately. Fully 95 percent of everything you do is determined by your habits, good or bad. A habit is an automatic, conditioned response or ritual of personal or business life. Your great goal is to form good habits that then function on their own, enhancing the quality of your life and increasing the scope of your rewards. Taking action on your goals and priorities is one of the most effective habits you can develop.
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The Miracle Equation by Hal Elrod | Book Summary
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There’s no two ways about it: dedicating time to self-improvement is deeply rewarding. But is it enough? Self-professed personal development devotee Hal Elrod isn’t so sure. After all, you can meditate, read and work out every day, and then . . . do nothing. Sure, you’ll be the most zen, knowledgeable and ripped you’ve ever been, but there’ll still be something missing: achievements.
And while there’s something to be said for relishing the journey itself, ultimately, it’s hitting targets that keeps us motivated. That washboard stomach and newfound fluency in Japanese just won’t mean that much if your bank account is still in the red, your relationships suck and you’re stuck in a job you hate. Leave those big issues unresolved and all those good habits are likely to end up falling by the wayside.
So what’s the alternative? Well, you need to start harnessing the energy you’re expending on your personal development to a larger purpose. Call it a mission. That’s ultimately what’ll get you out of bed in the morning and give all those smaller self-improvement strategies their meaning. If that sounds like a tall order, don’t worry – in this book summary, we’ll lay out an actionable, step-by-step guide to creating and fulfilling your personal mission.
In this summary of The Miracle Equation by Hal Elrod, you’ll learn
- what The Matrix can teach us about self-belief;
- how to make yourself emotionally invincible; and
- why our brains limit our potential, and what we can do about it.
The Miracle Equation Key Idea #1: There are two different kinds of miracle, but only one that you can do anything about.
One day, American jeweller Donnie Register found himself in the middle of a hold-up, with a gun pointed at his head. Things went south, and the robber pulled the trigger. The probability of that kind of shot ending in anything but instant death was pretty much zero, but luck was on Donnie’s side. He instinctively raised his hands, and the bullet was deflected by his gold wedding band, saving his life.
That’s what we usually think of as a miracle: an extraordinary stroke of fortune that seems to come from on high.
But it’s miracles like these that give the concept a bad name. As doubters are quick to point out, occurrences like Donnie’s narrow escape are incredibly rare. They’re also beyond our control – after all, if people knew how to simply conjure miraculous interventions we’d all have six-figure checks in our mailboxes and odds-defying health recoveries would be the norm.
The author felt the same way for a long time. But here’s what he gradually realized: rational skepticism can easily turn into cynicism. What’s the difference? Well, the first is a healthy sign that you’re using your critical faculties to analyse the world around you. The latter, by contrast, is an irrational belief that your options are more limited than they really are. And that’s when you start dismissing the miracles you can control.
People often assume that their most successful peers are incredibly “lucky,” as though the gods had personally ordained their achievements. But most highfliers don’t just sit around waiting for a random, passive miracle like Donnie’s: they actively create their own good fortune. That makes them miracle mavens, a term that goes back to the Hebrew word mebhin, meaning “one who knows.”
Every era has its own mavens. Think of figures like John F. Kennedy, the first American president to put a man on the moon, or Martin Luther King, the civil rights leader who transformed the nation’s ideas about both itself and its black citizens. While others waited and prayed for a miracle, these go-getters went out there and made it happen.
The Miracle Equation Key Idea #2: The author first discovered the miracle equation in his early twenties.
Let’s rewind back to Hal Elrod’s early twenties. He was just out of college and working as a sales rep for Cutco, a high-end kitchenware company. Up to that point, he’d been a pretty average kid, but he was beginning to hit his stride. That was down to his success in so-called “push periods” – Cutco’s 14-day sales contests.
In early 2001, he’d just made $20,000 worth of sales in two consecutive pushes and was on the verge of breaking the company’s all-time sales record. All he needed to do was make the same amount in a third push. The only problem? The next contest was only ten days long. That meant he’d have to sell $2,000 worth of cutlery every day – something he’d never done before.
