Self-Help Cheatsheet

07.11.2020 — Self-improvement, Principles — 12 min read

Success:

Optimism makes people perform better. Most importantly, the optimism that literally anything can be defeated with enough effort. Every obstacle is merely a challenge, not a threat.
Habits are what form and deform your life. Humans are short-sighted. Build a ritual that will, much like compound interest, build an amazing life. Working out twice a day for a week won’t do much. But a year could make for a transformation. Failure is not one dramatic fall, but a series of small failures, compounded over a longer period.
Scale slowly. An overnight success still had 1 step up goals every hour. A billion dollar company once only had a goal of a million dollars. Set numerous small, achievable, bite sized goals - as opposed to a few, huge chunky goals.
Authenticity is king. People enjoy authentic people, respect authentic people and welcome authentic people.
Common sense beats all rules, stipulations and otherwise. You likely know most of what you learn, it’s simply being reorganized to fit your mind better. When it’s time to take action, trust that you know what you’re doing and focus solely on moving.
Success comes from trying something, failing and modifying the action - Thousands of times. No amount of preparation (beyond the basic) can prepare you for the first day with sharks.

ACTION + MODIFICATION = RESULTS
Show small amounts of gratitude every day. Make it apart of your ritual. The gratitude forces you to focus on the things you are happy about. Small gratitude is low commitment and high reward.
Establish 3 to 20 second barriers between bad habits. Take batteries out the remote. Put junk food in trunk of car. It won’t stop you completely. But it will decrease significantly. Make positive habits easier. Pack a healthy lunch.
A huge part of succeeding at something is simply showing up. Even if that means you just walked in the door and back out. If you show up, the math says you’ll succeed, eventually.
Go 150% + beyond what you are expected to do. This is a 100% way to gain immediate traction. Applied with consistency can skyrocket results.
Practice task isolation. The only thing that matters in that moment is the task at hand. Work on that task only until you are ready to stop. Nothing else matters until.
Constantly be evaluating yourself. Every year, every month, week, day, hour. - Do this 100% objectively and healthily. The more you look at yourself objectively and decide what you’re doing right and wrong, the better feedback you can use to improve.
If you are always the smartest person in the room, you’re probably in a room full of idiots or you’re lying to yourself.
Double down on your strengths. Neutralize your weaknesses. Make them just capable enough to swim still water.
Adaptation is the key to survival. You cannot run over a jungle, but with the right small, frequent adjustments, you can run through a jungle.
Discipline is not just following a plan when you need a plan, but following the plan when you’ve succeeded. Make a plan and follow it, regardless of your emotions.
When you first wake up, try breathing faster and faster until hyperventilation. It makes your body kick into awake mode quickly.
Try fasting from a bad habit completely. Replace it with something less bad. Over time, you can replace a lot of small bad habits with less bad habits and get big change.
Organization, habits and the process of planning is actually all simply tools to clear space in your brain. You cannot use a car efficiently if it is jammed to the ceiling with clothes and furniture that belong in your house. And the furniture and clothes can’t be used correctly either.
Take stock in the understanding that 90% of successful people are doing a lot of hustle underneath the glam and money. They wake up early, they skip parties and they work - A LOT.
Automate literally every task you do not enjoy. It will make your life focus on the things you do enjoy.
Most habits can be changed by finding the belief rooted to it and finding all the evidence you can to break it. “The gym is a chore.” Watch documentaries about people who love the gym. "I love sugary foods" Watch documentaries about sugar causing disease. You are what you subscribe to.
Tell no one your goals. Talking gives you a rush of endorphins and dopamine. You “dope yourself out” on talking and never get anywhere.
No amount of regret can bring back the dead. Love immensely and give your friends and family what they deserve as soon as possible and as often as possible.
Chain together successful tasks and create the illustration of commitment, thus reducing your likelihood to miss out. - Crossing off days on a calendar chains a habit and thus reduces the chance to break it.
Stage every commitment so you only give what you get back, and scale it slowly. Put in 1 cent, if it gives back 1 cent, then put in 5 cents. If it gives back 5 cents, continue. Never Give 100% to an idea you haven’t tested at 10%, 25%, 50%, 75% etc.
Never show your cards first in a negotiation. The offer they have in mind may be much higher than you’re thinking.
In a dispute, ask for proof of everything. Make the process draining for the other party if you’re in the right and they are forcing you to wade through mud.

Finance:

Every successful person saves money. EVERY. SUCCESSFUL. PERSON. SAVES. MONEY. Save, at the very least, 10%.
Every successful person invests. Invest in a bank, invest in real estate, invest in yourself. No matter how you invest, it’s the only way to grow. Spend your money on things that grow. - This includes your health.
Do not skip on insurance. The peace of mind that disaster will not ruin you is worth the duty paid.
One of the most common failures in business & personal is the mismanagement of funds. Be very meticulous with how you spend your money.

Social:

Listen to people. Ask open-ended questions to get someone to talk. Why, what and how questions. To enhance listening, look for a one sentence life lesson to take from every story / interaction.
You are upset because no one calls you to do things. So is the person who didn’t call you. Initiate activity. This is a solid way to be invited to more things, meet new people and have fun.
- Group activities are always more comfortable.
- Have a specific plan in place of who, what, when, where & why.
- Sometimes the event will fall apart. This is common. Do it anyways. It’s worth it.
- Social people invite others out when they feel lonely. Antisocial people wait for a phone call. Antisocial people have a higher probability of being lonely.
Traveling & expanding your social circle makes you more confident in who you are.
Be 10% more excited than the person you are talking to in positive conversations.
You have value to add to every interaction. Whether it’s with a CEO or a janitor. No matter your past - If you’ve burned many bridges, at least you had bridges to burn.
If 10 people in a row reject you as a friend, that’s only .000000015 percent of the world’s population. You’ve got a whole lot more to choose from.
Small talk is the door to deep friendship. You must make small talk first. You first said “Hi” to your significant other, you first had an interview at a company. People need to know you won’t stab them before they want to hang out.
Letting go of the thought that people have to like you is the best decision you will ever make. People would have liked or disliked you regardless of how lightly you tread.
Talk to people’s emotions. A metalhead and a classical music lover can connect on how emotional they get during a raw, deep piece.

