Motivation
Learn key insights from Can’t Hurt Me, The 10X Rule, and Mindset!
Our Vialchemy team transformed their motivation by instilling key insights from these 3 life-changing books!
Can't Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds
Author: David Goggins
Key Learnings:
In order to accomplish big things in life you need to first find yourself. You need to first realize that the only person that is capable of turning your situation around is yourself. When you put yourself through incredibly hard situations, whether that is physical or mental you will find yourself on the other side. Success is an inside job!
Have you ever noticed what happens to your hands when you first start to go to the gym, or your fingers when you first start to play the guitar? At first your hands will hurt, you may get blisters or sores. But over time your skin thickens and these tasks that once caused you pain no longer do. As our skin gets stronger we call this building calluses. But what we learn from our hands can also be applied to our brain! We can build calluses on our brain when we work hard. You have to suffer to grow. If you take the easy route in life you may live your whole life without starting your true journey. If you do things you are uncomfortable with every day of your life before you know it you will build the strongest mindset and become comfortable with being uncomfortable.
We all have the ability to go into a space where we can accomplish anything when we figure out how to connect our mind with our body. Motivation can come and go but when you are driven to accomplish something you will figure out a way! Your mind may tell you to stop, often far before your body is at 100%. The next time things are getting tough ask yourself? Is this just my mind trying to trick me into taking the easy route? Will taking the easy route lead to success and greatness? Instead of giving up, figure out how to break the task down into small steps and focus on one at a time. This will give you the drive to power through!
At times of hell and suffering we may forget how tough we really are. When times get tough we need to look back and remind ourselves what we have overcome in life. Write down all your accomplishments in life, big and small. Imagine putting all of these in a cookie jar and then during our hardest times put your hand into the cookie jar and use these accomplishments to drive yourself forward in the hardest times.
We will all face difficult and challenging times in our life. We need to equip ourselves with different tools to help us through these times. We have a darkside deep down somewhere that we can strategically tap into. Goggins calls this “taking someone's soul”. Take the hurt and negative comments you have heard from others and transform it into the fuel that will power you to greatness! Think back to all the naysayers and prove them wrong.
Most people quit as soon as things get though. This makes it easy to be successful in today's age. If you train yourself to have a “I’ll do it anyways” mentality you are already leaps ahead of most of your peers. Never forget that on the other side of these tough obstacles you will find greatness.
Be a warrior in life. To be a warrior is about “doing whatever it takes” even if that means you need to suffer. But don't just do it for yourself. It needs to be bigger than yourself. Do it for the people beside you, do it for the ones you love in your life. If you choose to be a warrior you have two options, choose to go in hard and attack it, or to go in soft and quit when it gets difficult. It’s not about being better than anyone else. We grow by being better than how we were yesterday.
The 10x Rule: The Only Difference Between Success and Failure
Author: Grant Cardone
Key Learnings:
The 10X Rule is about pure domination mentality. You never do what others do. You must be willing to do what they won't do—and even take actions that you might deem “unreasonable.”
If you don't consider it your duty to live up to your potential, then you simply won't. If it doesn't become an ethical issue for you, then you won't feel obligated and driven to fulfill your capacity. Treating success as an option is one of the major reasons why more people don't create it for themselves—and why most people don't even get close to living up to their full potential. Good parents will do whatever it takes to take care of their children. They will get up in the middle of the night to feed their baby, work as hard as they have to in order to clothe and feed their children, fight for them, even put their lives at risk to protect them. This is the same way you must envision success.
Although you can train to increase your skills and your confidence, courage is only attained by doing—especially the things that you fear. Do things that scare you more frequently, and they will slowly begin to scare you a bit less—until they become so habitual that you wonder why you ever feared them in the first place!
The highly successful people take unbelievable amounts of action. They assume that their future achievements rely on investing in actions that may not pay dividends today but that when taken consistently and persistently over time will sooner or later bear fruit.
“Nothing happens to you; it happens because of you.” Excuses are never the reason for why you did or didn't do something. They're just a revision of the facts that you make up in order to help yourself feel better about what happened (or didn't). Excuses are for people who refuse to take responsibility for their life and how it turns out. If you keep telling yourself that long enough, you'll start to expect it—thereby ensuring that things will continue to not go your way.
