How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci: Seven Steps to Genius Every Day
Michael J. Gelb - 1998
And human beings are gifted with an almost unlimited potential for learning and creativity. Now you can uncover your own hidden abilities, sharpen your senses, and liberate your unique intelligence—by following the example of the greatest genius of all time, Leonardo da Vinci.Acclaimed author Michael J. Gelb, who has helped thousands of people expand their minds to accomplish more than they ever thought possible, shows you how. Drawing on Da Vinci's notebooks, inventions, and legendary works of art, Gelb introduces Seven Da Vincian Principles—the essential elements of genius—from curiosità, the insatiably curious approach to life to connessione, the appreciation for the interconnectedness of all things. With Da Vinci as your inspiration, you will discover an exhilarating new way of thinking. And step-by-step, through exercises and provocative lessons, you will harness the power—and awesome wonder—of your own genius, mastering such life-changing abilities as: •Problem solving •Creative thinking •Self-expression •Enjoying the world around you •Goal setting and life balance •Harmonizing body and mindDrawing on Da Vinci's notebooks, inventions, and legendary works of art, acclaimed author Michael J. Gelb, introduces seven Da Vincian principles, the essential elements of genius, from curiosita, the insatiably curious approach to life, to connessione, the appreciation for the interconnectedness of all things. With Da Vinci as their inspiration, readers will discover an exhilarating new way of thinking. Step-by-step, through exercises and provocative lessons, anyone can harness the power and awesome wonder of their own genius, mastering such life-changing skills as problem solving, creative thinking, self-expression, goal setting and life balance, and harmonizing body and mind.
Psycho-Cybernetics, A New Way to Get More Living Out of Life
Maxwell Maltz - 1960
So are failure and misery. But negative habits can be changed--and Psycho-Cybernetics shows you how!This is your personal audio guide to the amazing power of Psycho-Cybernetics--a program based on one of the world s classic self-help books, a multimillion-copy bestseller proven effective by readers worldwide. Presenting positive attitude as a means for change, Maltz s teaching has the ring of common sense. Psycho-Cybernetics-is the original text that defined the mind/body connection the concept that paved the way for most of today s personal empowerment programs. Turn crises into creative opportunities, dehypnotize yourself from false beliefs, and celebrate new freedom from fear and guilt.Testimonials and stories are interspersed with advice from Maltz, as well as techniques for relaxation and visualization. Dr. Maxwell Maltz teaches you his techniques of emotional surgery --the path to a dynamic new self-image and self-esteem and to achieving the success and happiness you deserve!
The Practicing Mind: Bringing Discipline and Focus into Your Life
Thomas M. Sterner - 2006
It has been acknowledged for centuries as the cornerstone of spiritual awakening in all traditions of Eastern thought. In the West, however, it is still a relatively unrecognized concept of living. The Western mind is always restless, never content with the moment. Its internal dialogue is always firing off thoughts filled with emotional content and pulling the individual out of the present and into the past or future. But individuals raised in Western culture are becoming increasingly more aware of their overall sense of mental exhaustion, their lack of discipline and their inability to focus on demand. They are willing to expend the energy necessary to experience inner peace and a quiet mind that is waiting to follow the direction of their will. They are realizing that the endless struggle to fulfill the insatiable appetite of instant gratification is fruitless and tiresome at best. They are ripe for a new path in life and eager for a new set of instructions. This is the purpose of The Practicing Mind. It comprehensively deals with helping the individual understand exactly what present moment awareness is, how we are raised in a manner contradictory to this, and how we change our mindset to make this a part of our daily living. This book is accessible to readers of all philosophical backgrounds. Regardless of your perspective, you will find the book's insights most compelling.You can find the wisdom of both The Practicing Mind and The Meditating Mind in the combination package: The Total Mindset.For your convenience, THE PRACTICING MIND is now in mp3 CD audiobook format.
Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts
Annie Duke - 2018
The pass was intercepted and the Seahawks lost. Critics called it the dumbest play in history. But was the call really that bad? Or did Carroll actually make a great move that was ruined by bad luck?Even the best decision doesn't yield the best outcome every time. There's always an element of luck that you can't control, and there is always information that is hidden from view. So the key to long-term success (and avoiding worrying yourself to death) is to think in bets: How sure am I? What are the possible ways things could turn out? What decision has the highest odds of success? Did I land in the unlucky 10% on the strategy that works 90% of the time? Or is my success attributable to dumb luck rather than great decision making?Annie Duke, a former World Series of Poker champion turned business consultant, draws on examples from business, sports, politics, and (of course) poker to share tools anyone can use to embrace uncertainty and make better decisions. For most people, it's difficult to say "I'm not sure" in a world that values and, even, rewards the appearance of certainty. But professional poker players are comfortable with the fact that great decisions don't always lead to great outcomes and bad decisions don't always lead to bad outcomes.By shifting your thinking from a need for certainty to a goal of accurately assessing what you know and what you don't, you'll be less vulnerable to reactive emotions, knee-jerk biases, and destructive habits in your decision making. You'll become more confident, calm, compassionate and successful in the long run.
