7 Inspirational Life Lessons We Can All Learn From Oliver James (The Man Who Struggles with Reading)

Introducing Oliver James

Oliver James is a TikTok (and #BookTok) sensation, motivational speaker, and personal trainer.

In his TikTok videos, Oliver often introduces himself by saying “I’m a 34-year-old man who struggles with reading.” However, it wasn’t long ago that he would say “I can’t read.”

He opens up about many deep struggles he has gone through with learning to read and his mental health. His story has been so inspiring that he ended up being featured on ABC’s Good Morning America, the Rachael Ray Show, NPR, and other major outlets.

The way I came to learn about Oliver may surprise you — after all, it surprised me. Oliver’s partner gave him a book that I compiled, titled 365 Quotes to Live Your Life By. It was the first book he ever owned, which was the beginning of his journey of learning to read better.

Oliver James, Tiktok sensation, motivational speaker, and personal trainer holding up "365 Quotes to Live Your Life By".

Often, he would read one or two quotes from the book while doing a workout session. Since the quotes are short, he did not need to spend too much time on them. Importantly, with this book, he had no excuse to avoid reading. There are at least 10 videos where he reads from the 365 Quotes book while he does a workout or after he reflects on his challenges with learning to read.

As 365 Quotes to Live Your Life By inspired Oliver, I was also inspired the more I learned about his story, and the more I realized how much of an effect a single book could have on someone.

As I browsed his videos, I was amazed at who this person is and what he has accomplished, and the shining path that he is illuminating in front of him. I’ve seen most of his videos at this point, and they are truly inspiring.

Oliver James has a greater depth of wisdom and understanding in him that is perhaps not apparent at first glance.

It’s easy to assume in this life that we know better than someone else because we have more education, financial resources, a better social network, status, or whatever it may be. But I will continue to tune in to see what Oliver is doing because I know that this is just the beginning. And I know that I and many others can learn from his struggle, experience, and the insights he shares.

Below are 7 Inspirational life lessons we can all learn from Oliver James, the man who struggles with reading (and who used to say “I can’t read”). To be clear, some of this post involves information I learned from his TikTok videos (@oliverspeaks1), including his words, and some of this is my elaboration or further thoughts on what he has said or done.

1) Start somewhere – Take the initiative.

A theme I’ve noticed in my own life, and the lives of many people lately is that just starting anything seems incredibly challenging. It’s common to build something up in our heads as being more difficult than it has to be. Then we may find ourselves thinking about starting, or talking about starting, but not actually doing it.

However, thinking about something without acting on it can be futile. If you want to help someone, go out and help them. If you want to make a change to better your life, then take a step toward that. Whatever it is you want to do, make sure you are taking action. A thought, even if it is positive, hopeful, or useful, can only take you so far when it comes to improving yourself.

The question is: What gives us that spark, that drive, or initiative? In Oliver’s case, he realized something. He saw that he would not be the best model for his kids if he could not read. Why would Oliver expect his son to be a great reader and achieve his dreams if he didn’t focus on this himself?

Ultimately, he saw that his life was not going in the right direction and all the difficulties that he was going to continue to have if he could not read. Oliver understood the pain that not knowing how to read well was causing him and the people around him, and he wanted to change that.

This type of realization can be a key motivator for any of us. When we see the pain we are causing and perpetuating, it is natural to want to stop this and embark on a new and better path. This is when you become empowered, find the courage within, and take action toward your goals.

Whatever it is that provides that spark in us, we need to tune into that if we ever expect to take major actions in our lives that lead to improvement.

What is so important in your life that you can’t afford to turn away from it any longer? Like Oliver, we have to see that for what it is and get started somewhere.

2) Work on your goals in your way.

Oliver’s goal for 2023 is to read 100 books. That would be quite an impressive feat, wouldn’t it?

Well, in one of his videos, Oliver discusses how some people don’t think he will be able to read 100 books in a year. Many people who read regularly, after all, still do not read 100 books in a year. And he is still learning and struggling. But Oliver knows that the goals other people set for themselves do not matter, or whatever opinion they may have about his goals also do not matter.

This is his personal goal that he has set for his reasons, and he will attempt to achieve this in a way that works for him. It may involve reading children’s books, or simpler books, as he isn’t trying to fulfill this goal in any way other than what works for him.

Oliver says, “If you set a goal, and you’re doing it at your pace, and you’re doing it for you, that’s all that matters.”

Often, we work on goals that someone else set out for us, in the way that they want us to work on them. This means we work on them in ways that don’t necessarily make us happy or that don’t allow us to function at our highest potential. Rather, we should listen to Oliver and tackle our goals in our way, for our own reasons.

Keep in mind that if Oliver was concerned with learning to read how other people say he should, perhaps he never would have gotten started. Conventional wisdom may say that you should start with a tutor, with a class, or with a particular kind of software or system meant for learning to read. But it seems Oliver decided that the most important thing was to get started and to read in the way that appealed to him and where he was able to get something done.

His partner gave him 365 Quotes to Live Your Life By, and he decided he would take it on his workouts, drives, and wherever he was going, and he would read a quote or two when he had the chance. Many people may say that this isn’t the right way. But it doesn’t matter, as long as Oliver is reading in the way that works for him.

To summarize, Oliver realized that to change his life, and keep himself from feeling stuck, he would need to learn to read. That motivated him to take the initiative. Then he worked on his goals his way, as he understood that this was the only way he would ever learn to read. What works for other people won’t necessarily work for him, so he didn’t concern himself with that.

When you have an important life goal, ask if you are approaching this in the best way that works for you, or if you have allowed too many people to tell you how you should be approaching this. Then, is their input helping, or is it just holding you back?