Tossing and turning in his bed the night before the contest began, Elrod toyed with the idea of calling it quits. His self-doubt had almost gotten the better of him when he remembered something business guru Jim Rohn once said – namely, that the purpose of a goal isn’t achieving it but becoming the sort of person who even attempts it. That insight led to what the author calls the miracle equation. This consisted of two parts: first off, establishing unwavering faith that he could reach his goal; and second, making an extraordinary effort to ensure that outcome.
As the final day approached, he’d made $17,024 in sales and had two appointments left. Making another three grand was a tall order, but it wasn’t impossible. But then disaster struck. The first client wasn’t home. Reaffirming his commitment to the miracle equation aloud, Elrod jumped back in his car and headed to his final meeting.
And that’s when the miracle happened. The client Elrod intended on meeting had also forgotten her appointment, but her Swedish sister-in-law was in town. After listening to Elrod’s presentation, she commented on what a lucky coincidence it was that he’d turned up at just that moment. She and her husband had agreed to buy a new set of knives after their US trip, and they were also looking for a present for her brother, a keen amateur cook. She bought two of Cutco’s “Ultimate Sets” on the spot. That was enough to push Elrod over his $20,000 target!
As he drove away, he realized that he’d found the formula for achieving success and creating a remarkable life for himself and his family.
The Miracle Equation Key Idea #3: Establishing unwavering faith is a conscious choice that both mentors and spirituality can support.
Did you know that 27 publishers turned down Dr. Seuss – the children’s book author who later sold 600 million copies of his books worldwide? Or that record studios told Elvis Presley he couldn’t cut it in the music business and advised him to stick to driving trucks? What keeps miracle mavens going when they’re faced with rejection and setbacks is unwavering faith: the unshakeable belief that they possess the ability to make miracles. But where does that faith come from?
Well, it’s what people sometimes call a “leap of faith.” That has two aspects. First, it’s a leap because there’s no other way of getting there – neither reason nor evidence provides a clear route to your destination. Secondly, it doesn’t come naturally. As we’ve seen, there are all kinds of obstacles to self-belief. That means it has to be consciously established in a moment of decision.
To see how that works, think of the first Matrix movie. You might remember Laurence Fishburne’s character, Morpheus, telling Keanu Reeve’s character, Neo, that he was “the one.” Neo doesn’t believe it, and falls short of his potential during his virtual training exercises. The key moment comes when Neo finally accepts that Morpheus is telling the truth – only then can he begin mastering his untapped abilities.
The plot of your life will mirror that of the movie when you make your own decision to believe; once you’ve accepted that you’re as deserving and talented as anyone on Earth, your limitless potential will become apparent. Before you get there, though, you can draw faith from a couple of other sources.
One is religion or spirituality. Take Rister Ratemo, a 14-year-old Kenyan girl who was close to going blind. Cultural proscriptions against taking another person’s body parts meant she couldn’t have the operation she needed – a corneal transplant – in Kenya. Her unwavering belief in God gave her the courage to board a plane and fly alone to the US, where she received the treatment she needed.
Then there are mentors. Before discovering the miracle equation, the author struggled with confidence issues. His Cutco mentor Jesse Levine, however, had an unshakable belief in his protégé’s abilities. At first, Elrod thought Jesse had simply made a mistake. But over time, that unwavering faith began to rub off on Elrod. Maybe, he started thinking, Jesse was right after all. Eventually, he became convinced that he really was capable of doing anything he put his mind to!
The Miracle Equation Key Idea #4: Learning to define yourself can help you overcome biological and social limitations.
By this point you might be champing at the bit to start applying the miracle equation to your own life. But hold on a second – before we do that, we’ll need to take care of a couple of common psychological logjams that get in the way of unwavering faith and extraordinary effort.
Let’s start with limitations. Think back to your childhood: What did you want to be when you grew up? Chances are, you set your sights high. Kids dream of becoming famous ballerinas or baseball players. When we’re young, everything seems possible. Over time, however, the world becomes smaller, and we find ourselves hemmed in by self-imposed limitations.
That’s partly down to the way the adult human brain functions. When you get down to it, it’s a pretty ancient piece of our wiring. Like our prehistoric ancestors, we’re constantly scanning our environment for signs of danger. That’s rational enough if you’re a caveman – after all, if you’re not on your toes you might just end up being mauled by a mountain lion. Unfortunately, our brains aren’t very good at telling the difference between the anxiety triggered by a charging mammoth and, say, the prospect of moving to a new city for a job. That means we end up irrationally rejecting opportunities.
