Self Awareness
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.
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