If their input is holding you back, consider Oliver’s next tip.

3) Don’t listen to the people who focus on the negative. Don’t let them restrict your potential.

One of Oliver’s TikTok videos shows a young woman who makes extremely negative and hurtful remarks when someone asks if she would date someone who could not read.

He responds to her hurtful words, as he wants his audience to learn a lesson here: “People’s words, they don’t mean nothing. Don’t let nobody label you. You are as smart as you think you are. Don’t worry about what anybody else says.”

As I already mentioned, when you have a goal, some people may criticize that the goal isn’t the right one, or that it is unrealistic. When people find out that you are not skilled at something, they may attack your intellect, ability, or motivation. Of course, regardless of what we choose to do in this life, there will be critics.

Constructive criticism can be useful and help us to make progress, but when someone is negative and hurtful without any purpose behind it, that is something that we have no reason to allow into our lives.

I am grateful to hear that Oliver does not allow the negativity to distract him from his purpose. He knows he wants to learn to read better, that he must get better at reading to improve his life, and that there is no reason to allow some negative comments to derail his plans. His plans are bigger than that.

Oliver took the initiative of getting started to read, and he focused on learning in his way, but he must also push through any negativity that others use to try to make themselves feel superior, or to doubt his potential, even if it may be well-intentioned in some cases.

We must retain our power of being able to clear the mind, stay focused, and know that we are capable of getting to where we need or want to be. Don’t allow the negativity to steer you off course, or to limit what you are truly capable of.

Redirect your focus onto the larger goal here, whatever that is in your life.

4) Pursue something that challenges you, and stop avoiding it.

One of my favorite things that Oliver says is “What hard and challenging thing are you doing for you that might make you a better you?”

Most of us know that challenge is a part of life, and it doesn’t help you to always seek comfort. You get tougher, stronger, and better by pursuing challenges. But the reason these words were so special is the person who says them.

Oliver was placed in special education as a child and treated abusively. He served over three years of his life in prison because through a lack of knowledge, he didn’t realize that trafficking weapons was a crime. He suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. He spent most of his life being functionally illiterate. In his own words, reading saved his life.

Perhaps it is cliché to say, but this is a person who seems like he would be a statistic, a cautionary tale. Rather, he has transformed his experiences into an inspiration for the world, and more importantly, he is learning to read so that he can be a better person, and hopefully make progress on his issues and ultimately accomplish his dreams.

When a person with such life experiences speaks to you, even if through a TikTok video, the words shine in a truly meaningful way. He isn’t coming from a place of judgment. Rather, it’s just an honest assessment — if Oliver James is pushing himself to learn to read, then we can all do something that challenges us every day.

Some of his personal challenges include mental health issues, a learning disability, and of course, not knowing how to read well. There is an even more fundamental issue in his life that interfered with his ability to learn to read, but we will discuss that in our next point.

Despite all the challenges he faces every day, he urges his audience to pursue a challenge in their lives and to seek to become better.

Oliver went most of his life avoiding reading, and as soon as he decided to face the challenge head-on, to always keep a book on him, and to stop making excuses, his life began to change. This is the second part of this lesson.

We must stop avoiding that challenging part of our lives that we don’t want to deal with.

This is the part where you may ask – How can I get the courage? Where can I start? Who can help? All of these types of questions are the exact reason it is a challenge. There is no simple road map to show you the way. Don’t you think Oliver went 34 years of his life wondering the same thing? Don’t you think he stopped and wondered who was going to come and help him? In one of his videos, he discusses realizing that no one was coming to save him. He was going to have to do it himself.

In time, he has gained so much support and fans, but it began with him choosing to work on his goals for himself. He stopped trying to avoid and escape the challenge, and instead decided to pursue it. No one else could do that for him.

We should all be willing to dive deep into a challenge in our lives. The deeper we dive in, the more we can grow.

5) Be open, sincere, and honest

In one video, Oliver says “I want to be as real and honest as I can so I can develop into a better person.”

Being honest and truthful has been fundamental in Oliver’s ability to make progress on his reading journey. To make progress at anything, you have to be real with what the situation is. In this case, Oliver was functionally illiterate. He could read some words, and understand things in a very basic way, but up until recently, he didn’t even feel capable of reading a menu in a restaurant.

He has been asked why he didn’t learn to read when he was younger, and his response was surprising, yet honest. He was physically abused when he was in the special education system as a child. The system was more interested in controlling and restraining him than they were in educating him. That abuse made it so Oliver didn’t have the energy to focus on learning to read, or on learning anything for that matter. Instead, he thought of ways he could get expelled so that he didn’t need to be there at all.

As they say, “the truth hurts,” but Oliver was willing to discuss this uncomfortable reality with his audience, because he understands that this is the path to progress. He is not running away from reality. It’s better to be honest with himself and the world.

Many people are interested in Oliver’s journey, as he has over 129,000 followers as I write this. And I believe people are attracted to someone open and sincere about who he is, who he was, and where he wants to go in life. The truth of Oliver’s situation is not all pleasant, but the fact that he is open and honest will help him to find the path to improvement. Likely, his honesty makes his followers want to help him as well

But if we hide from our problems, our insecurities, and our struggles, then we will not grow. If your energy and attention go to covering up your issues rather than shining a light on them and doing something about it, how can you expect to make progress?

Some people want to pretend that they are doing well — that everything in their life is perfect — but if we do that, then at some point our energy goes to maintaining the illusion that things are going well, rather than making improvements in our lives that we need to make. Again, if your focus is on appearing to be doing well, then when are you going to find the time to make real improvements?

Like Oliver, we must learn to be open and truthful about the struggles we are going through, and the problems of our lives. We must have the courage to face the reality of who we are, where we’ve been, and the problems of our lives. That is the only way to make progress.