Then there’s the worldview we learn from the society around us. We’re constantly told what is and what isn’t possible. Eventually, we settle for second best rather than pursuing our dreams because they’re “unrealistic.” But here’s the thing: there aren’t any hard limits on what any of us can do. Experts claimed no one could ever run a mile in under four minutes – until the British athlete Roger Bannister came along and did exactly that in 1954. Then less than two months later, another runner called John Landy broke Bannister’s record!
So how can we break out of these self-limiting patterns? Well, we need to start defining ourselves. That’s not so much about rejecting social labels as it is about refusing to see them as brakes on our capabilities. The author, for example, has been diagnosed with ADHD, but he refuses to let this diagnosis limit him. After all, ADHD makes focusing on tasks harder, but not impossible. And far from being a limit, it even has its upsides – after all, bouncing from one idea to the next can also be a highly effective creative strategy!
The Miracle Equation Key Idea #5: The five-minute rule can help you achieve emotional peace when things go wrong.
When the author was 20, he was involved in a near-fatal car crash after being hit head-on by a drunk driver going 70 miles an hour. What did the most damage, though, was being broadsided by a second vehicle. That collision broke eleven bones, including Elrod’s femur, eye socket and pelvis. His heart stopped for a full six minutes and he almost bled to death, leaving him in a coma.
When he woke, he was told he’d probably never walk again. His doctors expected him to fall into a profound depression. But after a moment of deep reflection, Elrod surprised them with his upbeat response. He laughed, cracked jokes and seemed to be in high spirits. That, the medical staff thought, must be a form of denial. Worried that he was repressing his emotions, they asked his parents to talk to him. That’s when the author explained the five-minute rule.
That’s something he learned from his Cutco mentor Jesse Levine. By the time of the crash, Elrod had been applying it every day for nearly two years. Here’s how it works: it’s okay to feel bad when things go wrong, but not for more than five minutes. When you suffer a setback, you set a timer and do whatever you need to – scream, cry, kvetch or punch a wall. Then, when the time’s up, you say, “Can’t change it” aloud and move on.
The reason the rule is so effective is because it taps into a powerful truth: emotional pain isn’t caused by external events that are beyond our control, but by our responses. Wallowing, in other words, is a choice that keeps us trapped in experiences we’re powerless to alter. Letting go and accepting them, by contrast, lets us move on. In Elrod’s case, it meant he could fully focus on his recovery and, eventually, regain the use of his legs.
But remember, getting to this stage takes time and constant practice. The best way to start is to use it to deal with those niggling bugbears that can ruin a working day. Elrod, for example, started applying the rule to get over frustrations like a client cancelling an order at the last minute. So – received a rude email from a colleague? Hit the timer, stew a little and move on!
The Miracle Equation Key Idea #6: Defining your mission is the best way of avoiding getting bogged down in competing goals.
Now that we’ve taken a look at overcoming the brain’s inbuilt limitations and toughening your emotional armor, it’s time to talk about goals. Chances are, you’ve got lots – we all do. But here’s the issue: if you don’t prioritize, you won’t achieve any of them.
In fact, attempting to tackle all your goals at once is the most common obstacle to progress. There just isn’t enough time to work on your health, family, finances, career and relationships simultaneously. Try it and you’ll be plenty busy but failing to make anything but the most inconsequential gains. It’ll leave you frustrated and ready to call the whole thing off.
While focusing on a single goal for six months might get you halfway to the finish line, divide your energies among five or six projects and you’ll barely scratch the surface of any one individual goal. There’s a good reason for that: as a 2009 Stanford University study shows, multitasking overloads our brains and makes us less efficient. Flitting among different tasks makes it harder to screen out non-essential information and dulls our memories.
That’s why you need a mission – an overarching end toward which your efforts are directed. To get a handle on that, think of Olympic athletes. If you want to compete at the highest level, you need to choose a single sport. And while you’ll work on various things – stamina, technique, diet and so on – everything supports the primary objective: winning gold in your chosen sport.
So what is your mission? Here you’ll want to grab a pen and paper and write out all your goals for the next half year. Now take a look at that list and ask yourself this question: Which one of those goals would help you develop the qualities and skills you’d need to fulfill all your dreams? You might, for example, decide that running a marathon would require the kind of dedication and self-belief that you’re also lacking in your career or love life.
