Self Help Rules To Live By

I just stumbled across, this gem, and I know all of you will love it dearly

This is a culmination of notes I took on a number of self help books that summarize the bare essentials of each their teachings and best bring things back to what really matters in terms of clear and concise content in each book.

I hope you will refer back to it and enjoy it as much as I have and will continue to do in the future

——-

Self help rules to live by

Add in every major self help rule from all of the books your have read (have mom bring in books from Detroit and then compile a master list)

Print this list and put it all over your home

Types of Rules To Live By

50 Self Help Classics

1. As A Man Thinkith: We don’t attract what we want, but what we are. Only by changing your thoughts will you change your life
2. NLP: “People work perfectly.” Program in new thoughts, actions, and feelings and you get a new life.
3. Meditations: Don’t get caught up in trivia or pettiness; appreciate your life within a larger context
4. Finding Your Own North Star: The book for you if you feel as though your life has taken a wrong turn.
5. Bhagavad-Gita: Seek peace inside yourself, do the work that is yours, and wonder at the mysteries of the universe
6. The Bible: Love, faith, hope, the glory of god, the perfectibility of man.
7. Iron John: Through old stories we can resurrect the ancient and deep power of the masculine
8. Consolation of Philosophy: No matter what happens to you, you always have freedom of mind
9. How Proust Can Change Your Life: Appreciate the rich experience of life, despite circumstances. Low expectations make for pleasant surprises
10. Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes: All life transitions have a pattern, which if acknowledgeable will make tough times more comprehensible
11. Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy: Feelings are not facts. Always question whether your emotions accurately reflect reality
12. The Power of Myth: Always do what you love and appreciate your life as a wonderful journey
13. Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff: Put your little struggles into perspective; by doing this you can gain more enjoyment of other people and life generally
14. How to Win Friends and Influence People: Really try and see the world as another sees it. The appreciation he or she feels mean that whatever you have to say will be truly heard
15. The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success: There is an easier way to get what you want from life; involving attunement with nature and the universe
16. The Alchemist: We too easily give up on our dreams, yet the universe is always ready to help us fulfill them
17. The 7 habits of highly Effective People: Real effectiveness comes from clarity (about your principles, values, and vision). Change is only real if it has become habitual
18. Flow: Rather than being idle, doing what you love is a pathway to greater meaning, happiness, and a self of higher complexity
19. The Art of Happiness: a Handbook for living: Achieving happiness does not have to depend on events. Through mental practice we can form the ability to be happy most of the time.
20. The Dhammapada: Refine and improve the quality of your thoughts and you will have little to fear from the world.
21. Real Magic: When you are aligned with your higher self and your life purpose, miraculous things happen.
22. Self Reliance: Whatever the pressures, be your own person.
23. Women Who Run with the Wolves: Reconnecting with your wild nature is not a mad indulgence but vital to mental and physical health.
24. Man’s Search for Meaning: The meaning of life is the meaning that you decide to give it.
25. Autobiography: Constant self improvement and a love of learning form your ticket to unusual success.
26. Creative Visualization: Life tends to live up to the thoughts and images you have about it, good or bad. Why not imagine your future the way you want it?
27. Emotional Intelligence: The Truly successful person will always have achieved emotional self mastery
28. Men Are from Mars, Women Are From Venus: Before we can treat each other as individuals, we must take into account the behavior differences of the sexes.
29. You Can Heal Your Life: You will only begin to change your life when you learn how to love yourself properly.
30. The Soul’s Code: Not only celebrities and nuns have “callings.” All of us have in our heart the image of the person we can be and the life we can live.
31. Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway: The presence of fear is an indicator that you are growing and accepting life’s challenges.
32. The 80/20 Principle: By identifying what you’re good at, then doing more of it, success will come easily.
33. Mindfulness: mental habits dull our lives. By regaining control of your thinking you can experience life anew.
34. Tao Te Ching: Make your life easier and more effective by attunement with the natural “flow” of the universe.
35. Psycho-Cybernetics: Out body/brain is a brilliant self contained system for achieving goals. Use it.
36. Motivation and Personality: Full mental health is not the absence of neurosis but the fulfillment of our potential.
37. Life Strategies: Get realistic about yourself and smart about the world. No one can do this for you.
38. Care of the Soul: Fill your emptiness by living soulfully. Let your individuality out by accepting your idiosyncrasies and dark side.
39. The Power of Your Subconscious Mind: By understanding how the subconscious mind works, you can learn how dreams become reality.
40. The Power of Positive Thinking: You can achieve anything if you have faith.
41. The Hero Within: Each of us tends to think and act according to patterns or “arch types.” Become aware of their power and use them to your advantage.
42. The Road Less Traveled: Once you admit that “life is difficult,” the fact is no longer of great consequence. Once you accept responsibility, you can make better choices.
43. Atlas Shrugged: Forge your own destiny, create something of value, enable a higher form of humankind by daring to think.
44. Awaken The Giant Within: It is time to seize the day and live the life you’ve imagined. This is your starter kit.
45. The Game of Life and How to play it: If life is thought of as a game, we are motivated to learn and apply the rules for our own happiness.
46. Learned Optimism: Cultivation of an optimistic mindset significantly increases your chances of health, wealth, and happiness.
47. Self-Help: History is full of people who achieved amazing things by sheer will and persistence.
48. The Phenomenon of Man: By appreciating and expressing your uniqueness, you literally enable the evolution of the world.
49. Walden: Make sure that you have time in your life just to think.
50. A Return to Love: Miracles start to happen when we resolve to depend fully on God and decide to love ourselves.

Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff and it’s All Small Stuff

1. Don’t sweat the small stuff
2. Make peace with imperfection
3. Let go of the idea that gentle, relaxed people can’t be super achievers
4. Be aware of the snowball effect of your thinking
5. Develop your compassion
6. Remind yourself that when you die, your “in basket” won’t be empty
7. Don’t interrupt others or finish their sentences
8. Do something nice for someone else and don’t tell anyone about it
9. Let others have the glory
10. Learn to live in the present moment
11. Imagine that everyone is enlightened except you
12. Let others be “right” most of the time
13. Become more patient
14. Create “patience practice periods”
15. Be the first one to act loving or reach out
16. Ask yourself the question, “will this matter a year from now?”
17. Surrender to the fact that life isn’t fair
18. Allow yourself to be bored
19. Lower your tolerance to stress
20. Once a week, write a heartfelt letter
21. Imagine yourself at your own funeral
22. Repeat to yourself, “life isn’t an emergency”
23. Experiment with your back burner
24. Spend a moment each day thinking of someone to thank
25. Smile at strangers, look into their eyes, and say hello
26. Set aside quiet time, every day
27. Imagine the people in your life as tiny infants and as one hundred year old adults
28. Seek first to understand
29. Become a better listener
30. Choose your battles wisely
31. Become aware of your moods and don’t allow yourself to be fooled by the low ones
32. Life is a test. It is only a test
33. Praise and blame are all the same
34. Practice random acts of kindness
35. Look beyond behavior
36. See the innocence
37. 0Choose being kind over being right
38. Tell three people (today) how much you love them
39. Practice humility
40. When in doubt about whose turn it is to take out the trash, go ahead and take it out
41. Avoid weatherproofing
42. Spend a moment, every day, thinking of someone to love
43. Become an anthropologist
44. Understand separate realities
45. Develop your own helping rituals
46. Every day, tell at least one person something you like, or appreciate about them
47. Argue for your limitations, and they’re yours
48. Remember that everything has god’s fingerprints on it
49. Resist the urge to criticize
50. Write down your five most stubborn positions and see if you can soften them
51. Just for fun, agree with criticism directed toward you (then watch it go away)
52. Search for the grain of truth in other opinions
53. Do See the glass as already broken (and everything else too)
54. Understand the statement, “wherever you go, there you are”
55. Breathe before you speak
56. Be grateful when you’re feeling good and graceful when your feeling bad
57. Become a less aggressive driver
58. Relax
59. Adopt a child through the mail
60. Turn your melodrama into a mellow-drama
61. Read articles and books with entirely different points of view from your own and try to learn something
62. Do one thing at a time
63. Count to ten
64. Practice being in the “eye of the storm”
65. Be flexible with changes in your plans
66. Think of what you have instead of what you want
67. Practice ignoring your negative thoughts
68. Be willing to learn from friends and family
69. Be happy where you are
70. Remember that you become what you practice most
71. Quiet the mind
72. Take up yoga
73. Make service and integral part of your life
74. Do a favor and don’t ask for, or expect, one in return
75. Think of your problems as potential teachers
76. Get comfortable not knowing
77. Acknowledge the totality of your being
78. Cut yourself some slack
79. Stop blaming others
80. Become an early riser
81. When trying to be helpful, focus on little things
82. Remember, one hundred years from now, all new people
83. Lighten up
84. Nurture a plant
85. Transform your relationship to your problems
86. The next time you find yourself in an argument, rather than defend your position, see if you can see the other point of view first
87. Redefine a “meaningful accomplishment”
88. Listen to your feelings (they are trying to tell you something)
89. If someone throws you the ball, you don’t have to catch it
90. One more passing show
91. Fill your life with love
92. Realize the power of your own thoughts
93. Give up on the idea that “more is better”
94. Keep asking yourself, “what’s really important?”
95. Trust your intuitive heart
96. Be open to “what is”
97. Mind your own business
98. Look for the extraordinary in the ordinary
99. Schedule time for your inner work
100. Live this day as if it were your last, it might be!

Who Moved My Cheese?

Change Happens

They keep moving the cheese

Anticipate change

Get ready for the cheese to move

Monitor Change

Smell the cheese often so you know when it is getting old

Adapt to Change Quickly

The quicker you let go of old cheese, the sooner you can enjoy the new cheese

Change

Move with the cheese

Enjoy Change!