If you do not want to share your struggles and problems with the world, that is fine. But at least dare to be sincere and truthful with yourself. Stop hiding from it.

6) Love yourself (You have to love yourself)

Oliver says that one of the greatest lessons he learned through his reading journey was that “I have to love myself.”

As many of us do, he likely struggled to love himself because he found it difficult to accept some less favorable aspects of himself or his life. As long as we want to escape who we are, it is difficult to truly love ourselves. It seems that self-love comes from learning self-acceptance. We may work to learn and grow in certain ways, such as becoming a better reader or learning a skill, but it’s also important to see that there is no need to become something that we are not. The core of who we are is fine, and is someone we must love, and is always worthy of love.

Fortunately, Oliver understands that he needs to love himself, and he needs to work on that. He knows that nothing good comes from being too hard on himself.

I hope you understand: We all need to be kind, understanding and accepting of ourselves. A key reason we have to learn to love ourselves is that it’s very difficult to love anyone else if you can’t even love yourself. We must be mindful of the type of energy we are putting into ourselves because that is the same thing we put out into the world.

Yet, even if the world around us seems especially difficult, troubling, or hurtful, we must find a way to love. Remember that we are good inside, we are worthy, beautiful, and with tremendous potential. Perhaps it is difficult to find love for ourselves at times, but we need to work on it. Strive to see yourself in a better light each day. Practice being understanding and forgiving with yourself.

In life, we often crave for someone to love us, to see us as beautiful, smart, or worthy somehow. But the key is to start to see this for yourself. Why wait for someone else to see it when you can work on this yourself? When you see it, your love grows.

I am aware that many, or perhaps most of us go through self-doubt, we think harshly of ourselves in our minds, or we find it hard to let go of mistakes that we made. And part of this is just being human. It’s not easy to completely let go of all negativity, and we can’t expect to accomplish that either. Nonetheless, we must find our way back to Love.

Love is the foundation.

When on the path to bettering yourself, as Oliver is, you have to return to love, because it’s all too easy to be hard on yourself. You try something challenging, and it may not go the way you hoped. Rather than get into self-doubt or self-hatred or excessive negativity, allow the love to flow through you.

7) “Be happy even when you don’t want to be.”

This last life lesson is a tip that Oliver James gave to his son. He appears to be giving parenting advice, but I believe this is advice that we all need to hear. If anything, the adults need to hear this more than the children.

Oliver says, “One of the keys to staying young and feeling happy is to be happy even when you don’t want to be. When you feel frustrated, when you don’t feel good, you don’t feel happy with the decision that you have to make… try your best inside to still be happy.”

My way of thinking of his advice is that this is how happiness is created in the world. If you are only happy when the situation is good, then that is expected. It is easy — no energy or effort has been required from you. However….

If you can be happy or strive to see the good in situations that are not the best, then you are creating happiness in your own life. You are making it happen.

Many of us may have a difficult time understanding this advice, and that is because to get to the point of striving to be happy even when you don’t feel it, you must understand that happiness or your state of mind is not always occurring due to outside events. We have some control over our thoughts, and with that, we also influence our emotions.

Don’t wait for happiness to come to you. Make it happen.

If you are on your way to work, and someone rear-ends your vehicle and they cause some damage, then you have the choice as to how you think about this.

Most people may get upset and believe that someone distracted on their phone probably hit them, and then the insurance isn’t going to cover this because it’s not that much damage anyway, but it’s still going to be expensive, and they’re going to be late for work, and the boss isn’t going to be happy, and so forth.

But if you practice striving to be happy even when the circumstances are not the best, you can get to the point where you may react differently.

You may react with concern for the other driver, and make sure that everyone is okay. You may realize that as long as everyone is okay, that is what is important here. You can always find a way to pay for any damage that you need to, or you can simply continue to drive the vehicle even with the damage, and life will go on. You can also decide that even if you are late for work and the boss doesn’t understand that you have a reason for it, then perhaps it was time to find a better boss and job anyhow.

How do you think these different ways of thinking and reacting will influence your emotions and your happiness? Don’t take my word for it. See if you can change the way you think about negative events in your life. Then see how that influences your happiness or your emotions and well-being.

The trick is to practice being happy even when the situation seems to be an unhappy one. Practice this, then when someone rear-ends your car one day, you will find a way to be happy through it.

Think about it — so many of us want happiness in this life, but what are we doing to actually work on it? Are we putting in the effort to be happy even when there is a mild inconvenience? If the slightest problem is enough to make you feel unhappy, sad, or moody, then this is something worth working on.

I won’t ask you to pretend to be happy, as that is not what this piece of advice is about. It’s about making an inner effort to see that most things in life are not worth feeling unhappy about. You have so much going for you in this life that you just need to open your eyes to it and see it and be grateful for it. Be happy with what is — don’t allow yourself to become unhappy because something didn’t go the way you wanted.

Oliver James was functionally illiterate for 34 years of his life. He doesn’t allow that fact to make him an unhappy and bitter person. He is working on changing things and improving every day. That is all he can do. We can’t expect any more than that.

This month, or likely this year, I will be working on putting all of these bits of advice into practice in my life. I hope that you do this too.

If Oliver is doing it, why can’t you? What is stopping you? As I said in my prior post, every moment presents a choice. What choices are you making?

