Author: Sal Damiata

Introduction

Are we humans inherently good or bad? That’s a question that almost everybody asks himself during the course of his lifetime. If you’re wondering how humans work and that our true nature is, keep reading as that’s the right content for you.

Why This Book

The Laws of Human Nature, written by Robert Greene, is a book that will help you uncover the secrets of human psychology and behavior so that you can better tackle your everyday life problems.

Anyway, is it really true that we are predictable beings and that by knowing how we and others work, we can get rid of the majority life daunting problems? 

Hi Success Titan reader, I’m Sal Damiata, and that’s what you’ll find out with this book summary of The Laws of Human Nature

Who’s It For

• Everybody that would like to better understand himself and others;
• Professionals that work with people and would like to improve their people skills;
• Human psychology enthusiasts and researchers.

What You’ll Learn

• How to better decode yourself and other people;
• How to integrate your shadow self and your masculine/feminine parts in your personality;
• How to maximize your own potential and creativity and attain fulfillment; 

In a Nutshell

As humans, we are predictable creatures, and because of that, we often make mistakes that can cost us a lot. Having a long term vision, understanding our negative patterns, having a positive attitude, understanding others, and will help us lead our life towards the attainment of what we want.

3 Sentence Summary

• Each one of us has a masculine side and a feminine side inside that are determined by our genetic imprint and by the early influences of our parents. Since those parts are within us and can’t be separated, you must integrate them to maximize your own potential, like many geniuses of history have done.

• If you want to experience a happy and fulfilling life, you have to get in touch with your authentic self and discover the natural talents and inclinations you privileged during your childhood. 

Then you should base your life path on one of a combination of those inclinations to provide service to the world that you find pleasant as well.

• Stop adopting a reactive mode to anything that happens to your short term, instead choose a responding modality where you choose your actions based on a long-term vision. 

This will help you stay focussed and avoid emotional blunders that might prevent you from getting to where you want to get.

Big Ideas

The big ideas we’ll explore together:

1. Beware of Short-sightedness
2. Search for Patterns
3. Develop a Sense of Purpose
4. The Law of Repression
5. Balance Masculine & Feminine Energies

Let’s Go!

Big Idea #1: Beware of Short-sightedness

One way to increase your odds of success is by developing a long-term thinking habit instead of being trapped by short-sightedness. 

Short-sightedness occurs whenever you react to a present event with too much frequency. This can make you commit mistakes the will impair your long-term wellbeing. 

Robert Greene suggests judging people by their narrowness or breath of their life vision. He says that it’s better to stay away from those who can’t see the larger consequences of their actions. 

That’s great advice you might be thinking, but how can you actually put this into practice?

First of all, create an elevated perspective so that you can see things with a broader vision and focus on your long-term goals. 

When you get some opportunities, detach yourself from the temporary emotional drive and think about the opportunity from an external point of view. 

Another way to get rid of short-sightedness is by changing your outlook of the world because the way you see, it will influence every part of your life since beliefs drive both thoughts and behavior. 

To create a change in attitude, you must change the meaning of the things you experience into something positive that will help you and others in the long run; this also means getting rid of disempowering meanings you give to the events.

A Relatable Example

A cool example the author provides on short-sightedness is the “Cobra Effect.” During British colonialism in India, the government was concerned about the huge numbers of cobras that were circulating at the time, so it offered money to everyone that would bring a dead cobra. 

The problem was that more people started to breed cobras due to the financial incentives, and, by the time the government saw that people were breeding cobras and extinguished the rewards, the cobra population had increased 3 times. 

This anecdote shows how attempting to solve a problem by neglecting its longer-term possibilities can actually make it worse as you can’t see where things will go whenever you make a decision. 

Anyway, by adopting more consequential thinking, you’ll have a clearer picture to avoid potential disasters. 

Big Idea #2: Search for Patterns

A large part of our character is formed when we are young, shaped by the external influences we receive from our caretakers. The character we have will show specific patterns of behavior from time to time that can be grasped by everybody observing with enough attention.

This awareness comes handy when meeting new people as it’s easy to be swayed by the first impression somebody gives us. 

However, when you are able to see their repeated actions more than their words and draw some conclusions about why they perform those actions, then you’ll be able to see the larger picture of things.

Apart from trying to understand others’ patterns of behavior, we must search for our own and understand through introspection why we do what we repeatedly do. This, again, most likely comes from the past experiences that shaped us. 

If we are driven by patterns that don’t help us get the things we want, self-sabotage will be inevitable; that’s why you have to discover yours and use them to your advantage.

A Relatable Example

In the book, the author talks about the story of Howard Hughes that when he was just 10 years old, he inherited a fortune from his parents that had died. 

He was raised by them in an over-controlling way where he had little or no freedom to make his own choices. 

This later backfired in him with the creation of a rebellious character that needed to control everything in his life, making everything on his own. 

The repressed desire for controlling his life impacted him in his business ventures as well, leading them eventually to failure.

Big Idea #3: Develop a Sense of Purpose

Even if this might sound hard to you, each one of us has his own natural inclinations that usually show up clearly during our childhood. 

Unfortunately, our parents might unconsciously put the projection of their ideal son/daughter onto us, inevitably conditioning the natural tendencies of the child. 

The problem is that those natural tendencies we have are where we can find our uniqueness, talents, and gifts. That’s why you must remember who you were and what you liked as a kid and claim it back to you. 

If you want to experience a happy and fulfilling life, you have to stop being influenced by the opinions of others on what you should do with it. Learn to trust yourself and your gut feeling and get others’ identities out of yourself as they’re not part of who you are. 

A Relatable Example

If you see how the majority of people are living their lives, you’ll see that many of them are spending their time fighting with themselves, getting into a career path they don’t like, and cultivating social relationships they don’t want. 

The frustrated husband that hates his job, the sexually unsatisfied wife that still keeps asking herself why she didn’t ask for a divorce, the college student that spends hours on books he’s not interested in. 

To avoid such an end, start recalling for some signs of primal inclinations in your early years. Usually, those signs reveal themselves as moments where you were naturally interested in a particular activity or subject. 

After that, you should explore the widest possible range in the field related to your calling until you find its part that appeals to you the most.

Big Idea #4: The Law of Repression

When we were young, we used to express our emotions freely and without any concern for what the expression of those emotions would cause in our lives. 

Then, When growing up, we are told that certain emotions are better than others and that we shouldn’t express the totality of what we feel as human beings. 

This is detrimental because, in reality, there are no good or bad emotions but only emotions that are more or less appropriate to certain situations. When we are taught that an emotion we feel is bad, we tend to repress it, thus causing an internal fracture.

Repressing those traits of us starts to attack our subconscious mind without us being aware of this; that’s what creates the shadow. The shadow self that is created in the early years represents our repressed desires, traits, and tendencies. 

Usually, in our shadow self, we can find what we consider unacceptable about us or that is considered as such by society. Our shadow self becomes more evident during moments of stress as it needs to release itself if it has been repressed harshly.

The solution lies in creating an integrated human that can accept his shadow self and express it properly. Moreover, the integrated human is mostly in tune with his child within as that’s its most authentic part to which people are naturally attracted.

A Relatable Example

How can you integrate your shadow self?

The first thing you should do is see your shadow self for what it really is. After that, you should embrace that part of you like yourself because it is a part of who you really are. 

Then you must integrate it into your personality and discover more of it so that it’s structured and embedded in who you are. Finally, you should show it to the world through a proper expression of it.

A relevant case the author brings up is Steve Job’s shadow self that he is to see, accept and integrate into his personality so well that he could express it with his job by acting independently and being rough sometimes. When you manage to do this, you will have become a whole human being capable of higher levels of creativity and personal power. 

Big Idea #5: Balance Masculine & Feminine Energies

Each one of us has a masculine side and a feminine side inside that are determined by our genetic imprint and by the early influences of our parents. Since those parts that are within us can’t be separated, you must acknowledge them just like your shadow self.

The problem is that even if every man and woman at the early stages of their lives have an innate feminine and masculine part, respectively, our society conditions us to think that men should behave like men and women like women. 

This makes them afraid to explore their feminine and masculine side, causing an internal fracture that causes unhappiness and a loss of power in the individual.

A Relatable Example

The greatest minds of our ages, like Leonardo da Vinci, Nikola Tesla, Salvador Dalì, and many more, acknowledged, used, and expressed both their masculine and feminine sides to create their genius works.

They’ve managed to create that because when you can combine the good qualities of female energy with the good qualities of male energy, you will tap into the ultimate power of the union of the opposites. 

Just as it happens during sexual intercourse, where a child is born with the union of the sperm cell with the female egg, when you fuse those two energies within you, you’ll be able to unleash your creativity.

Your Takeaway

Human nature might seem complicated to understand, but when you see the same behavioral patterns repeating themselves for millennia, it’s understandable with an attentive observation. There’s still more to learn about us but those foundational principles.