Savor the adventure and enjoy the taste of new cheese

Be ready to change quickly and enjoy it again & again

They keep moving the cheese

The Tipping Point

How little things can make a big difference (epidemics)

1. 1. The law of the few
2. Great ideas are spread by great people
3. 2. The stickiness factor
4. There are specific ways to make a message memorable, some are very simple
5. 3. The power of context
6. Human beings are a lot more sensitive to their environment than they seem

The Five Agreements

1. Be impeccable with your word
2. Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.
3. Don’t take anything personally
4. Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.
5. Don’t make assumptions
6. Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly, as you can avoid misunderstandings, sadness, and drama. With jus this one agreement, you can transform your life.
7. Always do your best
8. Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you avoid self judgment, self abuse, and regret.
9. Don’t believe me, don’t believe yourself, and don’t believe anyone else.
10. a. Be skeptical. Have the complete acceptance of yourself just the way you are, and the complete acceptance of everybody else just the way they are. The reward for this is your eternal happiness.

Mastery

1. To move towards mastery, you practice diligently, but you practice for the sake of the practice itself. Rather than being frustrated while on the plateau, you learn to appreciate and enjoy it just as much as you do the upward surges.
2. The Five Keys to Mastery
3. Instruction
4. The best thing you can do on the path to mastery is to arrange for first-rate instruction. The self taught person is on the chancy path.
5. Practice
6. Practice is something separate from the rest of your life. You practice in order to learn a skill, in order to improve yourself, in order to get ahead, achieve goals, make money. Mastery is practice; mastery is staying on the path.
7. Surrender
8. The courage of a master is measured by their willingness to surrender. This means surrendering to your teacher and to the demands of your discipline. It also means surrendering your hard-won proficiency from time to time in order to reach a higher or different level of proficiency.   For the master, surrender means there are no experts. There are only learners.
9. Intentionality
10. Having a movie of exactly what you want and playing it over and over in your head is essential for success in mastery. Create yourself a vision for your mastery; intentionality fuels the master’s journey. Every master is a master of vision.
11. The Edge
12. Test the edges of the envelope, but also walk the fine line between endless, goalless practice and those alluring goals that appear along the way. Before you can even consider playing the edge, there must be many years of instruction, practice, surrender, and intentionality. And afterwards? More training, more time on the plateau: the never ending path again.
13. Tools for Mastery
14. a. Dealing With Change and homeostasis
15. Be aware of how homeostasis works
16. Expect resistance and backlash
17. Be willing to negotiate with your resistance to change
18. When resistance occurs, be prepared to negotiate as it is the key to long term change.
19. Develop a support system
20. It helps to have other people with whom you can share the joys and perils of the change your making. At a minimum get the support of those who know what you are doing.
21. Follow a regular practice
22. Stability and comfort through practicing on a regular basis, not so much for the sake of achieving a goal as simply for its own sake. Practice is a habit, and any regular practice provides a sort of underlying homeostasis, a stable base during the instability of change.
23. Dedicate yourself to lifelong learning
24. The lifelong learner is essentially one who has learned to deal with homeostasis, simply because they are doing it all the time. Lifelong learning is the special providence of those who travel the path of mastery, the path that never ends.
25. Getting energy for Mastery
26. Maintain physical fitness
27. Acknowledge the negative and accentuate the positive
28. Try telling the truth
29. Honor but don’t indulge your own dark side
30. Set your priorities
31. Make commitments. Take action
32. Get on the path to mastery and stay on it
33. Pitfalls along the path
34. Conflicting way of life
35. Obsessive goal orientation
36. Poor instruction
37. Lack of competiveness
38. Over competitiveness
39. Laziness
40. Injuries
41. Drugs
42. Prizes and medals
43. Vanity
44. Dead seriousness
45. Inconsistency
46. Perfectionism

Win Friends and influence people

When dealing with people

1. Don’t criticize, condemn, or complain
2. Give honest and sincere appreciation
3. Arouse in the other person an eager want

Make People like You

1. Become genuinely interested in other people
2. Smile
3. Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language
4. Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves
5. Talk in terms of the other person’s interests
6. Make the other person feel important-and do it sincerely

How to win people to your way of thinking

1. The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it
2. Show respect for the other person’s opinions. Never say, “you’re wrong”
3. If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically
4. Begin in a friendly way
5. Get the other person saying, “yes, yes” immediately
6. Let the other person do a  great deal of the talking
7. Let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers
8. Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view
9. Be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas and desires
10. Appeal to nobler motives
11. Dramatize your ideas
12. Throw down a challenge

Be a Leader: How To Change people without giving offense or arousing resentment

1. Begin with praise and honest appreciation
2. Call attention to people’s mistakes indirectly
3. Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person
4. Ask questions instead of giving direct orders
5. Let the other person save face
6. Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement. Be “hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise.”
7. Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to
8. Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct
9. Make the other person feel happy about doing the thing you suggest