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I didn’t want to crowd the post above with too many links. Below are some resources you may wish to check out:

Oliver James’ TikTok channel - A TikTok account is NOT required

365 Quotes to Live Your Life By - Oliver began his reading journey with this book

Good Morning America (ABC) - Oliver James shares his story with the world

Oliver James’ video - this is one of my favorite motivational clips

Oliver James’ video - this is one of my favorite clips that includes 365 Quotes to Live Your Life By

Real Learning Comes Through Transformation

“Learning—real learning, wisdom—comes only when you are transformed. It is not an additive process—you cannot just go on adding knowledge to yourself. You will have to go through a transmutation that is hard.” – The Buddha Said… by Osho

I am only on the fifth chapter (out of 22) of The Buddha Said… and already I can see that this book carries great wisdom. It will be worth reading carefully, applying, and rereading, and reapplying. That is what I plan to do. The knowledge in this book could take time and effort to master, as it seems to guide us toward enlightenment.

The passage quoted above was insightful to me, yet it may appear quite obvious on its surface. I have found that most worthy wisdom is just that. It seems obvious and straightforward and often even easy to apply, yet very few of us do.

For example, I can tell you that getting impatient is bad. The next time someone is irritating you or provoking you, ignore it. Let it be. Take a breath and pay attention to something worthwhile in life.

Yet, for someone with the habit of impatience, will they listen and change?

Or I can tell you that to be lazy is bad. Do not waste this life. Go out and have the courage to find something that truly matters to you and that will make a difference in this world. Stop doing the bare minimum to get by and increase the standard you expect from yourself.

Yet, for someone with the habit of laziness, will they listen and change?

Or I can tell you that to be vengeful is bad. Stop wishing to get payback on all those that commit wrongs against you. In some cases, they are poisoned from having been wronged, making them want to wrong others. And in other cases, they don’t know the wrongs they commit and do so through a lack of awareness. Lastly, as we have all heard, “An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind,” so is this something we want to give energy to?

Yet, for someone with the habit of vengeance, will they listen and change?

As you may guess, I find it unlikely that the person with a habit of something will suddenly change their life from being exposed to mere words.

Despite that I work as a writer and earn my living this way, it is painful to admit that the words themselves are empty if they don’t cause personal transformation. The learning, the knowledge, the wisdom, the teachings—all of it is empty, useless, and fruitless if we do not change from within.

Yet I have seen, as you have seen, that most of us know the right things to do, to be, to say, and yet fail to do them. Perhaps we need to come to the awareness more deeply that the only worthwhile learning was not in the accumulation of knowledge, facts, or even the pursuit of higher understanding.

Rather, the only worthwhile learning was in whether we could become aware, change who we are, and perform new and better actions. Awareness is not enough—to be aware is to see that something is happening. But to see it and do nothing seems to be a massive failure, worse than not having seen it at all.

If you see a wall and walk into it, isn’t that somehow worse than someone who never saw the wall and walked into it accidentally?

We must become aware, change who we are, and perform new and better actions.

The point is to do something with all the accumulation of knowledge and facts. Otherwise, the learning was useless. This is not something we hear often.

I am a big believer in education and learning. But what we often forget is that as humans, what we learn should be causing some change within us. And that change within us should cause some change in the real world.

In a similar vein, Mahatma Gandhi said:

“If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him.”

If I read the tragic history of a people, and then I live my life normally, without my heart having grown, giving to charity, or learning more about their present-day struggles, then what have I truly learned?

If I “learn” by acquiring facts, and change nothing, then isn’t that a personal failing?

Yet, the point of this post is not to make us all feel guilty for anything we ever learned, where we failed to convert it into some positive action. The point is to see that we need to be brave and encourage these personal changes to happen.

I have seen many highly educated people increase their learning and awareness while failing to grow at all. I’ve been guilty of this too.

How much time do we spend reading the news versus actually doing something about the world's tragedies?

How much time do we spend educating our children about “the real world” while denying them the ability actually to participate in it?

And how much do we consume books or media while not producing something worthy in return?

Having written this post up to here, I believe you probably already knew everything I just stated. So if we already knew, why haven’t we committed to acquiring more helpful ideas and performing more actions that could help us change more profoundly?

The reason is that we fear change. Even for those who want progress, it still can feel scary or overwhelming to make a significant change.

But we don’t need to make massive changes in every area of our lives, suddenly.

We can decide on certain things that we find to be important and then invest ourselves into them.

I use the word invest because when you invest, you risk losing something. Your risk may be that you hope to help improve something, and in the end, you don’t make much of an impact. Then you may be let down or upset. But of course, we have to be willing to risk losing something to make our impact.

The outcomes we desire are never guaranteed. There is always a risk. We need to choose which risks are worth taking, where we can hope to gain a worthy experience that transforms us.

I think we fear changes because we tend to fear death. Change is the death of something old and the birth of something new. However, why should we fear it? We can guide the change in our lives by moving away from those things that do not work, which are not fruitful, and moving toward the ones that are.

We may find that the greatest life lessons come from the most significant changes within us or around us. Yet great changes imply some form of loss, which again is what we fear. We must become comfortable with the idea of losing something (or someone) if we ever wish to gain anything that truly matters.

We cling even to the things that don’t do us much good because they are familiar. They make us feel at home. But sometimes, that home is worth letting go of, to introduce something that compels us to grow.

In the end, we will lose our lives and everything we ever gained. All of that was temporary. But if we work on transforming ourselves, we will leave a permanent impact on the people around us and on the universe itself.

The universe is not static—it is ever-evolving and changing. Perhaps we could learn something from that.

The key lesson of the day is that we should continue to learn. But for that learning to be worth something, we should be ready and willing to change from within. This can mean seeing the world in a new way, feeling in a new way, and then deciding to stop doing something we used to do—and doing something in a way that we never did before.

We have not truly learned unless we have been transformed from the inside.

As a practical tip, after you read something or learn something, ask yourself:

What has truly changed?

If nothing, then ask:

What can I change, and should I change, given what I just learned?