If You Were My Best Friend 

My honest advice for you is to observe people around you as much as possible and to validate the theories explained in this book. Most of all, anyway, what you should do is to apply the advice on your own because the only enemy we face in life is ourselves.

About the Author

Robert Greene is a New York Times bestselling author in the realm of human behavior, power, and strategy. 

His books aim at describing how social dynamics work by adopting a deductive and scientific approach to human behavior, pointing out relevant historical examples as a way to prove those theories.

After having graduated in classical studies and having worked more than 70 jobs, he wrote his first book, “The 48 Laws of Power,” that eventually became a worldwide best-seller, forever changing his life.

Reading Suggestions

• “The 48 Laws of Power”, Robert Greene
• “Mastery,” Robert Greene
• “Atomic Habits,” James Clear
• “Everything is F*cked,” Mark Manson
• “Deep Work,” Cal Newport

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P.S. If you want to share your own life experiences related to this, let everybody know!

Introduction

Hi Success Titan reader, I’m Sal Damiata, and that’s the book summary of “The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty,” written by Dan Ariely. 

Why this Book?

Would you be surprised to discover that the majority of people are made up of cheaters? How would you feel if you knew that this is part of our human nature? Keep reading, and you will discover the honest truth.

Synopsis

The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty is a book that explains the reasons that drive people to lie or cheat, whether that would be at work, in personal relationships, or even with themselves. Anyway, is it really true that we’re all cheaters? Let’s discover it together.

Who’s it for? 

• People that would like to understand the psychology of cheating;
• Everybody that would like to create a trustworthy environment in their workplace;
• People that would like to cheat less even if this seems really hard for them.

What You’ll Learn from it

• Why humans cheat, and what are the real drivers behind this act;
• How to people are usually influenced into cheating more;
• How to curb cheating behaviors in other people.

In a Nutshell

• Peoples’ intentions are not as bad as you think, even when they cheat. Cheating, in fact, is usually an activity that isn’t calculated through with a cost-benefit analysis, it is rather influenced by social customs, cognitive strain, and psychological distance towards the act.

3 Sentence Summary

• People don’t cheat more just because of more opportunities but because of morality and other factors. Through many case studies, it has been seen that the chances of cheating don’t increase with better potential gains, and the probability of getting caught is not as a big influence in performing cheating behavior as we think. 

• Generally, the people act with integrity, and the more honest they’ll be, while the more dishonest acts they make, and the more they will cheat. Moreover, our cheating or not cheating tendencies will be reflected in other peoples’ perceptions regardless of how they objectively act.

• Cheating is increased whenever we associate ourselves with people that cheat and reduced whenever we are in a “tribe” where this act is condemned. From this evidence, we can see how cheating is more of a social activity rather than an individual one.

Big Ideas

Those are the most relevant ideas expressed in the book that we’ll explore together.

1. Cheating Doesn’t Depend on a Cost-Benefit Analysis
2. The More You Cheat, The More You Will
3. Perceived Distance Increases Cheating
4. When Cheating is Socially Acceptable, it Increases
5. Understand the Psychology of Cheating to Curb it. 

Time to learn more about them now!

Big Idea #1: Cheating Doesn’t Depend on a Cost-Benefit Analysis

There is one theory behind human cheating behavior, stating that the typical cheater usually thinks about how much he can gain from the crime, making a simple cost-benefit analysis. 

If the SMRC (Simple Model of Rational Crime) was true, anyway, the frequency of committing crimes would be reduced significantly if the dangers of committing them were risen (to make the costs become greater). 

This would mean that the probability of getting caught would be one of those influencing variables, along with the awareness of the increased expecting punishment. 

Anyway, it has been seen that this theory doesn’t prove to be right as the chances of cheating don’t increase with better potential gains, and the probability of getting caught is not as a big influence in performing cheating behavior as we think. 

A Relatable Example

Two groups of people were asked to solve 20 puzzles in a given time in the so-called “Matrix Test.” For each one puzzle that was solved by each group member, a cash prize would be given to them. 

Moreover, half of that group was given the possibility to lie about their results in order to see how prone they were to cheating.

The first group on average managed to solve 4 out of 20 puzzles, but they told to have solved 6, with a cash prize of $2 for each solution producing a “lying” profit of $4. 

Almost everybody cheated this way as the majority of people tend to cheat a little rather than not cheating at all or cheating big time. 

Then the researchers increased the rewards given to the people who were in the experiment. If the SMRC was true, then everybody would be cheating much more. 

The second time the experiment was done with a $10 promise, cheating activities were decreased, and when the chance to get caught increased, cheating remained the same. 

Big Idea #2: The More You Cheat, The More You Will.

It has been seen how having tendencies to cheat increased cheating amongst people. 

This happens because of the “Fudge Factor” that considers how much dishonesty a person can handle before they perceived their self-image to be impaired; what you repeatedly do, in fact, reinforces your identity. 

This shows how the more you act with integrity and the more honest you’ll be while committing one dishonest act can make us perform other dishonest acts. 

Moreover, the more honest we are, the more we perceive others, to be honest, and the more we cheat, the more we perceive others as cheaters. 

A Relatable Example

With a practical experiment is has been seen how there is a practical correlation between wearing fake clothing and the increase of your cheating behavior. 

The experiment consisted in taking three groups of people and giving a pair of sunglasses to each member of the group. After the pair of sunglasses was given, they had to take a math test.

The first group was given a pair of sunglasses and told that they were real; the cheating rate happened to be 30%. The second group was given a pair of sunglasses; no information about their authenticity was given; the cheating rate happened to be 42%. 

Finally, a pair of sunglasses was given to the third group and told that they were fake; the cheating rate happened to be a whopping 74%.

Big Idea #3: Perceived Distance Increases Cheating

Another conclusion that the author came to is that the larger the psychological distance between ourselves and the cheating behavior and the more easily we forgive ourselves for cheating. 

This happens many times in various occasions, for example, we all know that stealing money is and feels bad, anyway stealing products that were purchased with money generally seems less of a bad thing because of the psychological distance between the object and money.

That’s why people that could steal between a bag of beer or money generally went for the beer as they perceived it as less bad.

A Relatable Example

Through social research, it has been seen how golfers used to consider themselves as more cheaters if they touched the golf ball themselves without declaring it, rather than touching it with the club and not declaring it. 

Why? Again, the fudge factor made the act seem more personal to them. 

Big Idea #4: When Cheating is Socially Acceptable, it Increases.

We know that because of the “herd effect,” people usually don’t act because they think with their own heads, but they do so mostly based on what the masses do. 

This also happens when somebody is in a dilemma if to cheat or not, so cheating is like an infection, and people look for social cues to see if they can do it or not.

It has been seen how, if you see somebody that you consider an ally of your cheating, due to the human collaborative nature and herd mentality, you’ll be much more likely to cheat. 

When you, instead, see somebody of an “opposite tribe” that cheats, you won’t necessarily associate yourself with him as you don’t perceive him as being part of your friends, and thus, your cheating won’t be associated to the benefit of the group. 

This shows how both cheating and honesty are infectious, and that can get you to find your perfect match with which to share this behavioral trait. 

This happens because we are social animals, and when we get the chance to collaborate, cheating increases as a way to help the group; that’s called “altruistic cheating.”

A Relatable Example

To prove how peer behavior influences cheating, two groups of people were put to solve math problems under different conditions. 

Each problem that was solved gave them some money, like in the previous case. One group the opportunity to cheat was given, and a certain number of people took advantage of this opportunity. 

Then, in another group, the social element was introduced where, during the test, one person stood up at a certain point, screaming that he had finished it, making it blatantly obvious that cheating occurred. After he finished the test, the person got paid in front of everybody. 

People in that group turned out to cheat much more as they were witnesses of a cheating case. 

Big Idea #5: Understand the Psychology of Cheating to Curb it. 

Cheating seems to be a widespread phenomenon amongst the majority of humans, but since we know it is harmful to our wellbeing, we must find a way to reduce it. How can we? 

It has been found that one way to make this happen is by decreasing the temptation to cheat by reducing the conflict of interest in a situation where people are rewarded for cheating. 

Doctors are a great example to take as, sometimes, they get money rewards from pharmaceutical companies when they prescribe a certain product to their patients. 

There’s a clear conflict of interest in this case, so in order to reduce that, doctors should be prohibited from receiving money from pharmaceutical companies as their job is not selling their products but curing the patients.

A Relatable Example

If you are a shop owner and suspect that there’s somebody stealing money from your cash register, you could adopt the following strategies to avoid that. 

First of all, you could put a lock in the cash register and give the keys to the person you believe to be responsible for cheating. After that, you should incentive the person you believe to be cheating with higher monetary compensation. 

