By Sy Dorfman
1. Don’t focus on yourself. Focus on what needs to be done. Focus on making others feel important and special. If you focus on your own inadequacies, you will fail. You’re needed to help others and make them feel important and special.
2. It’s not about you. It’s not about wanting others to make you feel good. It’s not about expecting others to satisfy your needs. Focus on awareness. Temptation is a moment of insanity. It’s not important what you did before. It’s important what you’re gonna do next.
3. It’s not about satisfying your self-interests and emotional needs. The most important thing is to react in a new way. Whatever you want to do is your flaming desires—quick thrills and speedy passions. That’s what you have to go against. Sometimes doing things that you don’t feel like doing makes the suffering disappear.
4. You will always succeed if you struggle. Don’t be afraid to rough yourself up. When you don’t want to do something, when you don’t like something, it is essential to keep dissatisfaction alive—because now you’re confronting a real challenge. If you don’t want to do something, maybe that’s what you have to do.
5. Growth only comes when you get out of your comfort zone.
6. You initiate something new and different in your life. If you want something to happen, then you make it happen.
7. To not dislike a situation that you would normally dislike frees you from its potential control over you.
8. Find something good to say about people. If you look for the good, you’ll find plenty of good. You’ll be more positive, and it will absolutely make you feel good.
9. The secret is: the most important things in life are not something you’re gonna get or it’s gonna be given to you on a silver platter. Happiness, pleasure, joy, feeling good —it’s not “if I had this or that right now everything would be great.” It doesn’t work that way. If you’re in a bad mood, it’s not whether you’re in the mood to do something or need something. The greatest things come under pressure. The thing we hate most sometimes can turn out to be the best thing for us. Success only comes that way. If you’re willing to accept that challenge—even though you’re uncomfortable—you will always be successful, confident, and you will always have self-esteem.
