Think of yourself as dead.

You may think this is weird advice, but it’s not coming from me. It actually comes from Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius.

In his book “Meditations,” Aurelius says,

“Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now take what’s left and live it properly.”

I like this idea a lot. So much so that I’m convinced that if you apply it, it will completely change your life.

Why? Because oftentimes we give too much of our time and attention to the things that don’t matter. As a result, we completely ignore the things that do.

And we do this because we think we’re going to live forever.

We never stop to think that we’re going to die one day. When in fact, we could die tomorrow.

At any moment, you could get hit by a car, choke on your food, or trip on a step and hit your head.

Because of this, you need to stop focusing on all the little things that bother you and start making the best use of your time.

This doesn’t mean you should sell everything you own and gamble all the money away at the casino.

This isn’t the best use of your time.

Instead, the best use of your time is working on being a good person, doing your best, constantly improving yourself, and living a life of reason and virtue.

Imagine you died last night and you have now been given a second chance. Then make two lists:

1) What are the most important things in your life?

2) What do you actually spend your time with?

Compare the lists and choose one thing you’ll work on being better at in the next few days.
Doing this will help you focus on what’s truly important so that you don’t waste time on what’s not.

Thanks for your Wisdom Vincent Carlos

Whether or not you realize it turns out that talking to yourself is actually a quality of highly successful people.

In the book “Think and Grow Rich,” Napoleon Hill, who spent 25 years studying the qualities of highly successful people, talks about how having faith in yourself is one of the most powerful of all the major positive emotions a person can develop.

But, the question is, how do you develop faith if you don’t yet have it?

Well, it’s simple. You develop faith through self talk by using affirmations.

Hill says, “Repetition of affirmations to your subconscious mind is the only known method of voluntary development of the emotion of faith.”

Hill goes on to say, “It is a well-known fact that one comes to believe whatever one repeats to one’s self, whether the statement be true or false.”

This is why repeating affirmations to yourself are one of the most effective tools for quickly becoming the person you need to be to achieve everything you want in your life.

It’s no coincidence that successful individuals like Will Smith, Jim Carrey, Suze Orman, Muhammad Ali, Tony Robbins, Oprah Winfrey, and many more, have all used affirmations as a tool to help them on their journey to success.

Remember, we believe what we tell ourselves. So, if you don’t consciously design your daily affirmations to be more positive, then you will fail to develop the mindset that you need to take any area of your life to the next level.

How you talk to yourself on a daily basis will have a dramatic influence on your level of success in every area of your life, whether it’s happiness, health, finance, love, confidence, etc.

Thanks for your Wisdom Vincent Carlos

For most people, gratitude is often only expressed after experiencing a momentous occasion, such as receiving a promotion at work or getting married to the love of your life.

But gratitude doesn’t need to be reserved only for momentous occasions. You can also be thankful for something as simple as a delicious piece of pie.

And, fortunately for us, this feeling of gratitude can do a lot for you.

In the book “Thanks!: How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier,”  psychologist Robert Emmons shows that people who regularly practice gratitude by taking time out of their day to notice and reflect upon the things they’re thankful for have scientifically been proven to experience a nearly endless list of benefits and advantages.

According to many studies, practicing gratitude has been shown to improve your physical health, develop a stronger immune system, reduce symptoms of depression, increase one’s well-being and happiness, enhance empathy, improve quality of sleep, enhance self-esteem, increase mental strength, and help you experience more positive emotions such as joy in your life. (and improve your business as well! Sara Ohara).

So, the question we should all be asking ourselves is, how can we practice gratitude so that we can experience all these benefits as well?

Well, there are nearly infinite ways to show our gratitude, but one of the most popular and proven gratitude exercise available is journaling.

Journaling is probably the easiest gratitude exercise available because it’s the most simple. All it requires is a pen and paper.

Here’s how it works: Every morning, think back on the day before, and try to write down 3 things you were especially grateful for that day.

It can be something as little as a cup of coffee at your favorite coffee shop, or as grand as the love of your significant other.

