The advantage of meditation is not that you’re suddenly going to gain the superpower to control your internal state, it’s that you will recognize just how out of control your mind is.

On the mind: It is like a monkey flinging feces, that’s running around the room, making trouble, shouting, breaking things. It’s completely uncontrollable. It’s an out-of-control mad person.

You have to see this mad creature in operation before you feel a certain distaste towards it and you start separating yourself from it. In that separation is liberation.

I think the number one thing that clouds us from being able to see reality is that we have preconceived notions of the way it should be.

A busy mind accelerates the perceived passage of time. Buy more time by cultivating peace of mind.

To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.

To change one’s life: Start immediately. Do it flamboyantly.

Only the new, accepted deeply and totally, can transform you.

No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world.

Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.

Let your smile change the world, but don’t let the world change your smile.

The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress.

To change the world I have to change myself, break away from my conditioning.

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.

You can’t start the next chapter of your life if you keep re-reading the last one.

The ones who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.

If you want to be effective in business, you need a clear, calm, cool, and collected mind.

A clear mind, leads to better judgement, leads to better outcome.

Most of life is a search for who and what needs you the most.

You have one life. You’re dead for tens of billions of years, and you’re going to be dead for tens of billions of years.

The reality is life is a single-player game. You’re born alone. You’re going to die alone. All of your interpretations are alone. All your memories are alone. You’re gone in three generations and nobody cares. Before you showed up, nobody cared. It’s all single-player.

If you can’t see yourself working with someone for life, don’t work with them for a day.

All the real benefits in life come from compound interest.

Slow down, life is long.

Live below your means for freedom.

Ruthlessly cut meetings out of your life.

Change before you have to.

Relax you’ll live longer and perform better.

Live the life you want other people to live.

All the great endeavors in life are creative.

We all get shaped by adversity. All the great things that have happened to me in my life that I consider highly positive… they all started with something highly negative.

The flavor of life is on the edge. 

You have to do hard things to create your own meaning in life.

The three big ones in life are wealth, health, and happiness. We pursue them in that order but their importance is in the reverse.

My number one priority in life, above my happiness, above my family, above my work, is my own health. It starts with my physical health. Second, it’s my mental health. Third, it’s my spiritual health. Then it’s my family’s health

On what is the purpose of life: To keep growing and learning in the short period of time that you have. To seek truth and to accept things the way they are. To see the world the way it really is. Then, just to live your life. I think that’s it. Any deeper meanings or goals just lead to ideologies, which lead to desires, and belief systems, and disappointments and conflict.

If you look back at your life on your deathbed at all the interesting things you’ve done, they’re all going to be centered around the sacrifices you’ve made and the hard things that you did.

To say goodbye is to die a little.

There is nothing so stable as change.

It is in changing that we find purpose. =

In a gentle way, you can shake the world.

We are overexposed to everything. The way to survive in modern society is to be an ascetic, it is to retreat from society. There’s too much society everywhere you go. You have society in your phone, society in your pocket, society in your ears… It’s socializing you and programming everyone. The only solution is turn it off.

Humans are basically habit machines […] I think learning how to break habits is actually a very important meta skill and can serve you in life almost better than anything else.

When building habits, choose consistency over content. The best book is the one you can’t put down. The best exercise is the one you enjoy doing every day. The best health food is the one you find tasty. The best work is the work you’d do for free.

Don’t do things that you know are morally wrong. Not because someone is watching, but because you are. Self-esteem is just the reputation that you have with yourself.

When looking for a purpose to life, notice that most things are stepping stones, done for ulterior motives. True art, love, and play stand apart, as they are done for their own sakes.

The more you judge people and things, the more you’re going to separate yourself. You’ll feel good for an instant… but then you’re gonna feel lonely and then you’re just going to see negativity everywhere. The world just reflects your own feelings back at you.

All humans are meant to do something different every day. The idea that we repeat ourselves and we specialize and we pigeon hole ourselves is a modern invention created through specialization of labor in the industrial revolution.

A great goal in life would be to not have to be in a given place at a given time… Being accountable for your output rather than your input. I would love to be paid purely for my judgment.

On the meaning of life: You get to make up your own answer and that’s the beauty of it. If there was a single answer, we wouldn’t be free. We’d be trapped because we’d all have to live to that answer. We’d be robots competing with each other trying to fulfill that meaning more than the next person.