The Qualities That Make Us Who We Are

Last night as I was falling asleep, I had the Thought:

Who am I if you strip everything away? Let’s take away the people I know, the experiences I’ve had, the things I’ve learned, even my sensory abilities, my personality, biological makeup, my creative or intellectual or spiritual side. After a certain point, I become nothing. As you remove quality by quality, eventually nothing is left but nothingness itself.

Here, by qualities, I mean anything that makes you who you are.

When you lose all these pieces of who you are, eventually, what is left? It will just seem like an artificial, fragmented part of you. After a certain point, you would cease to be you.

As a peculiar example, let’s take one detail about all of us. Of course, our skin tone is a major part of how we see ourselves and others. It is probably the first or one of the first things you notice about a new person that you meet.

Consider this:

What if we all woke up tomorrow, and everyone’s skin was transparent?

You could literally see our internal organs, nerves, and maybe bones. I think people would feel more naked than ever, and they would start wearing something to cover all their exposed skin, at least what the clothing did not cover. Or they may cover it with makeup to give themselves an artificial skin tone. Otherwise, this would be too much of a distraction for most of us to bear. It would be difficult to hold a conversation with someone while you can literally see their brain. Or you may look at someone’s hands and see nerves and even bones, which could be off-putting, of course.

Yet, in a sense, nothing has really changed. We would still be the same people we always were. Our organs have always been there, they haven’t moved. But somehow, actually seeing them there would change our perceptions, our behaviors, perhaps even our beliefs.

The book Blindness by José Saramago left an impression on me when I read it many years ago - as this is a thought-provoking novel. The premise is that people spontaneously begin to go blind due to some unexplained circumstance or illness. Obviously, our sight is a pretty major quality that we value in ourselves. It is the main sense that we use to understand the world, at least for those born with sight. The book is a pretty good example of how losing one quality on a mass scale would change everything.

I have just been left amazed at the thought that if one seemingly trivial detail changes about us, then everything can change. And if one small thing changes, we may feel like we are no longer who we used to be. If my skin suddenly went transparent, or if I suddenly went blind, I think my whole life would change, and I would probably change as a person due to new experiences that would arise from this. People would treat me differently, and I would begin to shift my behaviors and expectations about life. Surely some core part of me would remain the same, but I think it’s easy to underestimate just how profoundly a life must change if we lose a major sense or quality such as sight.

So I wonder, are we just the qualities that happen to make us up? And then, if those qualities can arbitrarily change without our desire, what does that mean for us? Does it mean that our identities are sort of arbitrary outputs based on the qualities we have been given (through DNA and our experiences, etc.)

As an example, if you love rock and roll, it may just be because your Dad introduced it to you when you were a kid. If he had introduced jazz to you at that age, you might have fallen in love with that instead. Maybe if he had introduced magic tricks to you then, you would have loved that. It may have just been a point in your life when you idolized your Dad and wanted to do the same things as him. In this light, some of your qualities may be arbitrary.

These sorts of thoughts have made me wonder about the level of influence or power we truly have over our lives. One minuscule quality can change everything. And many of those qualities that we adopt are based on our environment and circumstances. It seems like we don’t have much choice in the qualities that make us up, right?

However, we may have much more power than we think. For example, if James (fictitious person) works hard to develop himself, he may gain better communication skills, self-confidence, resilience, and stress-reduction techniques. These simple qualities may work to change his whole life. Rather than waiting for life to influence his qualities, he has taken it upon himself to develop into something better.

In fact, to go back to the idea that one simple quality can change everything, perhaps by working on his communication skills first, he was able to gain self-confidence. Then this helped him gain the energy and motivation to improve himself in numerous other ways. One quality, his communication skills, could have made all the difference. And if he never developed that skill, his whole life path may have gone in a different, much worse path for him.

To sum up, in this post, there are just a few key ideas for you to think about:

1.     Who are we really? By removing or adding a seemingly trivial quality in our lives, everything about us can change. Is your identity something that you will actively shape yourself, or is it mostly being done by your environment and surroundings? What part of yourself do you identify with the most? Is this something that you chose, or something that happened to you?

2.     If one simple quality can change everything, you should choose to develop key qualities in yourself that can greatly impact your life. For example, this may be self-confidence, communication skills, resilience, creative skills, memory, attention, or mindfulness. You may wish to learn how to train yourself mentally to improve some of these qualities. The skills or qualities that can make the greatest impact may be different for everyone. You should ask yourself which quality would help you accomplish your life’s mission or key goals.  

Stop Thinking on Autopilot – 8 Tips to Wake Your Mind

Thinking is an interesting activity because it seems to be done on our own, yet we also borrow thoughts from the people around us. Sometimes if we are not careful, we may be borrowing other people’s thoughts too heavily, rather than thinking on our own.

One of the worst things we can do is assume that our thinking is already perfect. There is always something we can do to improve the way that we think. And, of course, the way that we think tends to influence our actions in the real world.

Our thoughts and the way we think are quite important, yet often we don’t give this idea much thought - the irony.

If you think on autopilot, you may also take action on autopilot, and you may be barely conscious of your life and not fully even realize this. This autopilot life is something we must learn to overcome by focusing on our thinking.

I believe we all think on autopilot at least some of the time – but fortunately, this post will help us to snap out of it.

Initially, I wanted to make this post about Critical Thinking – but I believe these are actually some of the fundamental thinking principles you need before you can develop into a critical thinker.

Let’s begin.

1. Get a Different Point of View

By being in your mind and body, you usually have your own point of view to judge things. This can lock you into one way of thinking. Rather, it will help grow your thinking abilities if you expose yourself to different cultures, backgrounds, and belief systems. You should seek to empathize and try to deeply understand how different people work and think. In time, you will find that your way of thinking is not the single right way to think.