FEAR stands for False Events Appearing Real, which implies that most of what you're afraid of doesn't ever come to pass. Fear is one of the most disabling emotions a human being can experience. It immobilizes people, and often, it ultimately prevents them from going for their goals and dreams. Eat your fears; don't feed them by backing off or giving them time to grow. Learn to look for and use fear so that you know exactly what you need to do to overcome it and advance your life.
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
Author: Carol Dweck
Key Learnings:
People are born with a love of learning, but the fixed mindset can undo it. Think of a time you were enjoying something. Then it became hard and you wanted out. Next time when this happens, don't fool yourself. It’s the fixed mindset. Put yourself in a growth mindset. Picture your brain forming new connections as you meet the challenge and learn. Keep on going.
Mindset of champions:
Those with the growth mindset found success in doing their best, in learning and improving. They found setbacks motivating, informative. They see them as a wake-up call. People with a growth mindset take charge of the processes that bring success and that maintain it.
Research by Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson show that negative labels harm our limited brain power. When stereotypes are evoked, they fill people’s mind with distracting thoughts - with secret worries about confirming the stereotype. People usually aren’t even aware of it, but they don’t have enough mental power left to do their best at a given task.
Mindset change is not about picking up a few pointers here and there. It’s about seeing things in a new way. Changing to a growth mindset is changing from judge-and-be-judged framework to a learn-and-help-learn framework. Their commitment is to growth, and growth takes plenty of time, effort, and mutual support.
The Growth Mindset is about believing your basic qualities are things that you can cultivate through your efforts.
Everyone can grow through application and experience despite differences in their initial talents and aptitudes, interests, or temperaments. True potential is unknown
Why waste time proving over and over how great you are when you could be getting better? Why hide deficiencies instead of overcoming them?
“When it’s really hard and I try really hard, and I can do something I couldn’t before.”
“When I work on something for a long time and I start to figure it out.”
The fixed mindset limits achievement. It fills people’s minds with interfering thoughts, it makes effort disagreeable, and it leads to inferior learning strategies. What’s more, it makes other people into judges instead of allies. Early performance does not tell you all you need to know about their talent and their future. Just because some people can do something with little or no training, it doesn’t mean that others can’t do it (and sometimes do it even better) with training.
Want to take your motivation to the next level? Sign up for our 5-week mentoring program today.
Self Awareness
Learn key insights from Think Like a Monk, The Four Agreements, and Man’s Search For Meaning!
Our Vialchemy team transformed their self awareness by instilling key insights from these 3 life-changing books!
Think Like a Monk: Train Your Mind for Peace & Purpose Every Day
Author: Jay Shetty
Key Learnings:
Guiding values are the principles that are most important to us and that we feel should guide us: who we want to be, how we treat ourselves and others. Observing and evaluating are key to thinking like a monk. When we tune out the opinions, expectations, and obligations of the world around us, we begin to hear ourselves.
What qualities do I look for/admire in family, friends, or colleagues? Whatever they may be, these qualities are, in fact, our own values — the very landmarks we should use to guide ourselves through our own lives.
The cause of fear: attachment. The cure for fear: detachment. Talking to our fear separates it from us and helps us understand that the fear is not us, it is just something we’re experiencing. Try shifting from I “am” angry to I “feel” angry. A monk mind practices detachment. We realize that everything—from our houses to our families—is borrowed. When we accept the temporary nature of everything in our lives, we can feel gratitude for the good fortune of getting to borrow them for a time.
We focus on satisfaction that comes from living a meaningful life. Happiness can be elusive—it’s hard to sustain a high level of joy. But to feel meaning shows that our actions have purpose. They lead to a worthwhile outcome. If you’re in love with the day-to-day process, then you do it with depth, authenticity, and a desire to make an impact. Satisfaction comes from believing in the value of what you do.
The monkey mind is a child and the monk mind is an adult. A child cries when it doesn’t get what it wants, ignoring what it already has. When the parent isn’t supervising, the child climbs on the counter near the hot stove to get to the cookie jar, and trouble follows. On the other hand, if the parent is too controlling, the child gets bitter, resentful and risk-averse. The first is to understand our minds— simply becoming aware of the different voices inside us.
The morning is defined by the evening. Settle into patterns and make decisions the night before, and you’ll have a head start on the morning and will be better able to make focused decisions throughout the day.