Okay, you’ve nailed down your highest priority. Don’t worry if it sounds like a tall order right now – as the quasi-military terminology suggests, missions are serious business!
The Miracle Equation Key Idea #7: Setting monthly targets and engineering your environment make it easier to fulfill your mission.
In this book summary, we’ll be focusing on inching your mission from possible toward probable. The greater your progress on that front, the more likely it is that you’ll stay engaged and committed. Ready? Great – let’s explore some support strategies you can start using today.
If you’ve ever made New Year’s resolutions, you’ll know that a year is a long time. That might sound like a boon, but it can actually be a curse. That’s because it’s simply too much time: if you pursue a goal over such an extended time span, you’re likely to lose your sense of urgency. After all, if you haven’t started that diet by the end of February, you’ve always got another ten months, right? Well, no. The overly optimistic thought that “I’ve got plenty of time left” tricks us into postponing important decisions.
So what if you gave yourself one month rather than twelve to accomplish your goals? Here’s how it works: instead of focusing on an annual target, you set yourself monthly goals that cumulatively bring you closer to fulfilling your mission. This has two benefits. First off, it breaks tasks down into bite-sized portions – aiming to write a business plan over four weeks, for example, sounds a lot less intimidating than “set up my own business”! Secondly, it gives you a healthy sense of urgency and can cut out procrastination.
And here’s the second way you can give yourself a safety net as you pursue your mission: engineer your environment. That’s all about removing goal-deterring obstacles from your day-to-day surroundings. So say you’ve decided to shed twenty pounds over the next year. One way of making life easier for yourself would be to make sure your pantry isn’t stocked with cookies and soda.
Want to meditate every morning? Don’t keep your attention-grabbing smartphone on the bedside table. If you want to hit the gym after work, by contrast, think about keeping your gear in the trunk of your car or changing before you leave the office. These little hacks are especially important because, as we’ve seen, time isn’t on your side: if you want to meet your targets, you’ll need to be working toward your goals every day.
The Miracle Equation Key Idea #8: Extraordinary effort is all about consistency and commitment.
That brings us almost to the end of our journey. In this book summary, we’ll wrap up with some tips to help you with the second part of the miracle equation – extraordinary effort. But let’s start out by clearing up a possible misconception: despite the name, this isn’t about heroic Herculean labors. In fact, bringing your miracle to fruition is all about constantly repeating small steps.
That has a couple of components. The first thing you’ll need to do is predetermine your process. What that means is figuring out which steps, if taken again and again, will lead to the fulfilment of your mission.
That’s what Hal Elrod did back at Cutco. Once he’d set his $20,000 push target, he called colleagues who’d already achieved that in the past with a list of questions he’d prepared beforehand. Their answer? Consistency pays. Rather than using newfangled sales hacks, they were hitting their phones every day at the same time and making the same number of calls.
That isn’t just a piece of sales wisdom, however. Whether you’re writing a book or aiming to lose weight, breaking your process down into “micro” steps makes your “macro” mission seem a lot less scary. Elrod, for example, wrote the The Miracle Equation by sitting down and getting 1,000 words onto the page every day. To find how to predetermine your process, you can start with Google, or, if that fails to turn up any insights, check out Amazon’s best-selling titles on your topic of interest. Your best bet, however, is to ask folks who are in the know, like the author did.
The next step is to schedule your process. If you’ve ever bought a big stack of books on a new subject you’ve just gotten into only to watch them gather dust on your shelf, or joined a gym you never ended up going to, you’ll know that life has a tendency to get in the way of our grand ambitions. That means you need to add slots to your diary – physically or digitally – that are dedicated exclusively to your mission. If your calendar is already overloaded with commitments, consider simplifying it and using online delivery services to take care of time-consuming chores like grocery shopping.
If you’ve come this far, well done – you’re now set to pursue your mission. So find the time to work on it and begin discovering your true potential!
Final summary
The key message in this book summary:
Miracles come in different shapes and sizes. Some are what the insurance industry calls “acts of God” and beyond all human control. Others are about transforming our dreams into reality, and these are in our own hands. In fact, there’s a fail-safe method for generating miracles; the trick is knowing how. And that’s where the miracle equation comes in: unwavering faith plus extraordinary effort equals miracles. In everyday terms, that means learning to overcome inborn cognitive limits, embracing your true gifts and putting in the hours necessary to realize your desires and ambitions.