Example: If your friend tells you that Native Americans exhibit a wide variety of negative qualities, you can assume that he is correct or read stories and view documentaries that are told from the perspective of Native Americans. You may even choose to interview or communicate with a Native American – but only do so if you are open to new ways of perceiving.

2. Test Your Assumptions

I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again - we all make assumptions. I assume every day that the floor I walk on will not break under me. We must make some assumptions to live a normal life. However, for important parts of our lives, we should learn to test our assumptions.

Even when you have information from a reliable source or a source that you trust, test it anyway. Avoid assuming that something is true just because one person or one source told you. You can test it by comparing it to other reliable sources, or perhaps by checking for yourself if the information is actually valid.

Example: If my wife tells me that she turned off all the stove burners, I may check on them to make sure before going to bed. For information that can impact your life, it’s worth checking on those assumptions.

3. Ask Yourself – Who Does This Information Benefit?

Nations build up convenient stories that view themselves in a positive light and view their rivals in a negative way. This may be the same with rival groups or organizations. This can also happen with individuals who end up developing animosity toward each other.

Understand that people tend to focus on information that makes them feel good. When you read information, and it seems to make someone feel good, likely at the expense of others, then you have to start thinking for yourself.

When it is clearly in someone’s benefit that you believe something, you should take extra caution, take a step back and reconsider how accurate this source is.

Example: Next time you hear biased reporting, where every word seems to benefit one group and somehow puts down another group, ask yourself who this is benefiting. Is the information coming from a place where people want to feel good about themselves (or get their audience to feel good about themselves), or are they truly focused on accurate reporting?

4. Come to Your Own Conclusions

When you read or listen to the news the next time, don’t listen to the conclusions that writers or reporters come to. Pretend that you can’t hear it, or simply skip over it. Instead, listen to the facts and the line of reasoning. Then, come to your own conclusions.

You may find that often enough, the conclusions you hear are there to gain people’s attention. The world operates in a way where the more eyes you get on your material, the more money you make. So it is in the news or different agencies benefit if they come to wild conclusions. Those wild conclusions tend to get shared more, incentivizing these agencies to make wilder statements more and more often. Basically, stop trusting the conclusions so much, and stick to the facts.

You can come up with your own conclusions since you have your own mind.

Example: Watch YouTube clips of news reporting - just the part where they focus on facts. List out any mentioned facts, and then come up with your own conclusions based on those facts. Then listen to their conclusions. Compare your conclusions to the ones they come up with. Then ask yourself if you had not done this exercise, would their conclusions have left a greater impact on you? (Perhaps they resorted to name-calling or personal attacks that were not relevant based on the facts.)

5. Be Open to the Possibility of Being Wrong

Many of us make up our minds about something and refuse to consider that we could be wrong. But we should be more open to that idea.

We should learn to pay more attention to whether the “facts” are actually true and correct, whether the line of reasoning is actually correct, and whether the conclusions someone comes to make sense based on the facts and the line of reasoning.

At any point in the process, anyone could be wrong. Are your facts wrong? Is your line of reasoning wrong? Are your conclusions wrong? Even if parts of this chain or process are exaggerated or mistaken, it calls everything into question.

Example: Practice listening to people who have different beliefs or points of view – you can do this with blogs or YouTube. Instead of dismissing their perspective entirely, try to listen to it and consider it fairly. Begin with sources or people you may generally disagree with and who are open, fair, and reasonable in how they talk about issues. Avoid sources that are overly biased and vitriolic – at least when you are beginning.

6. Learn How to Separate Fact from Fiction

To avoid thinking on autopilot, you should develop better systems for figuring out what is true and what is untrue. This can involve asking yourself a variety of questions such as: “Could your senses be deceiving you?”, “Is the source biased,” and “Are they speaking without substance?”

Fortunately, you can learn these tips and much more via a short Free eBook titled What is True? (and What is NOT True) if you sign up here.

7. Learn Something Every Day

A great way to avoid autopilot thinking will be to get into the habit of learning something regularly. There is no good excuse to avoid learning. Most of us make time to get on social media and watch TV and keep up with the news, so we can probably make time to learn something new and meaningful every day.

When you learn more, it becomes difficult for someone to influence you with “facts” that have no basis in reality, a line of faulty reasoning, or conclusions that do not make sense. The more you learn, the more you will realize when you have been given information that doesn’t seem right and deserves to be more properly investigated. If you do not know very much, any piece of information will seem plausible, so you will not know what is worth investigating more deeply.

Example: You can learn by reading blogs or books, engaging in new activities, visiting museums, taking a course (there are plenty of free ones online), listening to podcasts, or finding a tutor or mentor. There are so many ways to learn that you should be able to find something that appeals to you. I would urge you to learn from expert sources based on experience, science, or reason.

8. Don’t Base Your Whole Identity on Another Person or Organization

I often see that people begin to base their whole identity on a particular person, group, or organization. This can be problematic because you will feel the need to agree with everything that this person or group believes in if this happens. Instead, consider that just because you agree or believe in many things that someone else does, does not mean that you are the same. You are allowed to be the same in some ways and different in some ways.

We should always maintain some independence in our thinking. The way we think should be our own – we can be influenced or guided by others – but there is no reason why you must automatically absorb all the ways of thinking from a particular person or group.

Example: If you want to join a group, make it clear that you think for yourself and do not need anyone else to do your thinking for you. You should not feel pressured into agreeing or believing everything that they do. If they are unhappy with this, then it is not a group that you need in your life. If a group wants control over everything you do, including your thoughts, then the connotations here are quite negative – this can be associated with cults or brainwashing, for example.