What will happen once you use the following strategies? The stealer will, first of all, feel closer to the dishonest act of stealing as by unlocking the cash register, that person will link the act of stealing to him much more. 

By trusting the person giving him the key to the lock, you will create a more trustworthy environment for that person and so increase his discouragement from stealing from you.

Conclusion & Takeaway

The problem with worldwide cheating is not that there are a few minorities of people causing trouble but that there are many people doing small cheats every day. 

Making even little cheating a socially unacceptable act is what will really make the difference as we don’t rationally do a cost-benefit analysis whenever we have to decide if to cheat or not.

My Advice For You

If you are used to hanging out with people that cheat a lot, stop. Your tribe will influence you in the long run, and if you keep hanging out with the same people every day, you won’t be able to get out of your own negative loop. 

Remember that you are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with.

About the Author

Dan Ariely is a behavioral economist, author, and professor at Duke University. In 2018 he was appointed one of the most influential psychologists in the world thanks to his fruitful investigations on human irrationality and behavior.

Reading Suggestions

• “The Upside of Irrationality” – Dan Ariely
• “Payoff” – Dan Ariely
• “Dollars and Sense” – Jeff Kreisler
• “The Undoing Project” – Michael Lewis
• “Thinking Fast and Slow” – Daniel Kahneman

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Introduction

Hi Success Titan reader, I’m Sal Damiata, and that’s the book summary of “The Inner Game of Tennis,” written by Timothy Gallwey. 

Why this Book?

What if I told you that there is a state of mind under which you fuse yourself perfectly with everything around you, where time stops, and you perform are at the best you can ever do? If you want to learn how to access this peak performance state, keep reading.

Synopsis

The Inner Game of Tennis is a book that explains what the conditions required to get your mind to the so-called “peak-performance,” “super learning,” or “flow” states on command are. 

However, is it really true that we can get our mind into those states and perform at our best anytime we want? Let’s discover it together.

Who’s it for? 

• Everybody that practices competitive sports of any kind;
• Everybody that has troubles getting into peak performance states;
• People that would like to become more spontaneous in any area of their lives.

What You’ll Learn from it

• The practices to get into a peak-performance state on command;
• How to always get to a new level of performance while having fun;
• Tips and strategies to make your mind learn a new skill faster.

In a Nutshell

• Your body is smarter than you think; trust your subconscious mind by focussing on your self 2 rather than on your self 1 because that’s what will eventually improve your inner game.

3 Sentence Summary

• Your self 2 (subconscious mind) could play at it best if it wasn’t for the continuous critical intervention of your self 1 (conscious mind). Quiet your mind, trust your inner instincts and let go of judgment.

• Give yourself the right level of challenge because whenever your skills are too superior with respect to the challenge, you have to meet you get bored. On the contrary, whenever your skills are too low with respect to the challenge, you have to meet you get anxious. 

• To maximize the performance of your mind, make it quiet, focus on whatever is happening around you in that very moment, and do not think about the next move to make. Stop judging the quality of your game because if you always judge yourself, you can’t perform at your top. 

Big Ideas

Those are the most relevant ideas expressed in the book that we’ll explore together.

1. You Have Two Selves
2. Trust your Unconscious Mind
3. Always Challenge Yourself
4. Quiet your Mind and Get Focussed 
5. Visualize Success

Time to learn more about them now!

Big Idea #1: You Have Two Selves

As Timothy Gallwey points out, we all have two selves with which we function throughout our day. “Self 1” represents your conscious mind while “self 2” represents your subconscious one. 

The key to improving your inner game is to put your focus on your self 2 (unconscious) more than your self 1 (conscious.)

In fact, self 1 is oftentimes an impediment to self 2 that, below the surface, carries out billions of bodily functions and calculations without you being aware of that. That’s why when your conscious mind tries to control your subconscious one, things don’t work well. 

A Relatable Example

If you ever played a sport, had a date with a potential partner, or went to a job interview, you have probably noticed how you have one mind (conscious) that keeps talking to you, giving both positive and negative judgments based on how things go.

One the other hand, you have also noticed that sometimes, in the same situations, occurs a moment when the first mind seems to disappear into nothing while you are transported by the automatic flow of the second one. 

Those are your “Self 1” and “Self 2,” representing your conscious and subconscious minds, respectively.

Big Idea #2: Trust your Unconscious Mind

Having understood that we have two minds and that we should pay attention to our unconscious one to get into that flow state, how can we get it to that state? 

The first thing that the author talks about is that the best thing you can do to achieve that state is letting go of the need to control every little thing (movement of your body, words you say, thoughts you think).

This happens because when your conscious mind tries to micromanage everything as well as controlling your subconscious one, things will go bad. 

Your body is perfectly fine, being controlled automatically by your subconscious mind, so you don’t need to do anything to perform at your best. 

Another advice the author gives us is not to follow too strictly the advice of a coach and not to intellectualize your learning experience. Act like a child instead, as they do this so well that they experience “implicit learning” that is key to reach peak performance states.

A Relatable Example

Considering again the situations of above (sport, social settings). Did you ever notice that anytime you try to make something happen with your conscious mind, everything gets screwed up? 

Maybe you were too self-conscious about what movements to make or about what to say in a particular situation. 

When you put too much pressure to make something happen, probably that things will never happen. Just like when you play sports, and you get too tense, and you try to control each movement of your body, making you assume a very robotic and unnatural behavior. 

Or when you think too much about what to say when talking to somebody, making the conversation too calculated and less spontaneous.

Big Idea #3: Always Challenge Yourself

Challenges are necessary to get us out of our comfort zones, to make us perform at unprecedented levels and to get our mind in a peak performance state. 

This peak-performance state is what most spiritual masters refer to as the “Now” or “Present moment.” 

For this to happen, some conditions must be present. First of all, you should give yourself the right challenge level. Why? Whenever your skills are too superior with respect to the challenge you have to meet, you get bored. 

On the contrary, whenever your skills are too low with respect to the challenge you have to meet, you get anxious. 

The peak performance is not triggered under those states, but it occurs whenever you seek the right challenge for yourself. This means you should find out your own sweet spot to get into that peak performance state. 

Competition is good, but the best thing is competing with yourself to get the maximum enjoyment and progress out of the experience.

A Relatable Example

If you’ve ever seen a surfer in action, you can often see them taking on the biggest waves and not just any one of them. This occurs because each surfer does this as a way to challenge himself and to get in the zone. No surfer would get in the zone by taking a too big or a too-small wave for him. 

This principle is also applicable to virtually any other thing as everything has an inner and outer game. In business negotiations or in dating opportunities, if you can trust the present moment, you’ll have a much stronger chance to get something good out of the relationship. 

Big Idea #4: Quiet your Mind and Get Focussed 

You know that whenever you are in a situation where you require to be fully present, you should avoid the urge to control everything. To do this, quiet your mind and focus on whatever is happening around you at that very moment. 

If you’re playing tennis, football, golf, or basketball, focus on the ball and do not think about the next move to make.

Relax, and it will be easier to focus, be confident, non-judgmental, and trustworthy towards your own mind. Feel instead of thinking, and everything will seem like being in a flowing river. 

Stop judging the quality of your game because if you always judge yourself, you can’t perform at your top. There is no good or bad performance, there is just a performance when you are non-judgmental.

To make this non-judgmental condition occur, don’t label your actions as wrong whenever you perceive to have done something bad because they will trigger negative emotions in you that will distract your mind from the present moment. 

A Relatable Example

As a dating & social skills coach, I can see how true this concept is as I apply it to my life as well whenever I relate to women or people. 

I found that the best way to make an interaction go well is to just be in the now and to become one with the other person. That’s where the magic starts to happen also for people that are really bad at social skills.

Big Idea #5: Visualize Success

Finally, the last big idea for this book summary is visualizing yourself acting exactly as you want to be. The author literally suggests you ask for the qualities you’d like to have and then to trust the process. 

In your mind’s eye, see the greatest version of what you need to be coming to reality, see it with as many details as possible, and feel as if you were that person already.

Do what this kind of person would do, talk like that person, become that person, and you will win. 

When you visualize yourself being comfortable and fluid when doing the things that you have to do, your subconscious mind will learn a new behavioral pattern and improve your game. 

Moreover, it has been seen how our minds learn better when we see something rather than when we get instructions from somebody. 

A Relatable Example

Conor Mc Gregor is an expert not only when it comes to fighting but also when talking about how to use your mind in the best way possible. 

In many of his interviews, he talks about the power of visualization and how he could see himself winning before his fights occurred. 

Not surprisingly, he has been able to make a lot of correct predictions oftentimes, as he had trained his mind (and this body) to get into a specific state and to do specific movements whenever a certain situation presented himself. 

One of the greatest predictions he has ever made has been the one with his fight with Jose Aldo, where he predicted that he would have knocked him out with his left hook, exactly what happened during the fight.

