Tupatapo misiba huwa mara nyingi hali ya kuhamanika hutujia, mawazo na fikra mbalimbali hushamiri mpaka muda mwingine  zinatupelekea kumkufuru Mola wetu Jalia.

Hali ya kuhamanikia hutokea kwa sababu ya mshtuko mkubwa wa kihisia, huzuni kali, na maumivu ya kupoteza mtu muhimu katika maisha yetu. Hofu ya kukosa udhibiti wa hali, kutokuwa na uhakika kuhusu maisha bila wao, na upweke wa ghafla unaweza kuongezeka, na kusababisha wasiwasi uliopitiliza na kuhamanikia.  

Bi. Polina Maranova mmiliki wa Waraka wa Habari uitwayo ‘The Profile’, na pia Polina ni muandishi wa kitabu cha ‘Hidden Genius’. Katika waraka wake wa Agosti, 21 mwaka huu ulioenda  kichwa cha Waraka:  'My Annual Birthday Check-In: 11 Lessons From 33 Years on This Planet’. Katika Waraka huo allkuwa anatushirikisha mafunzo kumi na moja  ya maisha katika miaka thelathini na tatu  — kwenye funzo la sita  alizojifunza ndani ya miongo mitatu ni kuwa: “Hadithi zote za mapenzi zimetarajiwa kumalizika kwa msiba  (Tragic loss).” kwenye kulichambua funzo la maisha alisema alishawahi  kumsikia mwandishi Nicholas Sparks (ni muandishi gwiji wa riwaya kubwa nne ambazo anaelezea misiba mizito (Tragic loss) ya visa vya mapenzi; The Notebook, A Walk to Remember, Dear John, na A Message in a Bottle)  akisema haya kwenye mahojiano:

"Kwangu, mapenzi na msiba vimeungana. Huwezi kuwa na moja bila jingine. Na kadiri mapenzi yanavyokuwa makubwa, ndivyo msiba unavyokuwa mkubwa zaidi.”

"Unaona, kila siku mamilioni na mamilioni ya watu ulimwenguni wanakufa, na sisi sote tunaendelea na maisha yetu, tunakwenda kazini, hatujali. Lakini pale inapokuwa ni mtu unayempenda — dada yako, mke wako, babu au nyanya yako, rafiki yako — ni kama dunia yako inaanguka. Na kadiri mapenzi yalivyokuwa makubwa, ndivyo msiba unavyokuwa mkubwa zaidi.

"Hivyo basi, kwa tafsiri, hadithi zote za mapenzi lazima ziishie kwa msiba."’

Nazidi kujazia nyama kwenye mantiki hiyo ya ‘hadithi zote za mapenzi lazima ziishie kwenye hali ya msiba’. Kwahiyo  ilimradi tu kuna upendo, hakutakosa kuwa na huzuni. Huzuni ya wakati uliopita; ya maisha kuendelea na ombwe la nafasi tupu ambalo zamani lilijaa vicheko, furaha, kuthaminiana, amani na nguvu za watu tuliowapenda.

Kwenye upendo uliokithiri wa ndugu, jamaa, wenzi na rafiki unaweza kumithililisha  na bustani yenye maua ya aina nyingi. Upendo wa watu wa karibu ni kama miti yenye mizizi imara, inayotupa kivuli na utulivu, ikitufanya tuhisi tuna ulinzi na msaada wa kudumu. Upendo wa wenzi ni kama waridi wenye harufu nzuri na rangi angavu, unaotuletea furaha ya kipekee, shauku, na utamu wa mapenzi. Upendo wa marafiki ni kama maua ya porini yanayochanua kila kona, yakijaza bustani yetu na rangi za furaha, kicheko, na urafiki wa kweli. Bustani hii ya upendo ina aina mbalimbali za uzuri, kila moja ikiongeza thamani ya kipekee na kutufanya tuhisi tumezungukwa na furaha, nguvu, na upendo usio na mipaka. Na siku tukiwapoteza ni huzuni kubwa sana  kama mti mkubwa ulio kwenye uwanda mkavu, ukiwa umesimama peke yake. Mizizi yake inajitahidi kufikia maji ya kumbukumbu, lakini udongo wa upweke hauna rutuba. Majani yamekauka, na kila tawi lililokatika ni kama upotevu mwingine, huku mti ukisimama peke yake, ukijaribu kuishi licha ya maumivu hayo yote ni kwa sababu huzuni ni mwendelezo wa kawaida wa upendo.