The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom
Author: Miguel Ruiz
Key Learnings:
As children, we didn’t have the opportunity to choose our beliefs, but we agreed with the information that was passed to us from the dream of the planet via other humans. The only way to store information is by agreement. As soon as we agree, we believe it, and this is called faith. To have faith is to believe unconditionally. That’s how we learn as children. We agree with adults, and our faith is so strong that the belief system controls our whole dream of life. We didn’t choose these beliefs, and we may have rebelled against them, but we were not strong enough to win the rebellion. The result is surrender to the beliefs with our agreement. I call this process the domestication of humans.
How many times do we pay for one mistake? The answer is thousands of times. The human is the only animal on earth that pays a thousand times for the same mistake. We have a powerful memory. We make a mistake, we judge ourselves, we find ourselves guilty, and we punish ourselves, over and over.
THE FIRST AGREEMENT - Be Impeccable with Your Word
The seeds are opinions, ideas, and concepts. You plant a seed, a thought, and it grows. The word is like a seed, and the human mind is so fertile! The only problem is that too often it is fertile for the seeds of fear.
During our domestication, our parents and siblings gave their opinions about us without even thinking. We believed these opinions and we lived in fear over these opinions, like not being good at swimming, or sports, or writing. Someone gives an opinion and says, “Look, this girl is ugly!” The girl listens, believes she is ugly and grows up with the idea that she is ugly. It doesn’t matter how beautiful she is; as long as she has that agreement, she will believe that she is ugly. That is the spell she is under.
Then one day someone hooks your attention and using the word, lets you know that you are not stupid. You believe what the person says and make a new agreement. As a result, you no longer feel or act stupid. A whole spell is broken, just by the power of the word. Conversely, if you believe you are stupid, and someone hooks your attention and says, “Yes, you are really the most stupid person I have ever met,” the agreement will be reinforced and become even stronger.
When you become impeccable with your word, your mind is no longer fertile ground for words that come from black magic. Instead, it is fertile for the words that come from love. You can measure the impeccability of your word by your level of self-love. How much you love yourself and how you feel about yourself are directly proportionate to the quality and integrity of your word. When you are impeccable with your word, you feel good; you feel happy and at peace.
THE SECOND AGREEMENT - Don’t Take Anything Personally
If I see you on the street and I say, “Hey, you are so stupid,” without knowing you, it’s not about you; it’s about me. As soon as you agree, the poison goes through you, and you are trapped in the dream of hell. Taking things personally, is the maximum expression of selfishness because we make the assumption that everything is about “me.”
When we really see other people as they are without taking it personally, we can never be hurt by what they say or do. Even if others lie to you, it is okay. They are lying to you because they are afraid. They are afraid you will discover that they are not perfect.
THE THIRD AGREEMENT - Don’t Make Assumptions
The problem with making assumptions is that we believe they are the truth. It is always better to ask questions than to make an assumption because assumptions set us up for suffering.
We make the assumption that everyone sees life the way we do. We assume that others think the way we think, feel the way we feel, judge the way we judge, and abuse the way we abuse. This is the biggest assumption that humans make.
The way to keep yourself from making assumptions is to ask questions. Make sure the communication is clear. If you don’t understand, ask. Have the courage to ask questions until you are clear as you can be, and even then do not assume you know all there is to know about a given situation.
THE FOURTH AGREEMENT - Always Do Your Best
Everything is alive and changing all the time, so your best will sometimes be high quality, and other times it will not be as good. When you wake up refreshed and energized in the morning, your best will be better than when you are tired at night. Your best will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick, or sober as opposed to drunk.
Action is about living fully. Inaction is the way that we deny life. Inaction is sitting in front of the television every day for years because you are afraid to be alive and to take the risk of expressing what you are. Expressing what you are is taking action. You can have many great ideas in your head, but what makes the difference is the action. Without action upon an idea, there will be no manifestation, no results, and no reward.
Man’s Search For Meaning
Author: Viktor E. Frankl
Key Learnings:
Even when people in difficult circumstances appear to have no options available, they retain the freedom to choose how they will respond to their suffering. From the outside, it would seem that every prisoner had the same choices to make and that the ones who were not killed gave up their will and independence. However, prisoners exhibited willpower in deciding to persevere through the extreme circumstances of the camp, and their coping mechanisms were developed as a result of their only freedom, the choice of how to respond to suffering.
The attempt to develop a sense of humor and to see things in a humorous light is some kind of a trick learned while mastering the art of living. Humor is one of the soul’s weapons in the fight for self-preservation. It is well known that humor, more than anything else in the human make-up, can enable an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds. Frankl practically trained a friend who worked next to him on the building site to develop a sense of humor. He suggested to him that they would promise each other to invent at least one amusing story daily, about some incident that could happen one day after their liberation.
