3 Lessons from 300 Self-Improvement books - Clark Kegley
Muhammad Usama Ahmed
Video Editing | Boosting Sales, Leads & Views for Brands, Founders and Creators in 90 days | 1200+ Projects completed for Clients in 41 counteries
I saw this video on YouTube where Clark stated that he read 300 self improvement books and he had 3 Big lessons shared by all of these books.
Big Idea 1: Atomic Habit by James Clear
A photography processor on the first day of the semester divided the class into 2 groups. Quantity group “members of this group had to take number of photos” Quality group “members of this group will have to take only a single great photo with the best composition, light and story”.
At the end of the semester the results came out shocking. The quantity group had won, why? Because the people in the quantity group had tried a hundreds of times to take great photos and hence they ended up with a bunch of great photos.
This study sums up the Big Idea 1: Which is “STOP WAITING” stop waiting for the things to be perfect.
The above statement is complimented by the quote below: ??
“THE BEST IS THE ENEMY OF GOOD” VOLTAIRE-
Stop setting high standards and waiting for this to be right and then you will take the action and start doing something great.
Clark says: “If I had waited for the things to be perfect I could have not made half of the videos on this channel”
The tools by Phil Stuz:
He is a therapist who works in Hollywood with some A list clients: He said in his book that people are waiting for Exoneration: It is a term used “if you commit a crime and now you are proven innocent and all the burden is lifted off of your shoulder and you are now feeling free.
In human life this goes a lot deeper: People want to be exonerated from life’s struggles. “When is the moment when I read enough self development books and I am enlightened. When can I read business books and I end up with a proper path to make a million dollars” This is all human nature. Human nature says that I will study for 20 years, work for 40 years and then I will retire, sit back on the beach and enjoy the exonerated life.
Most of the books say that life’s struggles don’t go away and that actually the resistance of struggle actually created more struggle:
According to a study conducted on dogs in 1967 “Learned helplessness”:
The doctor studies behavior of 3 groups of dogs:
We will mainly discuss group 3, in which, the dogs were influenced by their previous experiences. Where they received a shock and they tried the lever but it didn’t open the door for their escape. So when the dogs were put in the cage in which the lever actually worked, whenever the god was shocked the dog did nothing.
Similar goes with the humans. A human wants to quit his bad habit of smoking, drinking, faping but he fails and eventually stops trying saying WHATS THE POINT OF ALL OF THIS WHEN I AM GOING TO FAIL AGAIN. Similar goes with the business; when a person is failing again and again after trying a number of times he then falls in to category 3 whats the point of this and they quit.
This study shows us LACK OF SELF CONTROL AND LACK OF HOPE.
Whats opposite to LEARNED helplessness “
Big Idea 2: Self reliance
Get out of the shocks. FUCK THE SHOCKS”
This is what self improvement it: Fuck the shocks; make yourself so disciplined, hopeful and courageous that you overcome all the shocks. Tell your self that if you don’t pick that piece of the puzzle someone else will and you will end up losing. ”You can get out of the shocks by motivation, instagram motivation posts or you can come out of it by seeing other peoples success stories etc” You have to go out there and make the things right for you.
You will be tempted to do the same old crap you have been addicted to but you have to quit. Just by quitting one bad habit you can change a lot of things.
You should get addicted to getting things done. You should get addicted to your work and make your work ethic so strong, that when someone gives you a task they know that it’s going to be done and they don’t have to look at you again to see if you have done the work.
The advise “DON’T LIVE ON THE FENCE” When you are living on the fence that means you are miserable and you are making everybody around you miserable. Start living away from the fence and start doing something you hate/hesitate to do/or makes you uncomfortable like (spending time learning/ learning a new skill, doing exercise), when you start taking little steps it starts to grow with you and it end up being your habit.
Big idea 3: Forgiveness: 1. Others - 2. Yourself
Forgiveness frees up a lot of your mental space and you move forward from a lot of things
Clark said “He did not have the best of relationship with his dad for the first 20 years of his life but does he really want past 20 years of not so good to effect the next 40 years? Nope, People change and people change for the better. So forgive others and live free of grudges.
Most of the time we are burdened by the things we have done wrong in the past and we waste half of our days procrastinating about the past which can not be changed. What you can instead do is forgive yourself and start self healing.
SELF-IMPROVEMENT is not complete with out SELF-HEALING: ?? ?? Both of these things come together to form a single great thing which is what you will be 2.0 version of yourself.
This picture above shows your state of EMOTIONS and ENERGY you will feel at the start and at the end of 2.0 you (Which is improved you)
If you the bottom of both the arrows you will see that you will have MORE MATTER AND LESS ENERGY and SURVIVAL EMOTIONS: You will feed yourself with small guilty pleasure to make you feel right in the moment but in long term will keep messing you up. LIKE “LUST, COMPARISON WITH OTHERS, GUILT”
When you get yourself out of the bottom most you will find yourself “ANGRY, HATING, FEARFUL” You will have to be super careful here because this is the step that makes you miserable and pushes you back to down to lust, comparison and guilt.
If you have mastered your way through this you will end up being more “COURAGEOUS, WILLING TO DO MORE”
When you are near to step 2.0 you. You will feel “LOVE, FREEDOM, PEACE” You will have less matter cluttered up in your mind and you won’t be stressing out. You will be happy in the present you will have the energy to figure out how to make things better which have been neglected by you in the past.