Huzuni ni taa kubwa ya neon, yenye mwanga mkali inayoonekana kila mahali, ikionyesha kila sehemu, ikitangaza kwa sauti kubwa, 'Upendo ulikuwa hapa.' na kwa maandishi madogo,'Upendo bado upo'.

Ndugu yangu hakika msiba usikie kwa jirani ila  usiombae ukufike;  maana ni afadhali kusikia juu ya matatizo au misiba inayowapata watu wengine (jirani), lakini unapaswa kuomba na kutarajia kwamba misiba hiyo isikufike au isikupate wewe mwenyewe.

Japo muda mwengine huo msemo unaokena una ukakasi ila naamini unatoa wito mkubwa wa kuwa na huruma na kuelewa maumivu ya wengine wakati huo ukitamani na kuomba kwamba wewe mwenyewe usipatwe na hali kama hiyo. Hii inaonyesha ukweli kwamba msiba ni kitu kibaya,kinaumiza sana ila kwa waamini tunajua ndiyo njia ya kukutana na Mola wetu Jalia na ingawa tunaweza kushiriki huzuni na wengine, ni jambo ambalo hakuna mtu anayetamani kumkuta. Bora uwe kwenye nafasi ya kufariji kuliko kufarijiwa; unayetoa kuliko kupokea.

Ila kama tujuavyo, Mola wetu sio utaratibu wake – na hafanyi kama fahamu za binadamu zinavyotaka; siku zote humuita yeyote anayemtaka; hajali mdogo wa rika au mkubwa wa rika; Rais au raia; tajiri au masikini; fukarafuke au hoehae; una kaa Masaki au Madongoporomoka; mnyonge au jasiri – yeye akikutaka atakuita tu.

Kuhusu Kitabu

Adili na Nduguze ni riwaya ya Sheikh Shaaban Robert inayozungumzia jinsi ambavyo Adili, kijana mwenye roho na tabia njema, alivyohusudiwa na ndugu zake (Hasidi na Mwivu), walimchukia na kumpatia mateso na kumweka katika hali ngumu katika nyakati tofauti.

Nduguze walimtesa kiasi cha kutosha na kama malipo ya makosa yao wakageuzwa manyani na jini liitwalo Huria. Lakini kwa moyo wake mwema, Adili akayaombea msamaha baada ya miaka mingi yakitunzwa naye kwa mateso ya kuyapiga kiboko kila usiku na kuyapa posho.

Baada ya hapo, Huria alikubali pendekezo la Adili na wakarejea katika utu tena. Mara baada ya baba yao kufariki dunia, Adili na nduguze waligawana mali sawa kwa sawa katika sehemu tatu.

Kwa sehemu kubwa, kitabu cha ‘Adili na Nduguze’ kimefanana na kitabu cha kwanza cha ‘Alfu Lela U Lela.’

Kuhusu Mwandishi

Sheikh Shaaban Bin Robert, pia anajulikana kama Shaaban Robert (1 Januari 1909 – 20 Juni 1962), alikuwa mshairi, mwandishi, na mwandishi wa insha kutoka Tanzania ambaye alitetea uhifadhi wa mila za ushairi wa Tanzania. Robert anasherehekewa kama mmoja wa wanafikra, wasomi, na waandishi wakubwa wa Kiswahili kutoka Tanzania katika Afrika Mashariki na ametajwa kama "Mshairi mkuu wa Kiswahili" na pia anajulikana kama "Baba wa Kiswahili." Pia anaheshimiwa kama mshairi wa kitaifa.