In the concentration camps, the prisoners who felt their lives and suffering held meaning yet to be fulfilled were less likely to commit suicide.
Those who know how close the connection is between the state of mind of a man—his courage and hope, or lack of them—and the state of immunity of his body will understand that the sudden loss of hope and courage can have a deadly effect. The death rate in the week between Christmas, 1944, and New Year’s, 1945, increased in camp beyond all previous experience. The majority of the prisoners had lived in the naïve hope that they would be home again by Christmas.
The motivation for all humankind exists in finding the meaning of their lives rather than in seeking the most power or most pleasure possible. Every human being seeks meaning in their life. Freudian and Adlerian psychotherapy define the primary motivation of humanity as pleasure or power, but these schools of thought do not explain the behavior of people in the most desperate circumstances imaginable such as the concentration camps.
The meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment. To put the question in general terms would be comparable to the question posed to a chess champion: “Tell me, Master, what is the best move in the world?” There simply is no such thing as the best or even a good move apart from a particular situation in a game and the particular personality of one’s opponent. The same holds for human existence. One should not search for an abstract meaning of life. Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life to carry out a concrete assignment which demands fulfillment.
We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life. It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us.
Meaning in a person's life can come from three places. Someone can choose to create something of importance (Work), experience something or develop a relationship that is unique (Love), or respond with dignity to unavoidable suffering (Courage).
Don’t aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must develop, and it does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself.
Want to expand your mind on the topic of self-awareness? Sign up for our 5-week mentoring program today.
Productivity
Learn key insights from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Atomic Habits, and Deep Work!
Our Vialchemy team transformed their productivity skills by instilling key insights from these 3 life-changing books!
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Author: Stephen R. Covey
Key Learnings:
Habit #1: Be Proactive!
Response-ability. We have the ability to choose our response and proactive people recognize that responsibility. They do not blame circumstances or conditions for their behavior.
Proactive people focus their time and energy on things they can control (circle of influence) vs reacting to or worrying about things out of their control (circle of concern).
Honor your commitments! The commitments we make to ourselves and others is the clearest manifestation of our proactivity.
Habit #2: Begin with the End in Mind!
We spend our life planning out activities and projects and so why don’t we do that with our lives. Instead of planning a vacation or escape from reality, plan a life that you truly enjoy every day where don’t have a life we want to escape from. Get clear on our highest end goals and align your day to day activities with these goals in mind. Real success is success with self, its not about having things but having mastery and victory over self!
Habit #3: Put First Things First!
How do you spend your days? Do you waste your time and energy doing stuff that simply isn’t that important? Identify the things that are the most important in your life and do them first.
Understand what your highest priorities are and have the courage to pleasantly, unapologetically say no to things that don’t fit within those priorities. It’s ok to say no to things when you have a bigger yes burning inside. "The enemy of the best is often the good"
Think efficiency when dealing with time, think effectiveness when dealing with people.
Habit #4: Think Win/Win!
When entering a relationship with anyone in life (business or personal) think win/win. Come to an agreement on how both sides of the party can benefit. Don’t think about succeeding in terms of other people failing. Be happy for others success!
Habit #5: Seek First to Understand!
Slow down and see things from the other person's perspective. Listen with the intent to understand vs to just reply or preparing to speak.
We all have emotional bank accounts and we need to focus on making more deposits than withdrawals. Making deposits into a person can help build a meaningful long lasting relationship.
Habit #6: Synergy!
Synergy is everywhere in nature. If you plant two plants close together, the roots commingle and improve the quality of the soil so that both plants will grow better than if they were separated.
Seek out view points from those that think differently than you. Show courage and discuss all points of views.
Habit #7: Sharpen the Saw!
Have a balanced systematic program for self renewal in the 4 areas of your life:
Physical: To live
Social / Emotional: To love
Mental: To learn
Spiritual: To leave a legacy
Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones
Author: James Clear
Key Learnings:
Four steps of forming a habit
Cue: Prompt your brain to start a behavior.
Craving: What you crave is not the habit itself, but the state changes your habit brings.
Respond: The habits that you execute.
Reward: the final goal of your habits, which satisfied your cravings.