Conclusion & Takeaway

Let go of the need to control everything and trust the process; if you have set a clear goal to reach, your subconscious mind will do the rest for you. That way, you know where you’re going, but you’re not desperately controlling the way to get there. 

The purpose of success is not necessarily the achievements you get when you win but who you become during your growth process.

My Advice For You

This “peak performance state” is something that you should experience for yourself rather than process intellectually. There’s no comparison that can be made with a real-life learning experience of what a peak state of mind is compared to what can be taught with a book. 

My advice for you, then, is to look for some challenges you can take over in an area of your life that you’d like to master.

About the Author

Timothy Gallwey is an author and mental coach born in San Francisco in 1938. He was the captain of the Harvard University tennis team. During his work as a coach, he had an epiphany where he understood how to get our mind into a super learning state. 

After that, he wrote his best-seller, “The Inner Game of Tennis,” that was inspired by eastern philosophical principles. 

Those same principles applied to the sports field made him the starter of the coaching trend that was later applied to all the fields we see it today, like business, personal relationships, etc.

Reading Suggestions

• “The Champion’s Mind” – Jim Afremow
• “Coaching of Performance” – John Whitmore
• “Zen Tennis” – Bill Scanlon
• “Mind Gym: An Athlete’s Guide to Inner Excellence” Gary Mack
• “How Champions Think” – Bob Rotella

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Introduction

Hi Success Titan reader, I’m Sal Damiata, and that’s the book summary of “The One Thing,” written by Gary Keller. 

Why this Book?

Are you overwhelmed by massive amounts of distractions like social media apps, text messages, and other things that keep you away from focusing on what you should do? If that sounds like your typical day, keep reading.

Synopsis

The One Thing is a book that is aimed at proving the point that focussing one essential thing is much better than trying to do everything at once, both for your productivity and happiness levels. Anyway, is it really true that focussing is the real key to that? Let’s discover it together.

Who’s it for? 

• People that have a hard time to focus and keep up with their projects;
• Everybody who has a lot of things going one but really none of them getting successful;
• Professionals or entrepreneurs that work with strict deadlines.

What You’ll Learn from it

• How to remove unnecessary things from your life and get your things done;
• Helpful strategies to overcome energy depletion and focus dispersion;
• How willpower works, how to manage it, and when to exercise it.

In a Nutshell

• Generally, the most professionally successful people on the planet focussed all their energies on one activity, one skill or project until they became successful. If you try to become good at everything, you’re most likely to be average in all those things.

3 Sentence Summary

• Most of the successful people in the world achieved success because they managed to focus on one thing and become masters at it instead of trying to become good at many things.

• Use your willpower wisely as the more you engage it, the more it gets depleted. Preferably do the most important activities in the morning when you are fresh and leave the less important ones for the rest of the day.

• Use the 80/20 principle to find out your one thing, block the time in your calendar when you have to do your one thing and give yourself less time to accomplish your most important task so that you’ll make more efficient use of it.

Big Ideas

Those are the most relevant ideas expressed in the book that we’ll explore together.

1. Start Small and Go Big
2. The One Thing
3. Manage Your Willpower
4. The Success List & Thinking Big
5. Use Those Productivity Tips

Time to learn more about them now!

Big Idea #1: Start Small and Go Big

Our life is like a domino game. If we want to make big dominoes fall, we have to make the smallest ones fall first. In fact, if you ever played with such a game, you’ve probably seen how moving one little domino piece can cause a bigger piece to fall. 

The smaller piece, according to scientific calculations, can make a piece 1.5 times bigger than it falls when hit.

Do this exercise, and by knowing where you want to get and by starting from today, you will create a domino effect that will eventually bring you to your 10-year goal and make this biggest domino fall like a little one. 

This will create vertical coherence and the domino effect, as well. That’s why the author suggests going big only after having created enough momentum to move the bigger pieces. 

A Relatable Example

To make this happen effectively, the author gives us a great exercise. Write down your goal 10 years from now and then jolt it down into different time milestones. If your destination 10 years from now is to get to “X,” where will you need to be 7 years from now? 

What about 5 years, 3 years, 1 year, 6 months, 1 month, a week, today? Think about that, and you’ll be closer to the achievement of your goals.

Big Idea #2: The One Thing

If you observe the most successful people of the world, you can easily notice how the majority of them achieved that massive success because they managed to focus on one thing and master it. 

Tiger Woods, Magnus Carlsen, Michael Jordan, Bill Gates, Cristiano Ronaldo, Conor Mc Gregor, and Steven Spielberg are just a few examples.

As the author says in his book, if you try to catch two rabbits, you won’t even catch one, just chase one rabbit and then try to get the other one. At least you’ll do this on a full stomach. 

To avoid such an unfocusing problem, the author has come with a powerful question that you should ask yourself every day to train your mind to refocus. 

The question is: “What is that one thing that you can do this week that, by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary.” You do this and will have the most impact. 

A Relatable example

Science has proved how multitasking, as many people think about it, doesn’t actually exist. In fact, our conscious brain can’t do multiple things at the same time. This can only happen through the combination of your conscious and subconscious mind. 

Since, when multitasking, you consciously decide to multitask, your productivity will inevitably decrease as when you switch your attention from one thing to another, there is a time where your brain goes blank. 

This makes it engage in different areas of your brain that slow down productivity significantly. 

Big Idea #3: Manage Your Willpower

Your willpower is like a muscle, this means that the more you train it and the stronger it will become as well as the more you use it and the more it will be depleted of energies.

This makes it crystal clear to us that if you use all your willpower doing petty things in the morning, for the rest of your day, you won’t have enough willpower to use for the activities that will make the difference in your life.

Can you recall those days where you worked hard, had to make many important decisions, or when you didn’t sleep enough and felt very tired? That’s a perfect scenario of depleted willpower. So how can you avoid such a depletion?

1: Spend your willpower on activities that matter first thing in the morning;

2: Make decisions fast, because the act of making them consumes a lot of glucose and willpower;

A Relatable Example 

To show how our willpower gets depleted just like a vampire does with somebody else’s blood, an experiment has been conducted years ago by some researchers. Two groups of people had to solve some mathematical problems in a room. 

Each person of the group was taken individually and brought into a room where to solve those problems, in that room, there was a jar full of marshmallows. 

To the first group, it was told that they could have eaten the marshmallows if they wanted to. The second group, instead, was forbidden to eat such marshmallows. The first group that was allowed to eat the marshmallows could resist more in solving the problems. 

The second group, instead, got burned out much sooner as they were using their willpower to resist the urge to eat the marshmallows.

Big Idea #4: The Success List & Thinking Big

Once you have found what is the one most important thing you must to do to become successful. You must also acknowledge how to prioritize the other activities in the best way possible. 

To become successful, you don’t need to be more disciplined, but you need to manage your activities better by building the right habits. The author advises prioritizing your work time ruthlessly above anything else. 

You shouldn’t be balanced whenever you are trying to succeed; be focussed instead, and don’t try to juggle too many balls.

Moreover, don’t be afraid of thinking big. You should think big but at the same time, as with the domino effect, focus on the little activities that will get the big goals to become true.

A Relatable Example

J.K. Rowling wasn’t afraid of thinking big when she wrote Harry Potter. Anyway, she had to focus on writing each day and getting this habit in order to complete her works. 

This proved to be a successful strategy as by adopting that long term view, coupled with the right consistent habit of writing, it was almost inevitable that she would have made it that big.

Big Idea #5: Use Those Productivity Tips

Finally, the author gives us a set of tips to use to maximize our productivity at work. One of those tips is using the 20/80 principle, stating that you should focus your energies on the 20% of things that will produce 80% of your results. 

Moreover, the author goes even further with this rule and says that in order to find your most important activity, once you find your 80/20, you should repeat the process again and again until you get to that one thing.

Secondly, being aware of Parkinson’s law (stating that the more time you have and the more you waste), can drive us towards shortening our deadlines for any task we must bring to completion. 

Finally, the author talks about time blocking, a concept with which you should block all the time in your calendar that you should dedicate to your most important activities. 

This means that if somebody invites you to do something in a day you “time blocked,” you should say no to the proposal (using common sense, I would add) and reschedule it.

Relatable Example

Parkinson’s law can be easily understood by visually anybody that has gone to school. Do you remember when your teacher scheduled an exam for a specific date? Well, if you’re like the majority of people, you didn’t study hard until some days before the exam. 

Why? Are we all better learners in the last days? Not specifically, but due to Parkinson’s law, we do become more productive when we know we have less time to accomplish a task.

Conclusion & Takeaway

Success can only come by focussing on one thing and not many of them. Thanks to the advice given by the author, you now have the tools to cut through the clutter and focus on the things that really matter.

My Advice For You

Don’t take everything said in this book as the ultimate truth for success. Surely focussing on one thing will higher your chances that you’ll become a top-notch performer in that area. 

