#22MinuteChallenge | Bible Project Reading Plan
Suggested Video
Torah: The Book of Deuteronomy
Day 053 | The Wilderness
Deuteronomy 1 – 3, Psalm 53
Source: Bible Project Reading Plan
Tuesday, February 22, 2022
Adebayo Martins | #JustAThought | #iMuse | #2022 | #017 | SAT.07.17.2021
Your body rarely arrives where your mind hasn't been.
Keep your mind on things above, not on worldly things.
Colossians 3:2 GW
He will give you your heart’s desire and carry out all your plans.
Psalms 20:4 GW
Adebayo Martins | #JustAThought | #iMuse | #2022 | #017 | SAT.07.17.2021
Monday, February 21, 2022
SUMMARY ATTEMPT | SLIGHT EDGE | JEFF OLSON | CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
USE YOUR SLIGHT EDGE ALLIES
“Be not afraid of going slowly; be afraid only of standing still.”
— Chinese proverb
You have powerful allies at your disposal, four slight edge forces that, once you recognize them in your life, you can harness in your pursuit of your dreams, like four wild horses all harnessed to a single chariot. They are momentum, completion, reflection, and celebration.
Use the Power of Momentum
We’ve come to expect fast results, to demand them — but fast, faster, fastest is a strategy that will eventually take you down the slight edge curve to the unhappy life.
Going too fast, or growing too fast, often puts the system’s (or the person’s) survival at risk. Faster can easily turn out to be slower.
Part of learning the slight edge is finding your own “intrinsically optimal rate of growth,” and it is always served best by a step-by-step approach of constant, never-ending improvement, which lays solid foundations and builds upon them over and over. The slight edge is your optimal rate of growth.
Simple disciplines compounded over time. That’s how the tortoise won; that’s how you get to be a winner, too. The key word in the Aesop moral is not “slow.” The key word here is steady. Steady wins the race. That’s the truth of it. Because steady is what taps into the power of the slight edge.
The fable of the tortoise and the hare is really about the remarkable power of momentum. Newton’s second law of thermodynamics: a body at rest tends to stay at rest — and a body in motion tends to remain in motion. That’s why your activity is so important. Once you’re in motion, it’s easy to keep on keeping on. Once you stop, it’s hard to change from stop to go.
I’ve found that it’s far more effective to take one business-building action every day for a week, than to take seven, or ten, or even two dozen all at once and then take the rest of the week off. People who do the first, week in and week out, build a successful business; people who do the second, don’t — even if they actually take a greater number of those business-building actions than the first group.
It can take a good amount of energy and initiative to get yourself started in a new activity — but it takes far, far less to keep yourself doing it once you’ve started.
The slight edge is a flow, and it moves at its own pace, automatically homing in on optimal growth rates. Part of understanding the slight edge is learning to go with the flow.
“Give yourself something to work toward — constantly.”
- Mary Kay Ash
Use the Power of Completion
Another way you gather momentum and harness it to your advantage is by regularly practicing an activity called completion.
Each and every incomplete thing in your life or work exerts a draining force on you, sucking the energy of accomplishment and success out of you as surely as a vampire stealing your blood. Every incomplete promise, commitment, or agreement saps your strength because it blocks your momentum and chokes off your ability to move forward, progress, or improve. Incomplete things keep calling you back to the past to take care of them.
Here’s the unfortunate and powerfully destructive truth of being incomplete: it keeps the past alive. Remember, people who live on the success curve are pulled by the future, while those who dwell on the failure curve are pulled by the past. And a surefire way to be forced to live as a prisoner of your past is not to complete things.
Take on those incompletions in your life just as you took on learning to walk. Baby steps, one at a time, letting the force of the slight edge work for you to help you complete whatever needs completing.
Take on any one of your “incomplete” projects, one at a time. And if even that one project seems like too huge a mountain to climb, rummage around its foothills until you find an initial step you can take. The biggest meal is still eaten one bite at a time.
Give fifteen minutes to completing something every day.
Use the Power of Reflection
Being productive and being busy are not necessarily the same thing. Doing things won’t create your success; doing the right things will. And if you’re doing the wrong things, doing more of them won’t increase your odds of success. It will only make you fail faster.
Whose dream did you build today — yours or somebody else’s?
In twelve-step programs this is called “taking a searching and fearless personal inventory.” I honestly encourage you to get a little searching and get fearless with yourself. Keep your progress, or the lack of it, right in your face.
Here’s a powerful exercise: Instead of writing down what you’re going to do write down at the end of the day what you did do that day. What actions did you take today that made you successful? Did you read ten pages of a good book? Did you eat healthy food and get some good exercise? Did you engage in positive associations? Did you do the things you need to do to be successful in your business? Did you tell somebody, “I appreciate you”?
At the end of a week, look back over your lists and take inventory. Not only will it tell you a lot about the truth of your everyday life, chances are good that the mere act of recording this daily reflection will have already started changing what you do.