A behavior won't become a habit if any stage is missing. Without cues, a habit won't start. Without cravings, there's no motivation to take actions. If the action is too difficult, we won't execute it. If the reward doesn't satisfy cravings, there's no reason to repeat the action. Without the first three steps, a behavior won't happen. Without the fourth step, an action won't be repeated.
To help form a new habit make concrete plans: I'll do "this action", at "this location", at "this time".
Try habit stacking: Make your existing behavior a hint to trigger the next behavior. For example, Wake up -> Arrange your bed -> Put a bed on the pillow -> Take a shower
What makes us take action is the anticipation to a reward, not the realization of a reward.
Temptation bundling: After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [HABIT I NEED]. After [HABIT I NEED], I will [HABIT I WANT].
The costs of your good habits are in the present. The cost of your bad habits are in the future. As a general rule, the more immediate pleasure you get from an action, the more strongly you should question whether it aligns with your long term goals.
Reprogram your brain to enjoy hard habits: Changing just one word, You don't "have" to, you "get" to. Reframe your habits to highlight their benefits rather than their drawbacks.
Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World
Author: Cal Newport
Key Learnings:
Deep Work: Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.
Shallow Work: Non-Cognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks, often performed while distracted. These efforts tend to not create much new value in the world and are easy to replicate.
Rule #1: Work Deeply
Move beyond good intentions and add routines and rituals to your working life designed to minimize the amount of your limited willpower necessary to transition into and maintain a state of unbroken concentration.
At the end of the workday, shut down your consideration of work issues until the next morning—no after-dinner e-mail check, no mental replays of conversations, and no scheming about how you’ll handle an upcoming challenge; shut down work thinking completely.
Rule #2: Embrace Boredom
Once you’re wired for distraction, you crave it. Instead of scheduling the occasional break from distraction so you can focus, you should schedule the occasional break from focus to give in to distraction.
To succeed with deep work you must rewire your brain to be comfortable resisting distracting stimuli. Working with great intensity—no e-mail breaks, no daydreaming, no Facebook browsing, no repeated trips to the coffee machine
Deep work requires levels of concentration well beyond where most knowledge workers are comfortable.
Rule #3: Quit Social Media
The Any-Benefit Approach to Network Tool Selection:
You’re justified in using a network tool if you can identify any possible benefit to its use, or anything you might possibly miss out on if you don’t use it.
One problem: These services are engineered to be addictive—robbing time and attention from activities that more directly support your professional and personal goals
Identify the core factors that determine success and happiness in your professional and personal life. Adopt a tool only if its positive impacts on these factors substantially outweigh its negative impacts.
Rule #4: Drain the Shallows
A deep work habit requires you to treat your time with respect. Decide in advance what you’re going to do with every minute of your workday.
Treat shallow work with suspicion because its damage is often vastly underestimated and its importance vastly overestimated. This type of work is inevitable, but you must keep it confined to a point where it doesn’t impede your ability to take full advantage of the deeper efforts that ultimately determine your impact.
Want to take your productivity to the next level? Sign up for our 5-week mentoring program today.
Relationships:
Learn key insights from Dare to Lead, Together, and How to Win Friends & Influence People!
Our Vialchemy team transformed their personal relationships by instilling key insights from these 3 life-changing books!
Dare to Lead: Brave Work, Tough Conversations, Whole Hearts
Author: Brené Brown
Key Learnings:
A rumble is a discussion, conversation, or meeting defined by a commitment to lean into vulnerability, to stay curious and generous, to stick with the messy middle of problem identification and solving, to take a break and circle back when necessary, to be fearless in owning our parts, and, as psychologist Harriet Lerner teaches, to listen with the same passion with which we want to be heard.
Not only is fake vulnerability ineffective—but it breeds distrust. There’s no faster way to piss off people than to try to manipulate them with vulnerability. Vulnerability is not a personal marketing tool. It’s not an oversharing strategy. Rumbling with vulnerability is about leaning into rather than walking away from the situations that make us feel uncertain, at risk, or emotionally exposed.
Perfectionism is not the same thing as striving for excellence. Perfectionism is not about healthy achievement and growth. Perfectionism is a defensive move. Perfectionism is not self-improvement. Perfectionism is, at its core, about trying to earn approval. Healthy striving is self-focused: How can I improve? Perfectionism is other-focused: What will people think?
If you’re going to tear something down, you have to offer a specific plan for how you would rebuild it to make it stronger and more substantial.