Anyway, success must be defined by you only, and if you believe that becoming successful is not strictly related to something professional, then you might also dilute your time to learn various skills. 

This won’t probably make you a top- performer, but it will still give you the chance to make it in a certain field by combining your various skillset.

About the Author

Gary Keller is the founder of the largest real estate agency in the US, the “Keller Williams Realty International.” Before getting so successful, he was scattering his energies on many things, causing him to suffer from psychological burnouts. 

Then he decided to focus on one thing only until he became so successful in life that he was inspired to write this book.

Reading Suggestions

• “Deep Work” – Cal Newport
• “Getting Things Done” – David Allen
• “Essentialism” – Greg McKeown
• “Atomic Habits” – James Clear
• “Start with Why” – Simon Sinek 

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Introduction

Hi Success Titan reader, I’m Sal Damiata, and that’s the book summary of “How Will You Measure Your Life,” written by Clayton Christensen. 

Why this Book?

What if I told you that pursuing a life where you only chase money will leave you empty and unfulfilled in the long run? If you want to learn how not to live such a life that you will probably regret on your deathbed, keep reading.

Synopsis

How Will You Measure Your Life is a book that is aimed at teaching you how to predict how your life will unfold based on business theories so that you can live the best life you can. But is it really true that you can predict such life outcomes? Let’s discover it together.

Who’s it for? 

• People that don’t like their jobs or find them meaningless;
• Individuals or professionals that would like to get a happier life;
• People who feel like missing out on other aspects of life apart from work.

What You’ll Learn from it

• What are the real motivational drivers for people in their careers;
• How to create a long-term fulfilling life in every aspect of it;
• How to carry on with your professional life without compromising on your happiness.

In a Nutshell

• The most successful professionals do not only invest their time in their work or career, but they also do in their relationships and lifestyle. That’s the only way you can achieve authentic and long-lasting happiness in your life.

3 Sentence Summary

• Whenever you’re pursuing a strategy that seems to be working, you’d usually be better off by keeping going with your original plan. However, if you are faced with a seemingly better opportunity, your best bet might be to consider an “emergent strategy” and change your plans.

• To build a successful career, ask yourself what motivates you to get out of bed in the morning. This can be doing service to other people, getting public recognition, or connecting with the infinite. Whatever your answer, if you manage to align your values with what you do for a living, your motivation to work will skyrocket.

• Successful businesses can be destroyed when organizations fail to look at things in the long-term. This also happens to people when, for a short-term benefit, they hijack their long-term success.

Big Ideas

Those are the most relevant ideas expressed in the book that we’ll explore together.

1. Career Success & Happiness Can Go together
2. True Happiness Lies in Relationships
3. Let Your Children Grow Alone
4. Balance Calculation with Serendipity
5. Beware of Marginal Thinking 

Time to learn more about them now!

Big Idea #1: Career Success & Happiness Can Go together

When it comes to forging a successful career, thinking in practical terms is necessary, but personal satisfaction is also important. To create a fulfilling career, thus, you should ask yourself questions that go beyond the simple “How much money can I make with that?” 

A question you should start finding the answer to is, “What motivates me to get out of bed in the morning?” It has been seen that people who found the answer to this question were usually happier because they found their own reasons to do things in life. 

For some of them, it was doing service to other people; for others, it was getting public recognition, for others working meant connecting with the infinite. Whatever your answer, discover your unique purpose, and you will ensure you happiness in the long-term.

When you manage to align your values with what you do for a living, you’ll be much more motivated to work, and you’ll also learn faster. In fact, it has been seen how the hardest working people are the ones involved in NGOs and other humanitarian institutions. 

Those people usually get paid less, but with their meaningful work, they keep going hard, proving that money is a correlation to a happy career, not causation of it.

A Relatable Example

In the Motivator-Hygiene theory, it’s explained how personal satisfaction in the workplace can only come if what you do matches your needs and personal values. The hygiene factors are related to the salary you receive, workplace security, and company policy. 

The Motivator factor, instead, relates to the achievement, responsibility, growth, challenges, and recognition that the job can give you.

Big Idea #2: True Happiness Lies in Relationships

Another way many people lose sight of the juice of life is by focussing too little on their relationships. Usually, they do that because work gives fast rewards, while relationships generally bear their fruits only in the long term.

The connections you’ll have made with people will be what will ultimately last in your memories much more than the amount of money you will have in your bank account. 

Invest and nurture your relationships as much as you can because your job is always to understand the needs of others, both in business and personal relationships. 

Relatable Example

In the book, he brings the example of a company that used to sales its products by marketing them as “soft drinks and sports drinks,” just like their competitors did; this approach, anyway, caused their sales to be low. 

Then they changed their marketing and started to understand what the customer really wanted. They found out that their core customers (parents) had a pain point because they couldn’t get their children to eat vegetables. 

The company, having this intuition, produced a milkshake with vegetables and, not surprisingly, their sales went up. 

In the same way, don’t project your needs on your spouse, instead try to understand what she needs and give her what she wants. 

Sometimes we assume what people really want, without really asking them what they might need; don’t assume but ask, and you’ll be far better in helping others. 

Big Idea #3: Let Your Children Grow Alone

In the past, most children used to work with their families, and because of that, they started to develop specific skills related to the field where they worked. 

Now today’s children have so much free time that doesn’t spend much of their time trying to improve a specific skill. That’s really bad as they won’t be as good with their problem-solving skills as they should be.

This means that, especially today, children shouldn’t be shielded from life challenges but rather encouraged to face them and even fail at them. That’s essential as only experience and failure will eventually create strong and self-sufficient adults. Make them face their everyday problems by themselves and let them cope with those problems individually.

A Relatable Example

An example of that can be brought to children that have to face their challenges at school, with their peers, struggles with love, and so on. A good way to make them grow thus is not by intervening in their lives but by supporting them in their choices.

How a parent should intervene, instead, is by creating a family culture where certain noble values are honored, so that the children will grow in a healthy environment that will inevitably contribute to their maturity. 

This will happen because your children will have certain guidelines that will help your children face their challenges.

Big Idea #4: Balance Calculation with Serendipity

Sometimes, along with your career, you’ll find yourself in a situation where you won’t know what to do. 

That usually happens when you decided to go into a specific direction, but then maybe you find out about another opportunity, leaving you with the dilemma “Should I keep up with my path or change it?.”

The author, in his book, talks about how there are usually two distinct things that happen whenever we try to pursue a goal, those are:

1: Anticipated opportunities, that are the things that you can consciously see and choose in order to reach your goal. Those anticipated opportunities constitute the elements that will eventually build your “deliberate strategy,” as the author calls it. 

2: Unanticipated opportunities, on the other hand, are the things you can’t see when you plan your strategy out, but that happens unexpectedly. They usually fight your deliberate strategy, force you to modify it, and to go through what the author calls an “emergent strategy.”

Then the new emergent strategy becomes the new deliberate strategy, perpetuating the process forever. This might get you frustrated and make you ask yourself how to make the decision between following an anticipated or an emergent strategy. 

Generally, the author advises that whenever you have a strategy that is working, you can stay there and keep going with your plans. When, however, you are faced with a possibly better opportunity, your best bet might be to go for an “emergent strategy.”

A Relatable Example

Before getting famous, the Japanese motorbike company “Honda” wanted to penetrate the US market. They, in fact, developed a project where they designed a bike that was supposed to compete with Harley Davidson and Triumph. 

They entered the market with this motorbike, but the attempt to penetrate it was rather unsuccessful; in fact, it almost killed Honda.

Their deliberate plan, thus, seemed like it wasn’t working. Honda, anyway, had another motorbike in its product line called the “super cub” that used in Japan as a way to deliver things in the urban streets. 

That bike was different from the typical US bike as it was smaller and more versatile; in fact, when Honda employees started to use it, they grabbed the attention of other traditional bikers. 

Those curious people eventually pushed Honda’s team to purchase more of those bikes, until they became super popular. 

Honda was low in sales, but by selling those small bikes, they could recover the costs. They continued producing such motorbikes until, well you, know as the rest is history.

Big Idea #5: Beware of Marginal Thinking 

If you enroll in any investment course, they’ll almost always teach you the concept that when evaluating alternative investments, you should ignore sunk costs and fixed costs and base your decisions on marginal costs and marginal revenues instead.

This approach is really dangerous, though, as usually, when making those evaluations, the marginal costs will almost always appear to be lower while the marginal profits will be higher. 

This biases companies to keep doing what they were in the past and not focus on future capabilities they might need. This means that success can be destroyed when people or organizations fail to look at the long term. 

A Relatable Example

Blockbuster dominated the movie renting industry in the late 90′ by making money with their DVD’s rental service. Some years later, Netflix entered the market, but it was very small compared to Blockbuster. 

