Who Will Cry When You Die\?: Life Lessons From The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari pdfdrive com

31.
List Your Problems
“A problem well stated is a problem half solved,” said Charles Kettering. There
is something very special that happens when you take out a piece of paper and
list every single one of your problems on it. It is very much like the peaceful
feeling you get after telling your best friend about something that has been
troubling you for weeks. A weight somehow falls from your shoulders. You feel
lighter, calmer and freer.
I have discovered that while our minds can be our best friends, they can
also be our worst enemies. If you keep thinking about your problems, pretty
soon you will find you think about little else. The mind is a strange creature in
this regard: the things you want it to remember it forgets, but all those things you
want it to forget, it remembers. I have people coming to my seminars who tell
me they are still mad about what someone did to them fifteen years ago or still
annoyed at what a rude salesclerk said to them last month.
To let go of the mental clutter that your problems tend to generate, list all
your worries on a piece of paper. If you do so, they will no longer be able to
fester in your mind and drain your valuable energy. This simple exercise will
also permit you to put your problems into perspective and tackle them in an
orderly, well-planned sequence. Among the many successful people who have
used this technique are martial arts master Bruce Lee and Winston Churchill,
who once said, “It helps to write down half a dozen things which are worrying
me. Two of them, say, disappear; about two, nothing can be done, so it’s no use
worrying; and two perhaps can be settled.”

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32.
Practice the Action Habit
“Wisdom is knowing what to do next, skill is knowing how to do it, and virtue is
doing it,” observed David Starr Jordan. Most of us know what we need to do in
order to live happier, healthier and more fulfilling lives. The real problem is that
we don’t do what we know. I have heard many motivational speakers say,
“Knowledge is power.” I disagree. Knowledge is not power. Knowledge is only
potential power. It transforms itself into actual power the moment you decisively
act on it.
The mark of a strong character lies not in doing what is fun to do or what is
easy to do. The sign of deep moral authority appears in the individual who
consistently does what he ought to be doing rather than what he feels like doing.
A person of true character spends his days doing that which is the right thing to
do. Rather than watching television for three hours after an exhausting day at
work, he has the courage to get up off the couch and read to his kids. Instead of
sleeping in on those cold wintry mornings, this individual exercises his natural
reserves of self-discipline and gets out of bed for a run. And since action is a
habit, the more positive actions you take, the more you will feel like taking.
All too often, we spend our days waiting for the ideal path to appear in front
of us. We forget that paths are made by walking, not waiting. Dreaming is great.
But thinking big thoughts alone will not build a business, pay your bills or make
you into the person you know in your heart you can be. In the words of Thomas
Carlyle, “The end of man is an action and not a thought, though it were the
noblest.” The smallest of actions is always better than the boldest of intentions.

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