True belonging is the spiritual practice of believing in and belonging to yourself so deeply that you can share your most authentic self with the world and find sacredness in both being a part of something and standing alone in the wilderness. True belonging doesn’t require you to change who you are; it requires you to be who you are.
There are five elements to empathy:
To see the world as others see it, or perspective taking
To be nonjudgmental
To understand another person’s feelings
To communicate your understanding of that person’s feelings
Mindfulness - feelings are neither suppressed nor exaggerated
Engage, stay curious, stay connected. Let go of the fear of saying the wrong thing, the need to fix it, and the desire to offer the perfect response that cures everything (that’s not going to happen). You don’t have to do it perfectly. Just do it.
Living into our values means that we do more than profess our values, we practice them. We walk our talk—we are clear about what we believe and hold important, and we take care that our intentions, words, thoughts, and behaviors align with those beliefs. Research participants who demonstrated the most willingness to rumble with vulnerability and practice courage tethered their behavior to one or two values, not ten.
Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World
Author: Vivek H. Murthy, MD
Key Learnings:
Loneliness is the subjective feeling that you’re lacking the social connections you need. It can feel like being stranded, abandoned, or cut off from the people with whom you belong—even if you’re surrounded by other people. What’s missing when you’re lonely is the feeling of closeness, trust, and the affection of genuine friends, loved ones, and community. We can feel lonely and emotionally alone even when we’re surrounded by other people. What defines loneliness is our internal comfort level.
Loneliness is the body's natural way of warning us that our life is out of balance, that we need to tend to our social needs.
Solitude is a state of peaceful aloneness or voluntary isolation. It is an opportunity for self-reflection and a chance to connect with ourselves without distraction or disturbance. It enhances our personal growth, creativity, and emotional well-being, allowing us to reflect, restore, and replenish.
What happens when we’re just kicking back and doing nothing? What’s our default network? Whenever we finish doing some kind of non-social thinking the network for social thinking comes back on like a reflex—almost instantly. In other words: Evolution has placed a bet that the best thing for our brain to do in any spare moment is to get ready to see the world socially. . . . We are built to be social creatures.
When we become chronically lonely, most of us are inclined to withdraw, whether we mean to or not. John Cacioppo determined that our threat perception changes when we’re lonely, so we push people away and see risk and threat in benign social opportunities. John’s widow, Dr. Stephanie Cacioppo, a neuroscientist who was his close collaborator and has taken on the role of continuing and expanding his work on loneliness at the University of Chicago, found that lonely brains detect social threats twice as fast as non-lonely brains.
In South Africa there’s a special phrase in Zulu—“Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu,” which means “I am because you are, and you are because we are.” This ideal is distilled in the term “ubuntu,” meaning to live through others. In contrast to individualist cultures, ubuntu stresses one’s connection to the group first, and harmony foremost.
Dan Buettner, author of The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who’ve Lived the Longest, has spent years identifying the areas of the world known as “blue zones,” which have the statistically highest life expectancy or rate of people who live to the age of one hundred. And while he believes that most of their longevity is a function of an environment that nudges them into eating plant-based foods and moving naturally all day long, Dan has found that they also enjoy an unusually high degree of social connection.
In 2016, Dr. Naomi Eisenberger and fellow researchers reported that the experience of helping others lowers activity in the brain’s stress and threat centers, including the amygdala, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, and anterior insula. At the same time, increased activity is seen in the parts of our brain associated with caregiving and rewards (our ventral striatum and septal area). This indicates that helping others reduces our stress even as it increases our sense of well-being, making it an important antidote to the pain of loneliness and disconnection.
It’s important to understand how our relative introversion or extroversion informs our preference for social interaction. These two terms describe the opposing ends of a wide spectrum. While there are relatively few extreme introverts or extroverts, most of us lean in one direction or the other:
If you’re very extroverted, you’ll prefer larger crowds and lots of social engagement. You probably love meeting new people, and when no one else is around, you may feel driven to actively seek out companionship. From stadium concerts to group outings, fun for you looks like one big social event.
For strong introverts, fun looks more like a deep conversation with one good friend in the corner of a library. Or it might look like a solitary browse through the library stacks. If you’re very introverted, you prefer to spend much of your time alone, and when you do connect, you’d rather get together with one or two close friends than face a crowd. Introverts like solitude.
How to Win Friends & Influence People
Author: Dale Carnegie
Key Learnings:
Try not to criticize, condemn or complain. These are like homing pigeons and always return home. Anyone can criticize, condemn and complain (and most fools do) but it takes true character to be understanding and forgiving.