Otherwise, if you follow someone or a group too closely, take a step back and ask yourself what you really think. Do you truly agree with everything they do, or was it just convenient for you to agree so you wouldn’t need to think things through on your own.

Recommended Readings

The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking by Edward Burger and Michael Starbird

Teach Yourself to Think by Edward de Bono

The Art of Thinking Clearly by Rolf Dobelli

How Not to Be Wrong by Jordan Ellenberg

The Stuff of Thought by Steven Pinker

Post-Truth by Lee McIntyre

Blindspot by Mahzarin Banaji

The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene

Influence by Robert Cialdini

The 7 Levels of Change by Rolf Smith

The Neurogenesis Diet and Lifestyle by Brant Cortright

The Secret Principles of Genius by I. C. Robledo

The Insightful Reader by I. C. Robledo

The Winner’s Mindset - 8 Tools for Success

Introduction

Quite often, I see that people are not equipped with the right mindset to win, succeed, or resolve the problems in their lives. Of course, there is no magic solution. What I am going to present here may take a lifetime to master, but it will provide a pathway toward accomplishing more than many of us even would have thought possible.

Consider the importance of using all these tools together. If you only use a few of them, you will be limiting your potential.

1. Growth Mindset

Dr. Carol Dweck has studied the growth mindset – a mindset where you believe that you can grow in your abilities. This is important because if you attempt to do something and fail if you have a growth mindset, you will believe that you can always work on it and improve. If you have a fixed mindset, you will believe that your skills and abilities are fixed, and there is not much you can do to get any better.

With the growth mindset, you believe that the more you work and push yourself, the better you can get. And this belief turns out to be true. Likewise, for those who believe that they are limited, or those with the fixed mindset, their beliefs also turn out to be true for themselves because they limit their own potential with this mindset.

2. Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

The growth mindset may actually be a form of the self-fulfilling prophecy. Note that people who think they can grow and improve can do so. Those who do not think they can grow and improve are unable to do so. This may be an oversimplification – but at least those who think they can are much more effective in accomplishing their goals.

With the self-fulfilling prophecy, whatever you expect to happen is quite likely to actually happen. There are limits to this, of course, but this concept is one of my favorite because it shows us just how powerful the human mind is.

As an example, if I take two forty-year-old men who look to be in average shape, and I ask them to do 40 push-ups for me, who is more likely to accomplish this? The one who doubts his own abilities, or the one who is sure he can do this? If they both had the same height, weight, health status, and muscular build, the one who was more sure of himself would have a better chance to accomplish the goal.

In my life, I have found that when I believe something is going to happen, I don’t spend any energy doubting or thinking about failure. That means I use more energy to accomplish what I want to do rather than on negative emotional energy. Therefore, I am much more likely to succeed at what I believed I would succeed at.

Often your belief will create reality. Be careful about what you expect, as it will probably happen. In this sense, it will pay off to be optimistic and expect things to go well.

3. Affirmations and Visualization

A“belief” with nothing to back it up can feel empty and meaningless for many of us. If I tell you to believe in yourself and believe that you will succeed, this sounds like empty motivational speak. It doesn’t feel real, and it seems unlikely to actually make a difference in your life. For that reason, you may wish to try creating affirmations and visualizations to make your beliefs more real in your mind.

Affirmations and visualization are tools you can use to create stronger positive beliefs in your mind, making it more likely that they will come true. This is an application of the self-fulfilling prophecy, where you train your mind to expect something to happen through affirmations. Affirmations are statements you make and say to yourself in effort to make them feel true and real. Once you have your affirmation, you can visualize that thing happening in vivid detail so that your mind feels it already has happened. Then there is nothing left to do but live out that which has already happened in your mind. Ultimately, your mind will feel comfort in simply living out that path which you have already created. This will feel like destiny, in a way. To do anything else outside of what your affirmation/visualizations indicate would feel like going against nature.

As an example of an affirmation, you may write down a statement such as:

I will live my life today without allowing negative emotions to guide my actions. Instead, I will be guided only by positive emotions, reason, and intuition.

With visualization, you would visualize yourself living out the above affirmation. You may envision someone verbally attacking you. But rather than allowing negative emotional energy to overcome you, you would respond calmly by suggesting that you continue this conversation when the other person has calmed down, or you could state that you have more important things you need to do at the moment. They should write their grievances in an email to you so that you can respond at a later time. If the person continues to be verbally aggressive, you may calmly walk away and say, “Have a nice day!” Notice that with this affirmation, the goal is not to extinguish negative emotion but rather to stop such emotions from guiding our everyday actions.

4. Ongoing Learning

Part of the way you win and do better than others is to learn more than them. In many fields, you must develop your expertise to perform well. Even if your field is not intellectual or informational, you could be surprised at the importance of continuing to learn. For example, someone who plays sports at a high level would want to study their opponents’ weaknesses to search for ways to gain a competitive advantage.

Our world changes and adapts rapidly, and so to keep up with this, you must continue to learn regularly. The prior principles focused on your beliefs and mindset. But if you have a positive mindset and you have not learned anything, then you may be an overconfident amateur.

5. Work Harder and Smarter

Working hard is a continuation of ongoing learning. You will need to learn and work harder than most people if you truly want to win. Generally, this can mean working more hours or training more rigorously. Then when you reach a level where everyone is working quite hard, you will need to work smarter to gain an advantage.

Working smarter could mean finding any critical weaknesses in your abilities and working to develop those. It could also mean finding your greatest strengths and fine-tuning those to become even better at what you do. Working smarter can also mean prioritizing what is truly important for you to work on. All work is not equal. You could work very hard and make very little progress if the work was not important or instrumental.