Whatever method you choose to use, find some way to make reflection an everyday thing, day in and day out, without fail.
Use the Power of Celebration
There is another critical reason the power of reflection is so important. It’s not just to be a nag and remind you when you’re slacking off. It’s also to point out to you all the positive steps you’re taking.
It’s the slight edge power of reflection and acknowledgement — celebration.
Keep your slight edge activities, your right choices and incremental successes, right out in the open where you can see them and celebrate them. Remember that all the activity required to apply the slight edge for your success is a series of baby steps.
Trust the process. Acknowledge those steps, no matter how small or insignificant they may seem at the time.
Essential Points from Chapter Fourteen
*On the path of mastery you have four powerful allies:
1. The power of momentum: steady wins the race.
2. The power of completion: clear out your undones and incompletes.
3. The power of reflection: facing the man or woman in the mirror.
4. The power of celebration: catch yourself doing something right.
#22MinuteChallenge | Bible Project Reading Plan | Day 052 | The Wilderness | Numbers 35 – 36, Psalm 52
#22MinuteChallenge | Bible Project Reading Plan
Suggested Video
Day 052 | The Wilderness
Numbers 35 – 36, Psalm 52
Source: Bible Project Reading Plan
Adebayo Martins | #JustAThought | #iMuse | #2022 | #016 | WED.02.24.2021
Sometimes, you ask God for a product, He gives you a process.
Concerning this thing I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart from me. And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
II Corinthians 12:8-9 NKJV
He sent a man before them— Joseph—who was sold as a slave. They hurt his feet with fetters, He was laid in irons. Until the time that his word came to pass, The word of the Lord tested him.
Psalms 105:17-19 NKJV
Adebayo Martins | #JustAThought | #iMuse | #2022 | #016 | WED.02.24.2021
Sunday, February 20, 2022
#22MinuteChallenge | Bible Project Reading Plan | Day 051 | The Wilderness | Numbers 33 – 34, Psalm 51
#22MinuteChallenge | Bible Project Reading Plan
Day 051 | The Wilderness
Numbers 33 – 34, Psalm 51
Source: Bible Project Reading Plan
Saturday, February 19, 2022
#22MinuteChallenge | Bible Project Reading Plan | Day 050 | The Wilderness | Numbers 31 – 32, Psalm 50
#22MinuteChallenge | Bible Project Reading Plan
Day 050 | The Wilderness
Numbers 31 – 32, Psalm 50
Source: Bible Project Reading Plan
Friday, February 18, 2022
SUMMARY ATTEMPT | SLIGHT EDGE | JEFF OLSON | CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
MASTERING THE SLIGHT EDGE
“You must hold your head high and keep those fists down. No matter what anyone else says to you, don’t let ’em get your goat. Try fightin’ with your head for a change.”
— Atticus Finch, in To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
There is a third type of learning; it is knowledge through modeling.
All the great learning traditions say the same thing: if you want to learn how to do something well, go find someone who has already mastered that skill, and apprentice yourself.
Learning pure information is not enough, and while adding the street smarts you gain from applying that information through personal experience can take you far, even that is not enough to go all the way toward the successful achievement of your goals. You need some way to process all that information and experience and integrate it. And there is only one reliable, solid way to do that: find someone else who has already achieved mastery in the area you’re looking at, and model your behavior based on their experience.
Personal development is not something you can pursue as an armchair expert, not something you can master from the sidelines. It has to be a contact sport — one where you are in contact with others who can help you on your journey. What we’re talking about here is the power of a mentor.
It’s amazing the impact one person can have on your life, just from the influence of how they see you, and what they see in you that you may not even see in yourself.
The quickest and surest path to raising the quality of your life is to start hanging out with people who have been there and done that. If you want to be a great public speaker, spend time with great speakers. If you want to be a success in business, then find a way to spend time in the company of successful businesspeople. If it’s important to you to be a terrific parent, the best thing you can do to further that aim is to spend lots of time with men and women who have mastered parenting.
Who are your heroes? Who are you modeling yourself after?
Too often we make heroes out of people who can’t really help us, whose lives are fantasies, not genuine role models. Take a look at who your heroes are — write down a list and examine it. Ask yourself, “Can I become like them? Are these people doing the kinds of things that I aspire to do and living the kinds of lives that I aspire to live? Can they really help me become who I want to become?”
Whatever goals you aspire to, seek out people who have achieved the same or very similar goals or who are well along that path, and go camp on their doorsteps or do whatever you can to associate with them, emulate them, and let their grasp, understanding, and mastery of the subject rub off on you.
The same is true for personal development and any change we want to see in our life. It has to consist of information and a supportive environment.
The Law of Association
Perhaps you’ve heard it said that your income tends to equal the average of the incomes of your five best friends. It’s true, and the same principle applies not only to your finances but to every aspect of your life. Your relationships, financial health, attitudes, level of success in your career, and everything else about your life will tend to be very close to the average level of each of these conditions in your five closest friends and associates.