People crave appreciation. But we want to focus on showing sincere appreciation rather than trying to flatter someone. Flattery is telling someone something they already know about themselves.
Arouse in the other person an eager want. Influence through education, pros and cons. First understand the other person's point of view and see things from that angle then compare it to yours. The world is full of people that are grabbing and self seeking. People that unselfishly try to serve others have a rare advantage and little competition.
Remember people's names, correctly! "A person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language." Remembering someone's name and calling upon it at ease is a very effective complement.
Welcome disagreements and try not to be defensive. Build bridges of agreement rather than islands of opinions. You may choose to postpone discussions when neither party has the evidence of truth.
Refrain from telling someone they are wrong as this undermines their intelligence and pride. “Men must be taught as if they thought you taught them not” -Alexander Pope. You can not teach a man anything, you can only help them to find it within themselves.
If you're wrong have the courage to admit it: Admit it before anyone has to tell you you're wrong. Be eager to criticize/critique yourself. Don't be a fool and defend your mistakes. As humans, we all want the feeling of importance. By condemning yourself first it is much more likely that the other person will take a more generous and forgiving attitude compared to if you were to defend your mistakes.
Even the smallest amount of appreciation and praise lead to the most significant improvements and accomplishments. Praising the good things someone does will strengthen their focus on those good things and the poor things that they do will atrophy due to the lack of attention. Be specific and refrain from general flattering remarks.
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Health & Nutrition
Learn key insights from Why We Sleep, How Not to Die, and Deep Nutrition!
Our Vialchemy team transformed their health by instilling key insights from these 3 life-changing books!
Why We Sleep: Unlocking The Power of Sleep & Dreams
Author: Matthew Walker
Key Learnings:
Sleep enhances your memory and makes you more creative. It makes you look more attractive. It keeps you slim and lowers food cravings. It protects you from cancer and dementia. It wards off colds and the flu. It lowers your risk of heart attacks and stroke, not to mention diabetes. It helps you feel happier, less depressed, and less anxious!
The recycle rate of a human being is around sixteen hours. After sixteen hours of being awake, the brain begins to fail. Humans need more than seven hours of sleep each night to maintain cognitive performance. After ten days of just seven hours of sleep, the brain is as dysfunctional as it would be after going without sleep for twenty-four hours. Three full nights of recovery sleep are insufficient to restore performance back to normal levels after a week of short sleeping.
Two processes determine when we feel sleepy – a 24-hour circadian rhythm where the body is naturally awake for 12-16 hours and a chemical called adenosine that slowly builds up starting from the moment we wake and continues to build until it makes us feel very sleepy at night.
First half of the night’s cycle is dominated by Non-REM sleep and the second half is predominantly REM sleep. Waking up 2 hours early may seem like you are only losing 25% of sleep. In reality you might be losing 60-90% of your REM sleep.
During REM sleep, the stress triggering chemical Noradrenaline (brain equivalent of adrenaline) is completely shut off, allowing the brain to learn and usefully recall salient life events without being crippled by the emotional baggage that those painful experiences originally carried.
During Non-REM sleep, the body repairs and regenerates tissues, builds bone and muscle, and appears to strengthen the immune system. As you get older, you get less Non-REM sleep. People under age 30 have about two hours of restorative sleep every night, while those over 65 might get only 30 minutes.
Tips for a better sleep:
Stick to a sleep schedule. Go to bed and wake up at the same time each day.
Try to exercise at least thirty minutes on most days and not later than two to three hours before your bedtime.
Avoid caffeine and nicotine. Caffeine’s effects can take as long as eight hours to wear off fully. Nicotine causes smokers to sleep only very lightly.
Avoid alcoholic drinks before bed. Having a nightcap or alcoholic beverage before sleep may help you relax but may rob you of your REM sleep.
Avoid large meals and beverages late at night. A large meal can cause indigestion, which interferes with sleep.
How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease
Author: Michael Greger
Key Learnings:
From an evolutionary standpoint the majority of the human population is eating in a manner much different than our ancestors. Studies show that as we have moved towards eating more animal products and highly processed foods our risk of chronic disease (such as cancer) has significantly increased.
80% or more of our risk towards chronic disease is related to our diet and lifestyle and not our genes. Most western doctors are not highly trained in nutrition nor do they typically give nutritional advice when it comes to disease. The pharmaceutical industry is over a trillion dollar industry and they are more focused on treating the diseases rather than preventing them in the first place.