Actionable advice:
Make peace with your emotional pain.
Take a moment to think about the things that cause you emotional pain. How much time and energy do you spend dwelling on them, and has it changed anything? One last question: Would your life be better if it didn’t contain the stress, anger and sadness associated with that pain? Well, let’s find out! Picture a source of your pain – the unchangeable circumstance that your mind wants to resist. Once you’ve got that image in your head, take a deep breath and focus your mind on consciously choosing to accept it unconditionally. If that doesn’t work right away, try again tomorrow – eventually you’ll find that the pain will recede as you embrace its unalterable reality.
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The Man’s Guide To Women | What Women Really Want | John M. Gottman | Book Summary
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Results from world-renowned relationship expert John Gottman’s famous Love Lab have proven an incredible truth- Men make or break relationships. Based on 40 years of research, The Man’s Guide to Women unlocks the mystery of how to attract, satisfy, and succeed with a woman for a lifetime. For the first time ever, there is a science-based answer to the age-old question- What do women really want in a man?
Dr. Gottman, author of the New York Times bestseller The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, and his wife and collaborator, clinical psychologist Julie Schwartz Gottman, PhD, have pored over the research along with bestselling coauthors Douglas Abrams and Rachel Carlton Abrams, MD. Together, they have written this definitive guide for men, providing answers on everything from how to approach a woman and build a connection with her to how to truly satisfy her in bed and know when the relationship is on the right track. The Man’s Guide to Women is a must-have playbook for how to play-and win-the game of love.
The book barely starts and Gottman already delivers an eye opener: men are the crucial factor between a great relationship and a failed relationship.
It’s not to say that women don’t count: it’s a relationship of two individuals, so sure they count. But men and their actions are the key variable.
What’s a man to do, then?
Read on.
What Do Women Really Want?
First of all, women are unique, and if she contradicts what Gottman’s love lab says, listen to her.
They do however have several traits that are likely to be shared. And the number one thing women want is this:
Trustworthiness
Trustworthiness in dating and relationships means that:
You are who you say you are
You do what you say you do
The authors say women want safe and dependable men and that’s why they find firefighters hot: they epitomize the role of the dependable hero.
And that’s why symbolic actions of protectiveness and concern such as opening doors and pulling chairs actually do work.
This is very important also sexually because trustworthiness and sex are linked for women. Sex means being vulnerable for women, and fear or lack of trust will inhibit them sexually.
Women’s 2 Biggest Complaints
Women in relationships have two major complaints:
He is never there for me
There isn’t enough intimacy and connection
They are related complaints of women who want more intimacy but feel alone in a relationship.
Men’s 2 Biggest Complaints:
Too much fighting
Not enough sex
Men are also, in a way, lonely in a relationship and they want intimacy as much as women.
But men feel more intimacy through less fighting and more sex.
What Men Want: Men want to be desired and to feel like his woman adores him and approves of him.
The Biggest Relationship Fix: ATTUNEMENT
Attunement is how you increase intimacy, remove most fights and increase sex.
But first, here’s what most men do wrong:
Men’s Mistakes: Dismissing Emotions
The fights of many couple are the consequence of men dismissing women’s emotions instead of attuning to them.
You dismiss women’s emotions every time you:
Minimize them (or say she’s exaggerating)
Fix them
Try to distract her from them
Make fun of them
Mock them
Ignore them
A big mistake men do is to feel responsible for the woman’s emotions. When they do that, they either try to fix her or become irritable as they take her feelings personally.
Men have problems especially with negative emotions. They think dwelling on them makes matters worst and will rather avoid them altogether. This is, again, a mistake.
Acceptance is key instead. Or even better: look at emotional “crisis” as an opportunity to build trust.
Attunement
Women want trustworthiness, and trustworthiness is built with emotional connection, which in turn is created with attunement.
Men who learned emotional attunement got what they ultimately wanted from their relationships: less fighting and more sex.