Working smarter can also mean finding the right leader, colleagues, or organization to work in. If you are highly skilled but in the wrong environment that can not properly use your skills, you will not accomplish much.

6. Make Your Own Luck

To increase your chances of winning or success, you should aim to make your own luck. This can mean increasing your chances for something good to happen. The way you approach this will be different depending on your field.

For example, if you have written something that you think everyone needs to read, you may pay to translate it into several languages. Even if no one in your native language is impacted by what you wrote, perhaps you will find people who truly believe in your ideas with another language.

Also, you may practice sending out an email to an author, political figure, or owner of a company regularly, depending on your goals. Be quick and to the point. Don’t ask for anything big such as for a job. You may start by recognizing their good work and how you are interested in what they do. Then you may ask if they have any suggestions to help you with a particular problem. Or perhaps they can suggest a resource that may help you. If you feel it is appropriate and you are especially interested in learning more from someone, you may offer to buy that person lunch so that you can have a quick conversation with them.

The general idea is that you will want to put yourself in positions where you will more likely accomplish your goals, whatever those goals may be. I recently heard that in high school, Bill Gates and his friends hacked into his high school’s computer databases so that he would get placed in classes with all females. The idea was that this would help increase Bill Gates’ chances of getting a date. Surely he must have had better chances of getting a date when he was surrounded by females.

To increase your luck and opportunities, ask yourself questions such as:

• Where can I position myself to increase the chances of meeting my goals? (This may even involve moving.)

• Who can I network with or contact to increase the chances of meeting my goals?

• What can I do to make more people notice my skills and talents (e.g., starting a blog, podcast, or volunteering to work for free for someone who is known for being the best in their field)

Notice that to increase your luck, you do not need particular goals. The general goal is to put yourself in situations or circumstances that will make it more likely for good things to happen. Of course, you probably should have some specific goals that you are working toward in your life at the same time.

7. Creative Problem-Solving

When you practice generating many solutions to your problems, you can get very good at this. If this becomes a daily practice for you, you will find that eventually, you can effortlessly come up with a variety of potential solutions to virtually any problem.

This creative skill is one of the greatest assets you can have because so many people are not used to thinking this way. In school and our work lives, many of us get used to searching for one solution to our problems. When that one solution does not work, we become frustrated and need to call the boss or Google it.

If we practice our creative idea generation abilities instead, we could become better and better. In time, we would feel confident that we could solve new problems on our own without always needing extra assistance.

As I already indicated, the world we live in is rapidly changing and demands that we adapt to it. Those who can look for creative solutions will be in the best position to succeed when difficult circumstances arise.

To practice this skill, the next time someone makes you aware of a problem, try to come up with five possible solutions to solve it. Also, of course, if you come across your own life problem, do the same thing. Do not settle for the first or even second obvious solution that you come. Work harder to train your mind to be more creative.

8. React Positively to the Overwhelming Likelihood of Failure

I often see that as soon as a problem becomes difficult, people are ready to give up on it. They will say that this is too difficult. Or, if the situation involves a game or competition, as soon as one team starts to lose, they will become discouraged and feel that there is no way to win.

However, the person with a true success mindset will never stop looking for possibilities to win or accomplish what they truly want to do. A problem that can develop in our mindsets is that when you look for reasons to give up, the next time you face a difficult problem, it becomes easier to give up. You can actually train yourself to become a failure. If you choose to give up every time things get difficult, you will train yourself to give up more easily and more quickly with each new problem you face. Eventually, just the slightest indication of trouble will cause you to throw in the towel. You will fail before you truly even get started.

Rather, we must train ourselves in the opposite direction. The harder things get, the more stubborn you should become, searching for pathways to accomplish your goals. Obviously, there is an actual point where it makes sense to give up, but it depends on the circumstance. If you do not look forward to succeeding at something, then you should probably give up. But more often than not, we give up too early on our goals or dreams.

My favorite way to train this mindset for not giving up is with games. It could be chess, Monopoly, or even video games. It doesn’t matter. I’ve learned that it is fun to win, but I also enjoy having fun when the odds are stacked against me. Even when you think all hope is lost, if you keep pushing forward and going for the win, sometimes you will get it. And it is gratifying to get that win when it seemed impossible. Games are a perfect vehicle to train your mindset because there is no real excuse to give up – you are usually not risking losing money or wasting anyone’s time.

When you can do so, practice continuing to go for the win even when others think it is a lost cause.

As an example, recently, I was playing a speed chess game. The other player was higher rated than me, and he outplayed me completely. Eventually, I got to the point where I realized I couldn't win the game if I played normally. I was down a lot of material (or points).

My solution was to make the worst possible move in the game.

The move was so bad only someone new to the game could make it. (My opponent and I were both in around the top 5% of chess players). I left my Queen vulnerable, which is the most valuable piece. In his mind, he never would have expected me to make this worst possible move, and so he didn’t realize how bad it truly was. He proceeded in the game, making a “normal” move. Then I stole his queen. I made the worst move possible in the game, but a side effect of this was that it would allow me to take his queen for free. Then I proceeded to win a game that should have been impossible for me to win at that point.

Notice that I used some creative thinking here - I don’t think most people consider making the worst possible move as a viable option when trying to win. Giving up assures you that you will lose, so sometimes, in difficult circumstances, it makes sense to try something “so crazy, it just might work.”

Train your mindset in small everyday ways like this. No game is too trivial. No situation is too minor. Take whatever opportunity you can to teach yourself to have a winner’s mindset. Keep going for that win even when the odds seem stacked against you. Trust me when I say that those wins feel the best.

If you liked this post, I also recommend reading my post on Oliver James’, as he is currently on the path to success despite dealing with functional illiteracy and mental health issues. It’s a truly inspirational story.