A study on prostate cancer showed the blood circulating throughout the bodies of those eating plant-based diets had nearly 8 times the stopping power when it comes to cancer cell growth. A study on breast cancer showed that after only 2 weeks on a plant based diet, their body was able to more effectively reprogram cancer cells for death (apoptosis) and stop breast cancer growth.
Many of our most common and universal diseases are non-existent in populations that consume a plant based diet, such as Uganda. Heart disease, the number one cause of death for westerners is almost non-existent in Uganda. Their diet is rich in vegetables, grains, greens, and almost all of their protein comes from plant sources.
Over 1000 families per day lose a loved one to high blood pressure. In plant based populations such as rural Kenya and rural China the 70-year-olds have the same blood pressure as the 16 year olds. The American heart association recommends a low meat diet vs a no meat diet even though they know a no meat diet is more beneficial.
One of the best kept secrets in medicine is that sometimes, given the right conditions, our body can heal itself. If we keep reinjuring it 3 times a day (every time we eat) it may never have the chance to fully heal itself.
Studies show that people eating a plant based diet had around half the depression, anxiety, and stress scores compared to those eating meat. They suspect this is due to an inflammatory omega-6 fatty acid mainly found in chicken and eggs that can cause inflammation in the brain.
Dr. Greger explains what you can incorporate into your life to prevent the top 15 killers. He calls them his daily dozen and they include the following: beans/legumes, berries, other whole fruits, dark leafy greens, cruciferous vegetables, other whole vegetables and mushrooms, whole grains, nuts or seeds, 1 tablespoon of flaxseeds, 1/4 teaspoon of turmeric, plus other herbs and spices, 90 minutes of moderate exercise.
On average plant foods contain over 64 times more antioxidants than animal foods! Why is this important? Antioxidants help to fight off free radicals in your body that are causing cell damage or oxidative stress. The experts believe that by reducing cell damage we can reduce the pace at which we age along with our risk for chronic disease.
Deep Nutrition: Why Your Genes Need Traditional Food
Author: Catherine Shanahan MD
Key Learnings:
Food is like a language, an unbroken information stream that connects every cell in your body to an aspect of the natural world. The better the source and more undamaged the message when it arrives to your cells the better your health will be. A calorie is not a calorie when it comes to health. Different foods with the same caloric content can program your cells to act in completely different ways
Genetic expression: your diet changes how your genes work. Epigenetics have found that everything we eat, do, think can trickle down into the level of our genes. The genome is more like a dynamic living being - growing, learning and adapting constantly. Disease is not necessarily tied to your genes passed down to you but how your genes function based on what nutrition you are feeding them. Our diet changes how our genes work.
DNA needs to be able to remember what it learned to function properly. Cancer develops in your cells when they misunderstand their role as a cooperative enterprise. The DNA running a cancer cell believes its job is to keep dividing with no regards to its neighboring cells until its growing mass starts to kill its neighboring cells.
Sugar and vegetable oil act as chemical static that block the signals our bodies need to run our metabolism smoothly which adds to the growth disruptions during pregnancy.
Industrial fat products such as vegetable oils are toxic to your arteries because they contain delicate poly-unsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs). These are prone to oxidative damage especially when they are exposed to heat.
Good fats: can handle the heat during processing and cooking
Olive oil, Peanut oil, Macadamia nut oil, Coconut oil, Butter, Animal fat, Lard, Palm oil
Bad Fats: cannot handle the heat during processing and cooking.
Vegetable oil, Canola oil, Soy oil, Sunflower oil, Cotton seed oil, Corn oil, Rapeseed oil, Safflower oil, Non buttery spreads including margarine.
Vegetable oils intercept the delivery of antioxidants to the brain - oxidative stress is a leading contributor to all cognitive diseases.
Sugar impacts changes how our hormones work by attaching and jamming receptors rendering us insensitive to the hormone insulin. Sugar stiffens the collagen in your joints and skin causing arthritis and premature wrinkling.
5 simple ways to get started on a healthier you:
Eat a big colorful salad 4 days per week with a non vegetable oil salad dressing
Include grass fed dairy fat into your diet (cheese, cream, butter)
Consume bone stock
Eat organ meats at least 1 times per week, or at least fish 3 times per week
Eat probiotic foods once per day (yogurt, sauerkraut, pickles)
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