Blockbuster, to see if their business strategy was sound, applied the Marginal Cost & Revenue formula, finding out that Netflix niche didn’t look attractive at all per their goals.

The problem? Blockbuster focussed so much on their numbers and on protecting the business that they lost their market share in a few years and declared bankruptcy just one year before Netflix got to 24 million customers.

How could Blockbuster have avoided such a failure? The company should have asked itself how to create a successful new business instead of how it could have protected it from failure. 

Their failure teaches us how important it is to give a look at the future instead of only being focused on how things are in the present.

Conclusion & Takeaway

Happiness and long term success can’t come if we only care about making money and neglect our core values. 

The most important things in life rarely have something to do with materialism, they rather are linked to the nurturing of healthy human relationships and to the contribution of other people’s lives.

My Advice For You

Observe your life objectively from outside and see if you can spot the areas of your life where you’re falling short. Then ask yourself how could you live a life that’s truly inspiring to you, and that could make you become your best version. 

About the Authors

Clayton Christensen is a best-selling author, businessman, and professor of business administration at Harvard Business School. Along with his successful career as a professor and writer, he has written many articles for the Harvard Business Review. 

Clayton is also an expert in business innovation, and his masterpiece “The Innovator’s Dilemma” is considered to contain one of the greatest ideas of the 21st century.

James Allworth is an American author and businessman. He graduated with a bachelor of commerce in the Australian National University, after which he got his MBA at Harvard Business School. 

He started his career in a big four management consulting firm, after which he dedicated himself to his passion for cracking strategic problems in the areas of business, technology, and innovation.

Karen Dillon is an American Investigative journalist. After graduating from the University of Missouri, at first, she started working for many newspapers. 

Later on, she started working as an investigative documentarist, earning the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting for her excellent service.

Reading Suggestions

• “The Innovator’s Dilemma” – Clayton Christensen
• “Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice” – Clayton Christensen
• “Finding Your Element” – Ken Robinson and Lou Aronica
• “Disrupting Class” – Clayton M. Christensen, Curtis W. Johnson, and Michael B. Horn
• “The Prosperity Paradox” – Clayton M. Christensen, Efosa Ojomo, and Karen Dillon

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Introduction 

Hi Success Titan reader, I’m Sal Damiata, and that’s the summary of Creativity Inc. written by Ed Catmull. 

Why this Book?

Would you like to know what the secrets to unleash creativity when working in any team are naturally? If you’re a professional or a creative team leader that wants to learn how to do this with your team, keep reading.

Synopsis

Creativity Inc. is a book that explains how creativity works and what practices help its natural blossom rather than its suppression. Anyway, is it really true that anybody can build powerful creative teams with the right practices? Let’s discover it together.

Who’s it For?

• Creative Team Managers & Leaders;
• Creative Entrepreneurs and professionals working in creative environments;
• Everyone who wants to understand better how creativity works.

What You’ll Learn from it

• Effectively manage teams of creative people;
• Easily overcome creative blocks both in you and others;
• Understand how to manage people in various businesses effectively.

In a Nutshell

• An excursus of how Pixar managed to overcome the creativity problems of its employees by implementing specific cultural, organizational, and behavioral practices aimed at fostering it. 

Amongst such practices are creating a fearless culture, creating the right team, fostering free communication between employees, and making them feel like they contribute to the final outcome.

3 Sentence-Summary

• Managers of creative companies must understand that putting trust in all its employees by respecting their positions as essential for the success of the business will improve their creative performances. 

• The working environment plays a huge role in the creativity levels of the employees working there. Make sure to make it as a stimulant for each individual as possible, giving each one of them complete freedom.

• Put a great team of people in the same room to solve a problem together and encourage them to be candid with each other. If they can empathize with one another, trust will be built, and creativity will be enhanced. Creativity is a practice, but it can’t come if trust is not present amongst team members.

Big Ideas

Those are the most relevant ideas expressed in the book that we’ll explore together.

1. Build The Right Team 
2. Make Employees Contribute
3. Balance is Key
4. Create a Fearless Culture
5. Beware of Confirmation Bias

Time to learn more about them now!

Big Idea #1: Build The Right Team 

One concept that many creative team managers fail to understand is that the biggest determinant in fostering creativity amongst people is not adopting he right creative process or the right idea; the secret lies in creating the right team. From what Ed Catmull saw during his work experience, a good idea can quickly die if it is harvested in the wrong team. 
Conversely, a very bad idea in a good team can be transformed into a good one. This means that it’s much better to have a bad idea in a good team rather than a good idea in a bad team.
To build such a creative team, Ed advises on taking a group of passionate and well-informed people, putting them together, and encouraging them to be candid with one another. 
He doesn’t say honest because being candid to him is a better way to build trust and thus foster creative collaboration.

A Relatable Example

Have you ever found yourself in a group of people where, no matter how much effort everybody put into talking, nobody ever really clicked with each other? How much creative energy was present there? How free did you feel at expressing yourself?
What about, instead, when you were in a group of people where you all seemed to click between each other spontaneously? How much creative energy was present in the air? How free did you feel at expressing yourself? 
Reflect on your own life cases to better understand what Ed Catmull means in his book.

Big Idea #2: Make Employees Contribute

Ed, in his book, talks about how many creative problems could be overcome if only managers would give their employees the freedom to contribute to aspects outside of their domain as well. 
When you employ somebody to do something specific in your firm and give him the possibility to express himself when it comes to general problem solving, you’ll see how much happier your employees will be and how much more creative solutions you’ll get.
That’s why hierarchical structures prevent employees from giving honest and oftentimes precious feedback. To avoid such problems, you make your employees feel more important by giving them higher responsibilities. 
It has been seen, in fact, how employees are happier and more productive when they know that their work is an important part of the whole process. 

A Relatable Example

Ed talked about the period when he was producing Toy Story 2, and the company was having problems with production managers. 
Anyway, those problems were all solved thanks to the company culture that has been created where every employee knew that he was an essential contributor to the excellence of Pixar. 
Eventually, they succeeded and made 500 Million at the box office, but only because the production managers knew that without them, the production of Toy Story 2 was doomed to fail. 

Big Idea #3: Balance is Key

In his book, Ed also talks about this idea where the “Ugly Baby” as he calls it represents an initially good idea that should be protected while the “Hungry Beast” is what is fed by success, and the more it gets, the more it wants. 
In any creative process, there will be a conflict between the hungry beast and the ugly baby, and the goal is to always balance them rather than using one or the other only. 
If you want to maximize your creativity, balance your focus as well, meaning that you should both be able to focus on one thing and see the broad perspective of it as well. 
Finally, always keep a beginner’s mind as if you believe you have nothing more to learn, new information can’t get into your brain.

A Relatable Example

One idea where Ed brings the concept of dualism is the door metaphor. One one side of the door, there is everything known, and on the other side, there is everything unknown. 
In order to create, it’s essential to have one step inside the door and another outside of it because, in order to create, we must absolutely jump into the unknown. 

Big Idea #4: Create a Fearless Culture

Another way to foster the creativity of your employees is by creating a company culture where making mistakes is ok. Many employees are terrified by expressing their opinions because they are afraid of failure. 
What Pixar did in order to avoid that creativity stuck was to create that fearless culture, where exploring new and crazy ideas was actually a good thing.

To create such a culture, encourage free communication amongst employees, and assume that people’s intentions are good. Then if you will ever fail, just create recovery techniques where the whole team cooperates to restore the situation. 

A Relatable Example

At Pixar, not every story that has been thought has eventually made it to the big screen. That’s normal as there are good creations and bad creations, what’s important anyway is to inspire people to create new ideas and explore new areas even if that seems crazy. 
That’s how Pixar came out with some crazy cartoons like Toy Story, Cars, Ratatouille, or Monsters Inc.

Big Idea #5: Beware of Confirmation Bias

As human beings, we often tend to be biassed towards certain things more than others. One of the ways with which we have this biased tendency is by seeking information that confirms or supports our opinions, regardless of actual accuracy. 
In psychology, that’s called the confirmation bias. Why does Ed talk about it in his book? Because usually, company managers believe that their ideas are always the best, even if they aren’t. 
That’s not true anyway, and managers of creative teams can avoid this bias by acknowledging that employees might have better ideas than them. 

A Relatable Example

During the one meeting at Pixar, one of the employees suggested to managers that it was probably much better to create animations of the stories once they were finished. 
The company, in fact, used to make animations along with the creation of the story that, most of the time, ned up being changed and thus forcing the animators to start all over again. 
The idea of first completing the stories and then going into the animation part saves the company a lot of money time and energy, all of that thanks to the idea of one employee. 

Conclusion & Takeaway

Ideas are not created singularly but are instead a collective process that takes form with movement and directed action. This shows how creativity is a practice that can be fostered by creating trust-based teams, fearless cultures, and an open mind towards the unknown. 