To understand attunement, we can use it as an acronym (A TT U N E):
Attend and give your undivided attention
Turn toward: not just a metaphor, but physically turn towards her
Understand: whatever she says, strive to understand. Ask questions
Non Defensive Listening: don’t justify or attack back
Empathize: understanding is intellectual, empathizing is emotional. Feel what she’s feeling
Non defensive listening
A special note goes to listening without defending.
Men more easily go into flight or fight, so it’s not easy for them to listen calmly. But those were able to stay calm were men with great relationships.
Women’s Rhythms
Women change as their hormones change during their menstrual cycles.
This just a general guidelines, as it varies widely from woman to woman:
First 2 week of menstrual cycle women are friendlier, talkative and relaxed
Second 2 weeks they can be more stressed, irritable and craving lone time
During ovulation women can be more emotional and interested in sex.
PMS (premestrual syndrome) can last one day or a full 2 weeks. Can include depression, anxiety, irritability, emotional sensitivity
You can help smooth things out by:
Listening to her feelings (which are real)
Avoid blaming PMS
Get familiar with her cycle (not every woman has a 28 days cycle)
Remember that women’s constant is change, so:
Don’t take her moods personally: they often have nothing to do with you
Know that your woman of last week will be a different one from this week
Hormones And Sex
Men have sex centers in their brains which are twice the size of women’s. And men think about sex on average six times more frequently than women.
But while men peak in sexual drive during teenager years and early adulthood, women don’t hit their sexual stride until their thirties.
Sexual drive for the genders indeed align more closely in the forties and fifties.
Alpha VS Beta: The Cycle Effect
Women are more attracted to the aggressive alpha men when ovulating and more attracted to kinder and nurturing men when not (beta).
The authors say that heroes adapt their behavior to be both alpha and beta depending on their woman’s cycle.
Women And Fear
While men go through most of their daily life without experiencing fear, that’s not the case for women.
It was actually eye opening for me to read the example in the book:
A marriage counselor asked a room full of couples when was the last time they were afraid. Men were astonished to see their spouses were afraid or feeling uneasy on a daily basis. Including when walking in the parking lot to get to that same seminar room.
Stress Response
Men get less fearful in high stress situations. Women get more fearful instead, and are also more likely to get mini-traumatized and be even more afraid of similar situations in the future.
The example is a near car crash where the man chases the other driver and the woman gets more and more afraid.
Holding Hands During Fearful Situations
An experiment in MRI scan showed that holding hands to their husbands completely erased fear in happily married women. It slightly decreased fear in unhappily married women.
And it had no consequences when holding hands was a stranger.
Women & Attraction
Women look for confidence, intelligence, and high social status.
High social status is highly contextual though. So you can be a nobody at work but have high social status on a night out playing board games.
The authors say that the expertise you demonstrate in an area of interest is what attracts women. So if you collect stamps, be highly knowledgeable of stamps.
Romancing A Woman
The authors say that women remember the first kiss more than anything else. Even more than losing their virginity.
Is She Girlfriend Material?
The author recommends you take note of how she treats her pets, friends and family.
That will give you a good idea on how she will treat you in the relationship.
Some more warning signs:
Does she complain often?
Pattern of friendships
How she treats service personnel and strangers
Is she considered or self centered?
Making Love To A Woman
The Man’s Guide to Women has a whole chapter on making love.
But here’s a few droplets if wisdom that no other sex book will tell you on women’s mindsets:
Beauty for Women is a Matter of Survival
There’s constant pressure on her from society and more and more from media from any direction.
A woman self identity is tied to her body. She doesn’t see herself separately from her body, so her self worth is often tied to it.
While men are judged by their performance and abilities, women are judged today by the same standards PLUS how good they look and how they dress in the process.
So here’s what a hero does:
Comments on how great she looks
Answer “you look good in everything” when she asks if she looks fat
Does NOT make funny jokes about her eating
Let her know he’s attracted to her
Appreciates her body in and out of bed
When heroes do that, they also get much better sex.
The Mental Side of Sex
Good sex and love making start before bed. A woman’s anatomy is actually only a small percentage of what turns her on and gives her pleasure.
And, the authors say, the greatest sex organ of a woman, is her mind.
And it’s a myth that if a woman doesn’t reach an orgasm the man is not a good lover. Ultimately, say the authors, a woman is responsible for her own sexual pleasure.