But keep in mind as you’re doing this exercise that the best way to reap the benefits of gratitude is to notice new and fresh things that you’re grateful for every day.

While you might always be thankful for your great family, just writing “I’m grateful for my family” day after day doesn’t keep your brain on alert for fresh grateful moments.

Get specific by writing “Today my significant other gave me a shoulder massage because she knew I was really stressed” or “My sister invited me over for dinner so I didn’t have to cook after a long day.”

By doing this, you’ll start to train your mind to focus less on the bad things that happened in your day and more on all the good things that happened to you.

This will start to slowly change the way you perceive situations by adjusting what you focus on a daily basis.

So, try it out. Do this exercise every day. Over time, you will start to see the profound effects gratitude will have on your well-being and your outlook on life.

Thanks for your Wisdom Vincent Carlos

That’s a lot of stuff!

Unfortunately, having so much stuff doesn’t improve our quality of life. In fact, for most people, having too much stuff actually makes them feel more anxious, more disorganized, and more overwhelmed.

So if that’s you, then maybe it’s time you tidy up.

But where should you start?

In the bestselling book “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up” author and Japanese organizer Marie Kondo recommends you take a random item, hold it in your hands, and ask yourself one simple but powerful question:

“Does it spark joy?”

For example, that ugly t-shirt you’ve owned since you were in high school might make you feel lazy when you hold it. If so, you should probably get rid of it.

On the other hand, that book you read 2 years ago that completely changed your life might excite you when you hold it. If so, you should definitely keep it.

The method is simple, but it works.

So try it out today! Get rid of something that doesn’t spark any joy in your life.

By doing this, you’ll be creating an environment that adds to your physical and mental well-being as opposed to living in an environment that takes away from it.

Thanks for your Wisdom Vincent Carlos

We’ve all been there.

Someone makes a critical remark towards us and we just feel mentally defeated as a result of it.

Criticism, whether online or in-person, can ruin our entire day.

But here’s the thing: criticism can only ruin your day if you let it.

In the book “A Guide To The Good Life,” William Irvine shares 3 strategies for effectively handling criticism:

The first strategy Irvine suggests is to pause and ask yourself whether what’s been said is true.

If it’s false, then there’s no reason to worry about it. If it’s true, then why does it bother you?

As Seneca asks,

“Why is it an insult to be told what is self-evident?”

The second strategy Irvine suggests is to ask yourself who insulted you?

If it’s someone you respect, then you probably value their opinion and should accept it as something you can actually improve on, right?

If you don’t respect the person who said it, then why bother with it?

And the third strategy Irvine suggests is to remember that happy and wise people don’t insult others.

Therefore, if a person insults you, you can be certain that this person has an immature character.

Remember, you can only be insulted if you let it happen. If you don’t care about what other people say, then you won’t feel insulted.

I love what Marcus Aurelius says in his book “Meditations”:

“It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own.”

Take this advice to heart and don’t take other people’s opinions about you too seriously.

Thanks for your Wisdom Vincent Carlos

Every single day we make hundreds of decisions: Should I hit the snooze button or not? What time should I leave for school/work? Should I exercise today? And if so, what time? What should I eat for dinner? Should I work more hours today or go home? Etc.

There are hundreds of things, if not more, that have to be decided on daily. Some decisions are important, but most are trivial. Unfortunately, studies have shown that as humans, our capacity to consistently make well thought out decisions is finite.

What this means is that when you use your brainpower earlier in the day deciding what to eat for breakfast, you’ll consequently have less of it later in the day when you have to decide if you should have that piece of cake or not. This is what’s known as decision fatigue, which is the psychological condition where making a decision in the present will reduce your decision-making ability in the future.

John Tierney, the coauthor of the New York Times bestselling book “Willpower,” says,

“Decision fatigue helps explain why ordinarily sensible people get angry at colleagues and families, splurge on clothes, buy junk food at the supermarket and can’t resist the dealer’s offer to rustproof their new car. No matter how rational and high-minded you try to be, you can’t make decision after decision without paying a biological price. It’s different from ordinary physical fatigue – you’re not consciously aware of being tired – but you’re low on mental energy.”