Curious: The Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends On It
Ian Leslie - 2014
But only some retain the habits of exploring, learning and discovering as they grow older. Which side of the ’curiosity divide’ are you on?In Curious Ian Leslie makes a passionate case for the cultivation of our desire to know. Curious people tend to be smarter, more creative and more successful. But at the very moment when the rewards of curiosity have never been higher, it is misunderstood and undervalued, and increasingly practised only by a cognitive elite.Filled with inspiring stories, case studies and practical advice, Curious will change the way you think about your own mental life, and that of those around you.
How to Have a Good Day: Harness the Power of Behavioral Science to Transform Your Working Life
Caroline Webb - 2016
Advances in these behavioral sciences are giving us ever better understanding of how our brains work, why we make the choices we do, and what it takes for us to be at our best. But it has not always been easy to see how to apply these insights in the real world – until now. In How to Have a Good Day, Webb explains exactly how to apply this science to our daily tasks and routines. She translates three big scientific ideas into step-by-step guidance that shows us how to set better priorities, make our time go further, ace every interaction, be our smartest selves, strengthen our personal impact, be resilient to setbacks, and boost our energy and enjoyment. Through it all, Webb teaches us how to navigate the typical challenges of modern workplaces—from conflict with colleagues to dull meetings and overflowing inboxes—with skill and ease. Filled with stories of people who have used Webb’s insights to boost their job satisfaction and performance at work, How to Have a Good Day is the book so many people wanted when they finished Nudge, Blink and Thinking Fast and Slow and were looking for practical ways to apply this fascinating science to their own lives and careers. A remarkable and much-needed book, How to Have a Good Day gives us the tools we need to have a lifetime of good days.From the Hardcover edition.
The Charge: Activating the 10 Human Drives That Make You Feel Alive
Brendon Burchard - 2012
USA TODAY BESTSELLER. AMAZON BESTSELLER. #1 WALL STREET JOURNAL. #1 BARNES AND NOBLE.On a dark and steamy Caribbean night, Brendon Burchard stood bleeding atop the crumpled hood of his wrecked car. That night he learned about mortality, discovering that at the end of our lives we will all ask, “Did I live? Did I love? Did I matter?” Since that fateful night, Brendon has lived a fully charged life, and he’s helped millions of people around the globe transform their lives and feel more alive, engaged, and fulfilled. Brendon observes that the emotional energy of the world has flatlined, and he sets out to fix it. People are stressed, restless, and wanting more out of life. Despite the fact that most people have what they “need” to be happy, they rarely feel the levels of excitement, engagement, or satisfaction they deserve. So what’s the solution? In The Charge, Brendon argues that the only way to measurably improve the quality of your life is to learn how to activate the very 10 drives that make you most human. These drives are your desires for more control, competence, congruence, caring, connection, change, challenge, creative expression, contribution, and consciousness. These drives shape everything you think, feel, and do in life, so understanding and mastering them is critical to your success and happiness. Strategically activating these drives on a consistent basis is the fastest path to living a fully charged life. Harnessing our human drives is not easy; if it were, we wouldn’t see so much restlessness in the world. That’s why Brendon has devised what he calls the true “activators” of human experience—a series of powerful yet simple actions you can take to radically increase your levels of energy, engagement, and fulfillment in all areas of your life. What Brendon uncovers in The Charge will surprise and challenge you. It turns out that most of the ways we seek to meet our human drives are actually counterproductive. We all want more control, for example, but seeking to have more certainty in our daily lives or to control other people will actually decrease our levels of control (and happiness). We have a deep desire for change, too, but we often fail to make the right kinds of change that would make us feel more alive and in command of our lives. In The Charge, Brendon helps us overcome these mistakes and illuminates the path for strategically and intelligently activating our 10 human drives so that we can have the one thing we all want: more life in our lives! Brendon Burchard is the founder of High Performance Academy and author of the #1 New York Times and #1 USA Today bestselling book The Millionaire Messenger. He is also the author of Life’s Golden Ticket and one of the top motivation and high performance trainers in the world. His famous training events and videos inspire millions of people to find their charge, share their voice, and make a greater difference.
Mastery
Robert Greene - 2012
By analyzing the lives of such past masters as Charles Darwin, Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, and Leonard da Vinci, as well as by interviewing nine contemporary masters, including tech guru Paul Graham and animal rights advocate Temple Grandin, Greene debunks our culture’s many myths about genius and distills the wisdom of the ages to reveal the secret to greatness. With this seminal text as a guide, readers will learn how to unlock the passion within and become masters.