She must first allow herself to reach an orgasm with you.
Handling Conflicts
First of all, make up sex is a myth: fighting puts a damper on women’s desire.
Women’s anger has its root in three different categories:
Powerlessness
Injustice
Other people’s irresponsibility
Research in the Love Lab shows that most of the times conflicts starts without a reason.
And when it happens, women want a good listener because women’s goal is to be better understood by her partner.
Men & Conflicts
Men are more likely to get aggressive, passive aggressive or seek revenge when they are angry.
Men get emotionally flooded and overwhelmed during conflict situation: they feel the shock of the attack and the need to defend. Those who can reduce heart rate while staying present tend to respond better and have better relationships.
To avoid flooding, there are three strategies:
Breath deeply
Count to 10
Take a break (WITHOUT thinking about your wife, but taking your mind off)
Your main job as a man is to learn to calm down when she has strong feelings or criticisms. It’s not about bending over, say the authors, it takes lots of strength to really listen while staying detached.
Women & Conflicts
Women are on average better at managing conflict, and that’s one of the reasons they don’t understand men stone walling or leaving mid conflict.
They are less likely to express anger directly, stay angry longer, and become more resentful. Since women are more likely to use indirect ways to express anger, they are also more likely to simply stay silent.
Women Need Friends
While men need a woman to live longer, it’s friendships with other women that determines women’s longevity.
Breast cancer patients also showed that the survival rate was highly correlated with the number of friends, and not on whether or not they had a spouse.
Women have a natural inclination for friends. They make friends more naturally than men, like while shopping or having manicure done.
Confidantes and Genders
In a study of blue collar marriages, their spouses was the only confidantes for men and men spoke to their wives about almost anything.
But their wives had many topics they didn’t talk about with their husbands and preferred other women instead.
Men’s Jealousy
Some men are jealous -and feel threatened- by their spouses’ girlfriends, and it was a major cause of domestic violence.
In case of male friends though they might have a reason to worry. The authors say that friendships slip into affairs when the woman complains to him about her relationship
Stages Of Love
Love has three stages:
Limerance: the period of butterflies (but not necessary nor sufficient for lifetime love)
Trust: women make sure he’s responsible for children (couple years)
Loyalty: you’ve chosen commitment, relationship transcends the two of you and becomes a thing of beauty
Limerance, the period of crazy love, is not the right time to make decisions about long term commitment. But the couples who don’t experience it sometimes feel as if something is missing. And wonder if they’ve done the right choice.
Importantly, the authors say that any other relationship type beyond monogamy in stage two is a threat to the relationship. Once you enter stage three, there’s a sense of purpose in the relationship. Couples feel like they have created something bigger than their mere sum.
How do you know if she’s the one?
Research has shown that similar interests matter little.
Feelings compatibility matters though. That’s about how you express affection and love how you express feelings, if at all. People have different ways of expressing feelings: passionate and all over or uncomfortable and shying away from feelings.
If you are mismatched there, it rarely works out.
Here’s an example of a more rational woman withholding emotions VS one who makes no effort and bursts at the seam:
If meta-emotion works, here’s what matters next: how does it feel being together? If she makes you feel happy, appreciated and that you can be yourself, than she is the right one for you.
Marriage
Turns out, marriage is more than a piece of paper.
The longer a couple lives together without getting married, the less they behave like a couple. They were also less likely to support each other and more likely to leave if someone better came along.
Overall, The Man’s Guide for Women makes the case that marriage is good.
Women And Children
The main message here is that women do put their children first once they become mothers.
They tend to build social networks that will help them support their babies, and the father is a central piece in such a network. She needs you, and countless studies show countless benefits for the children who grow up with an active father.
Heroes bond with their children as well instead of being jealous. And help raise healthy children in a happy family.
Staying Together For A Lifetime
Heroes are always curious about her and never stop investigating her and asking her questions.
And they’re never afraid of sharing their own world.
Staying curious is how you keep a healthy communication and tell her you care with facts. Sharing your world is how you keep trust and an open relationship.
The authors say that betrayals don’t happen out of the blue, but are the result of a long slide of secrets, unexpressed feelings moments of connection that went missing or dismissed.
If you turn away from your partner too many times, she might not be there when you finally turn to her again.
So here’s the other key: be present.
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