Simply put, every decision you make uses up your mental energy. Just the simple act of thinking about whether you should choose A or B will tire you out and reduce your brainpower. This means that the more decisions you have to make throughout the day, the weaker your decision-making process will become.

This is why many successful individuals like Barack Obama, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and Albert Einstein decided to reduce the number of decisions they make throughout the day by doing things such as choosing to adopt a monotonous wardrobe.

They understood that less time spent on making decisions meant more brainpower and time for everything else.

For the majority of the time Obama spent in office, he always wore either a gray or blue suit. In an article by Michael Lewis for Vanity Fair, President Obama explained why he did this,

“You’ll see I wear only gray or blue suits. I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make. You need to focus your decision-making energy. You need to routinize yourself. You can’t be going through the day distracted by trivia.”

Steve Jobs famously wore the same black turtleneck, blue jeans and New Balance sneakers every day. This quickly became his signature look as well as a part of the overall brand of Apple. Steve also understood that he had a finite capacity of brainpower to make well thought out decisions. A minute more a day using his brainpower to decide which T-shirt to wear is less brainpower he would have to think about his company.

Albert Einstein was also known for owning several variations of the same gray suit so that he wouldn’t have to waste time and brainpower deciding on which outfit to wear every morning.

If you’re constantly worrying every day about little decisions like what to wear, you’ll become more mentally exhausted as the day progresses. In order to save your mental power for the important decisions of the day, you have to learn to automate the mundane decisions you go through every day so that you don’t have to constantly think about them and waste brainpower.

Here are some things you can do:

1. Like Steve, Zuckerberg, and Einstein find a few t-shirts, sweaters, jeans, and dresses you like and buy multiple quantities of them. Then essentially wear the same thing every day.
2. Schedule a set time to exercise every day. Don’t constantly use your brainpower trying to think about when is a good time to exercise.
3. Do your grocery shopping at the same time once a week.
4. Design a morning routine. The morning is filled with a lot of mundane decisions that you can learn to automate such as what to wear, what to eat, what time to leave, what time to wake up, etc. You can automate all your morning decisions with a routine.
5. Make a few meals that you have every day the same. This can be a great dieting tool, but the main idea is you don’t want to be worrying about what to make, which ingredients to use and what the nutritional value of each meal is throughout the day, every day.

These are just 5 of the hundreds of decisions that you make throughout the day that you can learn to automate. But truthfully, you could probably automate and eliminate about 80% of the decisions you make every day. You just have to be aware of this concept and learn to notice which decisions aren’t high-quality important decisions and then delegate those.

Thanks for your Wisdom Vincent Carlos

This is a question that Tim Ferriss asked successful entrepreneur Derek Sivers in his book “Tools of Titans.”

What did Sivers say? He said, “Don’t be a donkey.”

This is one of the best pieces of advice from this book, but what does that mean?

Sivers explains that this advice is based on the fable about Buridan’s Donkey, which is a story about a donkey who is equally hungry and thirsty.

And in this story, there’s a stack of hay a few feet away from the donkey on one side and a pail of water a few feet away on the other side.

But because the hay and water are equally as far, the donkey can’t decide whether he should eat the hay first or drink the water first

As a result, the donkey eventually falls over and dies from both hunger and thirst.

Sivers says, “A donkey can’t think of the future. If he did, he’d realize he could clearly go first to drink the water, then go eat the hay. So, my advice to my 30 year old self is, don’t be a donkey. You can do everything you want to do. You just need foresight and patience.”

In other words, you can do almost everything you want in life.

The only thing, however, is you can’t do it all at the same time.

So, if you have 10 things you want to accomplish over the next 10 years, you can achieve those 10 things if you simply dedicate yourself to one thing for a year. And then dedicate yourself to the next thing for another year. And so on.

But if you try to do all 10 things at once, you’re going to be Buridan’s Donkey.

Don’t be a donkey.

Thanks for your Wisdom Vincent Carlos