You Are Not Your Brain: The 4-Step Solution for Changing Bad Habits, Ending Unhealthy Thinking, and Taking Control of Your Life
Jeffrey M. Schwartz - 2011
A leading neuroplasticity researcher and the coauthor of the groundbreaking books Brain Lock and The Mind and the Brain, Jeffrey M. Schwartz has spent his career studying the structure and neuronal firing patterns of the human brain. He pioneered the first mindfulness-based treatment program for people suffering from OCD, teaching patients how to achieve long-term relief from their compulsions. For the past six years, Schwartz has worked with psychiatrist Rebecca Gladding to refine a program that successfully explains how the brain works and why we often feel besieged by bad brain wiring. Just like with the compulsions of OCD patients, they discovered that bad habits, social anxieties, self-deprecating thoughts, and compulsive overindulgence are all rooted in overactive brain circuits. The key to making life changes that you want-to make your brain work for you-is to consciously choose to "starve" these circuits of focused attention, thereby decreasing their influence and strength. As evidenced by the huge success of Schwartz's previous books, as well as Daniel Amen's Change Your Brain, Change Your Life, and Norman Doidge's The Brain That Changes Itself, there is a large audience interested in harnessing the brain's untapped potential, yearning for a step-by-step, scientifically grounded and clinically proven approach. In fact, readers of Brain Lock wrote to the authors in record numbers asking for such a book. In You Are Not Your Brain, Schwartz and Gladding carefully outline their program, showing readers how to identify negative brain impulses, channel them through the power of focused attention, and ultimately lead more fulfilling and empowered lives.
The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't
Julia Galef - 2019
In other words, we have what Julia Galef calls a soldier mindset. From tribalism and wishful thinking, to rationalizing in our personal lives and everything in between, we are driven to defend the ideas we most want to believe--and shoot down those we don't.But if we want to get things right more often, argues Galef, we should train ourselves to have a scout mindset. Unlike the soldier, a scout's goal isn't to defend one side over the other. It's to go out, survey the territory, and come back with as accurate a map as possible. Regardless of what they hope to be the case, above all, the scout wants to know what's actually true.In The Scout Mindset, Galef shows that what makes scouts better at getting things right isn't that they're smarter or more knowledgeable than everyone else. It's a handful of emotional skills, habits, and ways of looking at the world--which anyone can learn. With fascinating examples ranging from how to survive being stranded in the middle of the ocean, to how Jeff Bezos avoids overconfidence, to how superforecasters outperform CIA operatives, to Reddit threads and modern partisan politics, Galef explores why our brains deceive us and what we can do to change the way we think.
Micromastery: Learn Small, Learn Fast, and Find the Hidden Path to Happiness
Robert Twigger - 2017
A brilliant idea, utterly convincing, and superbly carried through' - Philip PullmanWe read that we must be passionate about only one thing, that 10,000 hours of hard practice is needed to achieve mastery. But in fact most successful people, including Nobel prize winners, nurture multiple areas of knowledge and activity that feed their central subject.Whether it's making a perfect soufflé, dancing a tango or lighting a fire, when we take the time to cultivate small and quantifiable areas of expertise, we change everything. We become faster and more fearless learners, spot more creative opportunities, improve our brain health and boost our happiness. We see knowledge itself completely differently. The skills acquired in painting a door flawlessly or growing delicious chillies will unexpectedly transform your life.So start small. Start specific. But start - and you'll be on the path to mastery.
One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way
Robert Maurer - 2004
Rooted in the two thousand-year-old wisdom of the Tao Te Ching--"The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step"--Kaizen is the art of making great and lasting change through small, steady increments. Kaizen is the tortoise versus the hare. Kaizen is the eleven Fortune 500 companies that significantly outperformed the market through moderate, step-by-step actions. Kaizen is losing weight not by a crash diet (which more often than not crashes) but by eating one bite less at each meal--then, a month later, eating two bites less. Kaizen is starting a life-changing exercise program by standing--just standing--on a treadmill for one minute a day. Written by an expert on Kaizen--Dr. Robert Maurer, a psychologist on the staff at the UCLA medical school who speaks and consults nationally--"One Small Step" is the gentle but potent way to effect change. Beginning by outlining the all-important role that fear plays in all types of change--and Kaizen's ability to circumvent it--Dr. Maurer then explains the 7 Small Steps: how to Think Small Thoughts, Take Small Actions, Solve Small Problems, and more. He shows how to perform mind sculpture--visualizing virtual change so that real change comes more naturally. Why small rewards motivate better than big rewards. How great discoveries are made by paying attention to the little details most of us overlook. Hundreds of examples of Kaizen at work grace the book, as well as quotes from W. Edwards Deming (who brought Kaizen to Japanese industry), Peter Drucker, coach John Wooden, and others.