My Advice for You

I would suggest you put into practice the principles explained in this books that hit you the most or that sparked your curiosity the most. Then confront yourself with other people working in creative environments and see for yourself if those principles are true or not. 
In the end, the best thing you can do for yourself is internalizing those concepts so that you can apply them in any creative area of your life and profession.

About The Author

Ed Catmull is the Co-Founder of the successful movie company Pixar. As a young child, he always dreamed of becoming a movie animator, inspired by cartoons like Pinocchio and Peter Pan. He went on to study computer sciences and worked as such in various companies. 
Later on, anyway, with the advent of 3D computer animation, he decided to combine his computer skills with the animation ones to create his first computer-animated movie. 
That evolved to his career at Pixar, giving him worldwide success along with several prestigious awards like the “Academy Award” (Oscar). To date, he retired from Pixar even though he is still an adviser. 

Reading Suggestions

• “Steal Like an Artist” – Austin Kleon
• “Zero to One” – Blake Masters
• “The War of Art” – Steven Pressfield
• “Good to Great” – James C. Collins
• “Creative Confidence” – Tom Kelley

Introduction

Hi Success Titan reader, I’m Sal Damiata, and that’s the book summary of “Awaken the Giant Within,” written by Tony Robbins. 

Why this Book?

What if beneath you lies an invincible version of yourself that is capable of making both your life and other peoples’ lives a masterpiece? Keep reading, as that’s probably the right book summary for you.

Synopsis

Awaken the Giant Within is a book that will teach you how to exploit the infinite power you have within you to create mind-blowing change in your life. Anyway, is it really true that we all have that power within us? And if yes, how can we harness it? Let’s discover it together.

Who’s it for? 

• Everybody feeling stuck and like they can’t change their lives for the better;
• Entrepreneurs or any kind of professionals that would like to feel more empowered in their job;
• Anybody wanting a better life both for him/her and their loved ones.

What You’ll Learn from it

• The strategies that have helped Tony Robbins and his students shape their own lives;
• Techniques that will help you to overcome your limiting beliefs, surpass your own limits and take control of your life;
• How to use the power of decision and concentration to make your dreams come true.

In a Nutshell

• We are the forgers of our destiny. Within all of us lies the power of change because we can make conscious decisions about how to carry on with our lives at any given moment. Once we make better decisions, our actions will change, and so will the results that will eventually give us a better life.

3 Sentence Summary

• This means that when you shift your perception of yourself, your entire life will change as a consequence of that. When you fail at something, don’t say to yourself that you are a failure, because all you are, is the same person that produced a specific event that you called “failure.”

• To change your behavior, all you have to do is to mentally associate something positive to the behaviors you’d like to have and something negative to the behaviors you don’t want to have. The rest will be done automatically by your habitual mind.

• If you want to experience long-term happiness, become aware of what your value system is. Once you know it, align your daily actions with those values that are important to you consistently.

Big Ideas

Those are the most relevant ideas expressed in the book that we’ll explore together.

1. Make Committed Decisions
2. Know Your Values
3. Ask Powerful Questions
4. Expand Your Identity
5. Your Habits Shape Your Destiny 

Time to learn more about them now!

Big Idea #1: Make Committed Decisions

As Tony Robbins says, our destiny is shaped during the moments we make decisions. If you are getting stuck by your circumstances, make a committed decision to change your behavior because cause once you produce different actions, different results will inevitably occur. 

The father of all actions is decision then, not circumstances, and realize that whenever you don’t make a decision, you’re actually making one; you’re deciding to stay the same person you were. 

What’s important, when making new decisions, is to always make them in an empowered state of mind rather than in a low one because they will be directly affected by how you will feel in the very moment you make that decision.

The next time you are in an empowered state ask yourself the following questionS: “What kind of person do I want to be 10 years from now?”, What goals and dreams would I like to achieve during that period?”

A Relatable Example

Think about an event that occurred a long time ago, maybe 10 years or more. Travel back to your memory and think of the person you were. 

Now think of the person you are now and ask yourself, “How much have I changed?” Maybe you’ve changed a lot, or maybe you’ve stayed the same. 

The reality is that you could have made this 10 years change in one day. Why? Because changing our actions is not supposed to be a long term process and, even neurologically, it just takes 21 days for you to change from one habit (behavior) to another one. 

Big Idea #2: Know Your Values

Whenever we honor our values, we go into the right direction in life and feel joy and contentment with what we do, whenever we don’t honor them we feel like carrying a burden that we are not supposed to carry. 

That’s true because our values guide us towards our most authentic pursuit. Many people that aren’t happy is because they didn’t make a conscious decision for what to strive for; thus, they go after things that don’t lead to their happiness but to a meaningless life.

If you don’t want to be one of those people that will regret how they spent their lives on the deathbed, become aware of what you value and align it with the decisions (thus actions) you make every single day. 

When you are aware of what you value, and you don’t, every decision will be far easier to make for you.

A Relatable Example

Tony shows how the most successful people in history always had their value system aligned with their actions. 

An example of that can be Gandhi that, instead of striving for war, fought for unity, Nikola Tesla that valued a lot of human progress, Salvador Dali that valued art and expression or Mike Tyson that valued victory over anything else.

Big Idea #3: Ask Powerful Questions

We often ask questions to ourselves, but what kind of questions do we usually ask? In fact, as in everything, there are good and bad questions that we can use to influence the way we think.

When you start to pose yourself a different set of questions, you will reshape your attitude towards reality, and this will eventually change your emotional response to any event you will be subject to.

This means that when you start posing yourself the right questions and start using the right words, you’ll start to think differently, and when you think differently, guess what happens? You act differently, and different actions produce different results. 

This means that you’ll literally change your life by changing the questions you ask yourself and by changing the words you use to define who you are and the events you experience.

A Relatable Example

If you get dumped by your 10 years old girlfriend, you can ask yourself two types of questions; the first one can be:

1: “Why the hell am I so unlucky? After 10 years, she dumped me, I even wanted to marry her.”

2: “What can I learn from this? By the way, better that she left me before we got even married.”

Which one of those questions makes you think in a more powerful way, in your opinion?

You know the answer. Now think of all the different possible ways you can apply this concept to the different areas of your life, and you will have a life-changing weapon between your hands.

Big Idea #4: Expand Your Identity

Our destiny is largely controlled by who we think we are more than you can imagine. Our self-perception is so powerful, yet it operates below the surface of our consciousness. 

This means that when you shift your perception of yourself, your entire life will change as a consequence of that. 

The first principle to apply when changing your self-perception is to separate your negative behaviors from your identity. 

When you fail at something, don’t say to yourself that you are a failure because all you are is the same person that produced a specific event that you called “failure.”

When you start to understand this, you can change your identity at will. One way to do this is by setting higher standards for yourself so that you know what you deserve and what you don’t deserve. 

Make a conscious decision after you finish reading this article of the person you want to be and start living like that person, regardless of your past and of who you think you were before reading this article.

A Relatable Example

One famous example showing how powerful a change in our self-perception can be one of the school children. Some poor-performing school children were once taken by a professor individually, and it was told them that they were actually gifted. 

Not surprisingly, their grades started to change for the better, and they actually became so good to take excellent marks, all because they truly believed to be gifted. 

Big Idea #5: Your Habits Shape Your Destiny 

Having come to this point, I believe Tony’s point to be clear to you; if you change your habits, you will change your destiny. In order to change your destiny, then you simply need to adopt the following principles.

1: First of all let go of all the disempowering thought patterns you might have about yourself, life and the world;

2: Whenever there’s something you perceive as a problem, focus on its solutions rather than complaining

3: Change the meaning you give to “bad” events and manipulate your thinking so that they become a good lesson for you;

4: Use failure as a way to learn and move forward more than a way to stop yourself from acting. 

A Relatable Example

Many people are stopped by the habit of procrastination. According to Tony, procrastination happens because one believes that by acting, he will experience more pain than procrastinating. 

To change those behaviors, all you have to do is to associate procrastination with pain and acting with pleasure, and you will automatically improve your productivity. 

How can you do this? By listing all the good things that will happen to your life (in the short, medium and long term) if you act, versus all the bad things that will happen to you (in the short, medium and long term) if you fail to act.

Conclusion & Takeaway

Many people have self-imposed barriers that, most of the time, are just illusions. You can shatter those barriers and create a brand new life for yourself by making a committed decision to change the way you think and act. 

Once you start to do this, you’ll experience true change, and you’ll have defeated your only enemy, your limiting beliefs.

My Advice For You

My advice for you is to start applying those concepts right away instead of closing this page and getting to your next activity unconsciously. If you liked this book, I suggest you purchase it and to put it into practice. 

Yes, I said put into practice and not read it because that’s a book to practice and not just to read. If you need any further clarification or help, feel free to contact me on my social media pages as personal change is my bread and butter.