Health:

Get 6-8 hours of sleep. It can cause huge detriments to your wellbeing to get less.
Go to sleep and wake up at the same time every day.
Sleep is one of the more important aspects of health, right beside nutrition and exercise. Master these three and you are doing well.
Optimum sleep temperature is 61-64 degrees F. Optimal sleep warm up is 1 hour before bed to begin process attempting sleep. - No screens, no exercise, no stress.
Meditation provides a range of health benefits.
Exposure to nature prevented hay fever and other illnesses in cavemen.
Stem cells regrow the body.
Alcohol consumption linked to many diseases we didn’t think - such as Alzheimer's, Dementia, Cancer, etc. Alcohol companies are funding research to make alcohol okay or “healthy”.
Not exercising is worse for your health than smoking, diabetes and heart disease.
Tobacco use linked to a quarter of a billion life-years lost vs. illegal drugs accounting for only tens of millions.
Education linked to better health than income. Intelligent people make smarter health decisions that prevent the need for reactive, potentially too-late healthcare.
Dropping smartphones from evening activity led to 93.6% of participants opting to keep their phones off at night. - Increased happiness, focus & wellbeing.
Dark chocolate is a superfood. Good for health and mind.

Business:

WHO matters most, then WHY, then HOW, then WHAT, then WHEN. Hire the right people with the right motives who follow a great plan and what you do and when you do it should work out on it’s own.
Facebook, Uber, AirBnb, eBay - All got their start connecting two people together who could help each other. None have inventory, shipping centers, etc.
Buy low, sell high. Every business is in the business of buying something cheaper than they sell it. Simplify your business by asking what you’re buying for cheap, and selling for more.
Personal letters are the only way to get through a noisy world today. Find a way to personalize every communication you send.
The product will sell itself. Build a product that people will talk about.
Test EVERYTHING. We live in a hyper-feedback world. Run test after test and build on what works. Methodically test every single aspect of your business.
“Big Picture” thinkers don’t work well in a startup. You need detail oriented thinkers to calculate every move and thought.
Ideas are like treadmills. It can be a catalyst to something great, but will require you to execute methodically and frequently. A treadmill without work is worthless.
One of the most common failures in business & personal is the mismanagement of funds. Be very meticulous with how you spend your money.
The best marketing is word of mouth. Talk to the loudest birds and get noticed effortlessly.
Know your worth. Ask for that raise. It costs money to replace an employee, and it could be a significant amount.

Tips from a self-improvement book

The desire for more positive experience is itself a negative experience. And, paradoxically, the acceptance of one’s negative experience is itself a positive experience. Everything in life is won through surmounting the associated negative experience.
Problems never stop; they merely get exchanged and/or upgraded. We get to control what our problems mean based on how we choose to think about them, the standard by which we choose to measure them. Happiness comes from solving problems, but it requires struggle. Who you are is defined by what you’re willing to struggle for.
People who become great at something become great because they understand that they’re not already great — they are mediocre, they are average — and that they could be so much better.
Good values are reality-based, socially constructive, and immediate and controllable. Bad values are superstitious, socially destructive, and not immediate or controllable.
We shouldn't seek to find the ultimate "right" answer for ourselves, but rather, we should seek to chip away at the ways that we're wrong today so that we can be a little less wrong tomorrow.
The only way to solve our problems is to first admit that our actions and beliefs up to this point have been wrong and are now working. This openness to being wrong must exist for any real change or growth to take place.
The more something threatens your identity, the more you will avoid it. Don't just sit there. Do something. The answers will follow.
The difference between a healthy and an unhealthy relationship comes down to two things: how well each person in the relationship accepts responsibility, and the willingness of each person to both reject and be rejected by their partner.
Trust is like a china plate. If you break it once, with some care and attention you can put it back together again. But if you break it more and more times, eventually it shatters to the point where it's impossible to repair.
The only way to be comfortable with death is to understand and see yourself as something bigger than yourself; to choose values that stretch beyond serving yourself, that are simple and immediate and controllable and tolerant of the chaotic world around you.
Compelling careers often have complex origins that reject the simple idea that all you have to do is follow your passion.
The idea that excellence at performing a complex task requires a critical minimum level of practice surfaces again and again in studies of expertise.
If you just show up and work hard, you’ll soon hit a performance plateau beyond which you fail to get any better. Doing things we know how to do well is enjoyable, and that’s exactly the opposite of what deliberate practice demands. Deliberate practice is above all an effort of focus and concentration, and it is an approach to work where you deliberately stretch your abilities beyond where you're comfortable and then receive ruthless feedback on your performance.
Giving people more control over what they do and how they do it increases their happiness, engagement, and sense of fulfillment.

Acknowledgements:

I (@vijethph) just found this while browsing Reddit, thought it was good, and put up here with some modifications of my own. The original work and credit all go to whoever posted this up on Reddit (I don't know their name). So, I thank them for sharing this valuable material.