A Personal Bible is a collection of your favorite wisdom, notes, and passages that you can – like the Bible – read and re-read and absorb and memorize and integrate wholly into your life. Over the years my own collection has grown to include poems, book notes, article excerpts, and even a Bible passage. I formalized the document last year and try to update it monthly and read from it nightly. It’s one of my daily habits but not one that I actively track.
Below are additions I’ve made in 2017. You can download my latest version here. Feel free to read or edit or fork your own!
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War of Art by Steven Pressfield [Kindle]
- Resistance will unfailingly point to true North — meaning that calling or action it most wants to stop us from doing. We can use this. We can use it as a compass. We can navigate by Resistance, letting it guide us to that calling or action that we must follow before all others. Rule of thumb: The more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.
- The warrior and the artist live by the same code of necessity, which dictates that the battle must be fought anew every day.
- The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it. Resistance is experienced as fear; the degree of fear equates to the strength of Resistance.
- The conventional interpretation is that the amateur pursues his calling out of love, while the pro does it for money. Not the way I see it. In my view, the amateur does not love the game enough. If he did, he would not pursue it as a sideline, distinct from his “real” vocation.
- The professional dedicates himself to mastering technique not because he believes technique is a substitute for inspiration but because he wants to be in possession of the full arsenal of skills when inspiration does come.
- The ancient Spartans schooled themselves to regard the enemy, any enemy, as nameless and faceless. In other words, they believed that if they did their work, no force on earth could stand against them.
- When Arnold Schwarzenegger hits the gym, he’s on his own turf. But what made it his own are the hours and years of sweat he put in to claim it. A territory doesn’t give, it gives back.
The 4 Agreements by Miguel Ruiz [Kindle]
- Be impeccable with your word
- Don’t take anything personally
- Don’t make assumptions
- Always do your best
Tim Ferriss [source]
- What’s the least crowded channel?
- What if I could only subtract to solve problems?
- Am I hunting antelope or field mice?
- What would this look like if it were easy?
- One former Navy SEAL friend recently texted me a principle used in their training: “Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.”