About the Author

Anthony Robbins is probably the most influential personality in the self-development industry. Until he was 18, he was just getting by, until he hit the lowest point in his life that eventually inspired him to become the man he is now. 

He is the author of many best-selling books, and today, he holds seminars around the globe, inspiring millions of people every year to become their best version.

Reading Suggestions

• “Unlimited Power” – Tony Robbins
• “Money” – Tony Robbins
• “Think and Grow Rich” – Napoleon Hill
• “The Power of Positive Thinking” – Norman Vincent Peale
• “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” Stephen R. Covey

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Introduction

Hi Success Titan reader, I’m Sal Damiata, and that’s the book summary of “Tools of Titans,” written by Tim Ferris. 

Why this Book?

If you could have the possibility to have a chat with the most successful people of our recent years, what questions would you ask them? 

Synopsis

“Tools of Titans” is a book that does that, in an easy format. Interviewing more of the 200 successful “Titans” of our world. Anyway, is it really possible to become successful, also for you, by adopting the favorite strategies of those masters? Let’s discover it together.

Who’s it for? 

• People that have a burning desire to become successful;
• Ambitious people that hate failure and have high projects that want to bring to life;
• Entrepreneurs, personal development freaks, and everybody that loves implementing life hacks.

What You’ll Learn from it

• The best winning practices from the most successful people in the world;
• What mindsets are more likely to make you thrive in business and life;
• Strategies to become happier, more fulfilled, and productive. 

In a Nutshell

Success always leaves clues, and those are the clues that Tim Ferris wants to teach us with his book. The secret of success, anyway, doesn’t lie only is knowing what those clues are but in implementing them on a regular basis. Then, you’ll probably make it as the Titans did.

3 Sentence Summary

• Sometimes bad life experiences can teach us we don’t want and propel us towards a better life. Put yourself in uncomfortable situations where you embrace fear and go out of your comfort zone consistently. Growth will be a natural byproduct of such an attitude.

• Most of the time, entrepreneurial success requires staying focussed in the face of distractions and pressure from other people. Thus, having the ability to keep on going even when others criticize, you will be essential for your success.

• If you want to make it with a business, acquire the trust of 1000 people, make them your core fans, and serve them the best you can. Then they will purchase almost everything from you and, if you do the math, making them spend $150 a year will make you earn a huge profit.

Big Ideas

Those are the most relevant ideas expressed in the book that we’ll explore together.

1. Model & Contribute
2. Discomfort is a Teacher
3. Adopt Long-Term Systems
4. Get 1000 True Fans
5. Be Focussed

Time to learn more about them now!

Big Idea #1: Model & Contribute

Success always leaves clues. If you want to become successful, the best thing you can do is take the example of the people that have already gotten to where you want to get. The route has already been paved, so why not modeling their behavior? 

If you don’t know what to do with your life, anyway, I’d suggest you follow Tony Robbins’ advice and contribute to people’s lives.

Tony says that the majority of unhappiness comes because we put too much focus on ourselves, rather than thinking about how we can help others. 

Moreover, he advises to ask yourself quality questions because they force you to think about quality answers that, ultimately, will bring you a high-quality life. 

A Relatable Example

If you find yourself stuck in a particular position where you don’t know what to do, the best thing you can do is act the shit out of you. 

In the book, here’s this story of a donkey that couldn’t decide between drinking water or eating hay. He stood still in front of the two for hours until he died of thirst. 

If he drank water, he could have gotten more time to eat hay and have both of them. Many people act like this donkey, not knowing what to do with their lives and ending up doing nothing. 

Start doing something, whether that’s writing one word instead of a book, making a video instead of getting 1 Million subscribers, or going to the gym once instead of seeking the perfect body right away. The rest will come.

Big Idea #2: Discomfort is a Teacher

Everybody knows that hard work brings to success, but what about having a hard job? That’s the case of Chris Sacca, a successful investor in the area of San Francisco as things haven’t always been nice roses for him.

When he was young, Sacca used to work at very bad jobs, like cleaning septic tanks full of excrements while his superiors were giving him rough orders.

Shocked by this experience, he used it as a momentum to create a different life for himself. This shows how, sometimes, the bad experiences we get in life can serve us as a reminder for what we don’t want and propel us towards what we want. 

Live a life where you put yourself in uncomfortable situations, where you embrace fear and go out of your comfort zone consistently.

A Relatable Example

I never personally cleaned septic tanks, but I remember summer 2015 working in Ibiza as a party ticket seller. 

It was a cool job, but when you had to stay 10 hours under the boiling sun, talking to hundreds of people every single day, it can be an exhausting task even for the most social person (me). 

From that experience, I understood that I didn’t want a job that, after it was done, all I dreamed of doing was sleeping. That gave me the motivation to pursue my entrepreneurial career where even if I work a lot, I have the freedom to manage my life as I want.

Big Idea #3: Adopt Long-Term Systems

Rather than setting short term goals, go for long-term systems. Many entrepreneurs fail with their businesses because they only set goals that, by nature, foresee a specific result to be reached. 

Sometimes, anyway, reaching those results doesn’t depend only on you, and whenever you don’t reach the goal that you’ve set for yourself, you can end up thinking of yourself as a failure. 

Instead, if you practice a skill consistently and make it a part of your routine, you are building a system to success because it’s inevitable that the more you practice something, the more successful you’ll become at it. 

A Relatable Example

Years ago, when I started approaching women cold, I used to set specific monthly and yearly goals, determining how many women I should have slept by that time. 

This process ended up to be detrimental both for my wellbeing and for the enjoyment of meeting women, as I would never meet my goals. 

Nowadays, instead, I just have a very simple system where, whenever I see an attractive woman, I go talk to her, regardless of the outcome. 

By adopting this system, not only I relieved myself of all the unnecessary pressure coming from having specific goals set, but it kept me consistent and helped me build solid cold approaching skills over the course of the latest years.

Big Idea #4: Get 1000 True Fans

If you can make 1000 people happy and get them to spend $150 every year on your products, you have a six-figure income every year. Sounds crazy? 

Yes, a little, but it’s actually like that. Many business starters think that the only way they can make it is by going huge and targeting hundreds of thousands of people when, in reality, you just need a solid fan base to make it. 

That’s how niche products or services keep thriving. They focussed on building a trustworthy fan base that keeps coming over and over again. 

It’s important, anyway, that you manage to inspire trust in those people and keep serving them at your best as core fans will do almost anything to get your products or services. 

A Relatable Example

Many musicians believe that in order to make a living with music, they need to have a huge fan base. 

The reality is that if you have 1000 true fans and can get them to pay you $5 a month to support your creations (on Patreon for instance), you’d have high enough income to make a living; apart from all the money, you can make on Spotify, Youtube, etc. 

This is just an example but works well also for other businesses, as well as it’s actually a principle that can be applied almost everywhere. 

Big Idea #5: Be Focussed

Most of the time, entrepreneurial success requires staying focussed in the face of distractions and pressure from other people. When you start thinking with your own head and do unconventional things, then people will most likely start to put pressure on you. 

Maybe you want to start a new business, but your friend tells you not to do it because it’s too risky. Or, maybe, you started your business for some months, but you didn’t see any money coming in, and so your parents put pressure on you. 

Whatever the case, having the ability to stay focused on your path will be essential for your success.

A Relatable Example

It took me a long time to become comfortable staying focussed on my path without caring for what people said about me. 

The biggest risk I’ve taken so far has been to quit the corporate career (for which I devoted 5 years of my life) to go solo and work as a freelance coach and entrepreneur. 

Today almost live the life of my dreams, and every day, it’s a great opportunity for me to learn, grow, and experiment. 

Anyway, along the path, I got criticized a lot for my choices (and I still do) from my family, colleagues, and distant friends. Imagine how much would I have missed out of I listened to what they told me?

Conclusion & Takeaway

There’s no single path to success, you can only take inspiration from others but never replicate another’s path. Anyway, if you implement the habits that helped the titans of the world to make it, you will most likely than not make it as well. 

My Advice for You

My personal advice today is that you get a mentor that has already achieved the results you want. This way, it will be easier for you to discover what he has done to get to where he is in a more direct way rather than taking information online. 

About The Author

Tim Ferris, an American Entrepreneur, Investor, and Podcaster from New York. After getting a degree from Princeton University in East-Asian studies, he started his own company that then sold making huge profits. 

During that period, he started writing his first book, “The 4-hour workweek,” that has been one of the many successes that brought him to become a multi best-selling author. 

“Tools of Titans” is the byproduct of various conversations with nearly 200 world-changers and personalities of different backgrounds like billionaires, celebrities, and other influential figures.  

Reading Suggestions

• “The 4 Hour Body” – Tim Ferris
• “Extreme Ownership” – Jocko Willink
• “The Obstacle is the Way” – Ryan Holiday
• “Start with Why” – Simon Sinek
• “Zero to One” – Blake Masters