You are the combined average of the five people you associate with most — including the way you walk, talk, act, think, and dress. Your income, your accomplishments, even your values and philosophy will reflect them.
Become acutely aware of who you are modeling. This has everything to do with your philosophy and your attitudes, which have more to do with your actions and what you’re creating in your life than any other factor.
You know why birds of a feather flock together? Because they’re all heading in the same direction. Look at the people with whom you flock, the company you keep: what destination are they headed for? And is that where you want to be headed?
Look at the people around you:
Are they more successful than you are?
Are they people who live the kinds of lives you aspire to live, or the kinds of lives you hope to leave behind?
On what side of the slight edge are they living — on the success curve or the failure curve?
Is the slight edge working for them or against them?
Where will they be in twenty years?
Are they pulling you up or dragging you down?
This is a pass or fail test; there is no maybe about it. Remember, there is no standing still. Everything curves. We’re all going in one of two directions, either up or down. Your association with each person you know is either empowering you, or it’s not — taking you up the success curve or down the failure curve.
If your relationship with someone has a theme of blame and feeds on the past, it’s disempowering. If it has a theme of responsibility, self-reflection, and change and feels like something moving into the future, it’s empowering.
Longevity experts are now telling us that keeping a positive outlook is just as critical a factor to health and long life as diet and exercise! You can’t afford to have people around you who are consistently acting as a drag on your positive outlook.
That may not sound like the most compassionate philosophy in the world, but let me tell you, there’s nothing compassionate about letting yourself get sucked into a vortex of negativity. The best thing I can do to serve the world around me is to keep myself in a state where I can best contribute — and I can’t do that if I’m being dragged down by an environment of cynicism and self-pitying complaint. I want to spend my time with people who have an infectiously positive attitude, who bring energy and vitality to the table, and who brighten the room.
There may be some people with whom you’re now spending two days a week where you might decide you need to take that down to two hours. There may also be people with whom you’re spending only two minutes, where you’ll realize you need to spend far more time with them — two hours or two days. And you will find times when what you really need to do is simply disassociate yourself from someone. That’s a part of the Law of Association, too.
Casual relationships deserve casual time — not quality time. There are people with whom you can spend two minutes, but not two hours. There are people with whom you can spend two hours, but not two days.
Having compassion and having direction are not mutually exclusive; they just take careful thought and discernment. You’re not judging those people; you’re simply asking yourself to be honest about whether or not those relationships are empowering you and helping to support your purpose and realize your dreams.
“No two minds ever come together without thereby creating a third, invisible, intangible force, which may be likened to a third mind,”
- Napoleon Hill.
A group of like-minded, achievement-oriented individuals, he explained, could come together to create an association far greater than the sum of its parts, thus dramatically leveraging each other’s success.
Applying Hill’s principle is simple: surround yourself with people of like mind and different talents and temperaments with the purpose of serving the goals of every member of the group. Associate with these people on a regular basis.
Apply the Law of Association. Create your own mastermind, a group of those who have chosen to live among the 5 percent, and let them support you, let them be the lift beneath the wings of your dreams.
Leadership is not something you do; it is something that grows organically out of the natural rhythm of learning. When you start at the beginning of anything, you’re at the highest level of anxiety. As you learn — through study and doing, information and experience, book smarts and street smarts — you gradually lower your level of anxiety by raising your level of mastery. As you continue climbing that ladder of knowledge, you keep your eyes on worthy mentors, always using learning through modeling as your learning gyroscope to keep you on track.
Using those three dimensions of learning — study, do, model — with slight edge persistence, in time your level of mastery rises to the point where you turn around and realize others are modeling you. You have yourself become worthy of emulating, of serving as a guide and hero to others. You have grown into leadership — and now you’re the mentor.
Essential Points from Chapter Thirteen
* If you want to learn how to do something well, find someone who has mastered that skill and apprentice yourself.
* Choose your heroes carefully: are they genuine role models you want to emulate?
* Choose your associates: everything about your life will closely reflect the lives of your five closest friends.
* Sometimes you need to let go and disassociate.
* Form and use a mastermind: two minds are better than one, and five are even better.
#22MinuteChallenge | Bible Project Reading Plan | Day 049 | The Wilderness | Numbers 28 – 30, Psalm 49
#22MinuteChallenge | Bible Project Reading Plan
Day 049 | The Wilderness
Numbers 28 – 30, Psalm 49
Source: Bible Project Reading Plan
Adebayo Martins | #JustAThought | #iMuse | #2022 | #015 | THU.09.05.2019
You can’t lock people in your heart and expect to be free.
“And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him, that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses.
Mark 11:25 NKJV
And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.
Ephesians 4:32 NKJV
Adebayo Martins | #JustAThought | #iMuse | #2022 | #015 | THU.09.05.2019
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