The War for Kindness: Building Empathy in a Fractured World
Jamil Zaki - 2019
We struggle to understand people who aren't like us, but find it easy to hate them. Studies show that we are less caring than we were even thirty years ago. In 2006, Barack Obama said that the United States was suffering from an "empathy deficit." Since then, things seem to have only gotten worse.It doesn't have to be this way. In this groundbreaking book, Jamil Zaki shares cutting-edge research, including experiments from his own lab, showing that empathy is not a fixed trait--something we're born with or not--but rather a skill that can be strengthened through effort. He also tells the stories of people who embody this new perspective, fighting for kindness in the most difficult of circumstances. We meet a former neo-Nazi who is now helping to extract people from hate groups, ex-prisoners discussing novels with the judge who sentenced them, Washington police officers changing their culture to decrease violence among their ranks, and NICU nurses fine-tuning their empathy so that they don't succumb to burnout.Written with clarity and passion, The War for Kindness is an inspiring call to action. The future may depend on whether we accept the challenge.Praise for The War for Kindness"A wide-ranging practical guide to making the world better."--NPR"Relating anecdotes and test cases from his fellow researchers, news events and the imaginary world of literature and entertainment, Zaki makes a vital case for 'fighting for kindness.' . . . If he's right--and after reading The War for Kindness, you'll probably think so--Zaki's work is right on time." --San Francisco Chronicle"In this landmark book, Jamil Zaki gives us a revolutionary perspective on empathy: Empathy can be developed, and, when it is, people, relationships, organizations, and cultures are changed."--Carol Dweck, author of Mindset
Own the Day, Own Your Life: Optimised practices for waking, working, learning, eating, training, playing, sleeping and sex
Aubrey Marcus - 2018
Aubrey Marcus, author of the book is CEO of Onnit, a human performance company that he has built into one of the fastest growing companies in the world.How can we get the most out of our body and mind on a daily basis? Want to change your life for the better?Aubrey Marcus answers these questions in this handbook that guides the reader to optimise each moment of the day. With small, actionable changes implemented throughout the course of one day we can feel better, perform more efficiently and live happier. And these habits turn into weekly routines, ultimately becoming part of a lifelong healthy choice.From workouts and diet to inbox triage, mindfulness, shower temperature and sex this groundbreaking manual provides strategies for each element of your day. Drawing on the latest studies and traditional practices from around the world, this book delivers cutting-edge life hacks, nutritional expertise, brain upgrades and fitness regimes.Own the Day presents a path to change. It guides readers through a single 24-hour day of positive choices and optimal living that will form the groundwork for all their days to come. From foundational elements like workouts, diet, and mindfulness, to more routine opportunities to optimize your choices, such as shower temperature and inbox triage, readers will learn to make the most of every moment.Ultimately, Marcus creates a choose-your-own-adventure guide to living that brings the reader's mind, body, and spirit to life. It is a promise delivered on the back of real, concrete strategies for better living. And the all-encompassing results are what make this book's simplistic approach so successful. By focusing on optimal decision making for just one day —by making several small, key changes in your daily approach—you end up addressing your health at every level. And owning your day.
Who Not How: The Formula to Achieve Bigger Goals Through Accelerating Teamwork
Dan Sullivan - 2020
but not enough time to execute it? What about a goal you really want to accomplish...but can't because instead of taking action, you procrastinate? Do you feel like the only way things are going to get done is if you do them? But what if it wasn't that way? What if you had a team of people around you that helped you accomplish your goals (while you helped them accomplish theirs)? When we want something done, we've been trained to ask ourselves: "How can I do this?" Well, there is a better question to ask. One that unlocks a whole new world of ease and accomplishment. Expert coach Dan Sullivan knows the question we should ask instead: "Who can do this for me?" This may seem simple. And it is. But don't let the lack of complexity fool you. By mastering this question, you will quickly learn how billionaires and successful entrepreneurs like Dan build incredible businesses and personal freedom. This book will teach you how to make this essential paradigm-shift so you can: - Build a successful business effectively while not killing yourself - Immediately free-up 1,000+ hours of work that you shouldn't be doing anyway - Bypass the typical scarcity and decline of aging and other societal norms - Increase your vision in all areas of life and build teams of WHOs to support you in that vision - Never be limited in your goals and ambitions again - Expand your abundance of wealth, innovation, relationships, and joy - Build a life where everything you do is your choice--how you spend your time, how much money you make, the quality of your relationships, and the type of work you do Making this shift involves retraining your brain to stop limiting your potential based on what you solely can do and instead focus on the nearly infinite and endless connections between yourself and other people as well as the limitless transformation possible through those connections.