Shaaban alizaliwa kwa baba mwenye asili ya Wayao na mama mwenye asili ya Kidigo katika kijiji cha Vibamba, kata ya Tangasisi, wilaya ya Tanga, iliyoko kusini mwa Jiji la Tanga katika Mkoa wa Tanga, Tanzania (wakati huo ikiitwa Afrika Mashariki ya Kijerumani). Jina la Robert ni jina la afisa wa kikoloni wa Kiingereza aliyemwomba mzazi wake kumpa jina hilo. Kwa hivyo, kwa maana halisi, Robert lilikuwa jina lake la pili (siyo jina la ukoo au jina la mwisho), jina lake la kwanza likiwa ni Shaaban. Shaaban mwenyewe kwa muda fulani aliandika jina hilo kama 'Roberts' badala ya 'Robert'. Kuanzia mwaka 1922 hadi 1926 alisoma jijini Dar es Salaam, na akawa wa pili katika darasa la wanafunzi 11 na kupokea Cheti cha Kuondoka Shuleni chini ya mfumo wa elimu wa kikoloni wa Kiingereza wakati huo katika Tanganyika.

Baada ya kupokea cheti cha shule, Shaaban alifanya kazi katika nyadhifa mbalimbali kama mtumishi wa serikali ya kikoloni. Kuanzia mwaka 1926 hadi 1944, alifanya kazi kama afisa wa forodha katika maeneo tofauti ndani ya eneo hilo, ikiwa ni pamoja na kituo kimoja katika Kisiwa cha Kwale, wilayani Mkuranga katika Mkoa wa Pwani wa sasa. Kuanzia 1944 hadi 1946 alifanya kazi katika Idara ya Wanyamapori. Kuanzia 1946 hadi 1952 alifanya kazi katika Ofisi ya Wilaya ya Tanga, na kutoka 1952 hadi 1960 alikuwa katika Ofisi ya Upimaji huko Tanga. Alifanya kazi kwa ukaribu sana na Chama cha TANU na Julius Nyerere. Matukio mengi ya uzoefu wake wa utumishi wa umma yameingizwa katika maandiko yake. Katika maisha yake, alipokea Tuzo na Medali ya Margaret Wrong kwa Fasihi ya Afrika na aliheshimiwa na serikali ya Uingereza kwa kutunukiwa cheo cha Mwanachama wa Order ya Uingereza (M.B.E.).

Robert alichangia katika kuendeleza lugha ya Kiswahili na mapambano ya kuheshimu utu wa binadamu. Alikuwa mwanaharakati maarufu wa haki za binadamu. Alipigania uhuru na usawa wa kijinsia, na alipinga ubaguzi wa rangi na dini nchini Tanzania. Rais wa kwanza wa Tanzania, Julius Nyerere, alimvutia sana marehemu Shaaban Robert, na alithamini na kuendeleza sana kazi zake za kiakili. Shaaban pia aliwaheshimu kwa usawa Waislamu na Wakristo. Hii inaonekana katika majina yake mawili yasiyo ya kawaida (Shaaban—jina la Kiislamu na Robert, jina la Kikristo). [Jina la Robert kwa hakika lilikuwa moja ya majina kadhaa ya baba yake, mengine yakiwa Selemani na Ufukwe.]

Sheikh Shaaban Robert alifanikiwa kuandika insha, vitabu, nathari, na mashairi, na baadhi ya maandiko yake ni sehemu ya mtaala wa shule na vitabu vya kusomwa katika elimu ya juu.

Kwa ujumla Shaaban Robert aliandika vitabu ishirini na nne. Baadhi ya vitabu hivi ni: Adili na Nduguze, Kusadikika, Kufikirika, Wasifu wa Siti Binti Saad, Maisha Yangu Baada ya Miaka Hamsini, Utubora Mkulima. Vitabu vyake vimetafsiriwa katika lugha ya Kichina, Kiingereza na Kirusi

Mafunzo Kitabuni

• Tendo hukidhi haja maridhawa kuliko neno.

• Haja ikishughulikiwa kwa matendo hupatikana upesi, lakini ikishughulikiwa kwa maneno huchelewa kama sadaka.

• Ukamilifu wa mtu duniani ni tabia njema.

• Kila mtu bora, anatakiwa kuonyesha ubora wake kwa kuchukuana na watu.

• Hulka njema sawa na mali.

• Waungwana hawanyimai neni lisilokalifu.

• Hapana roho mbinguni wala duniani isiyopitiwa na majuto.

• Hiari na dhima ni mambo mawili ambayo hayatimiziki kwa wakati mmoja.

• Hapana mtu awezae kwenda njia mbili kwa wakati mmoja.

• Ukali wa mbwa hutokana na msasi.

• Waungwana hawasemi uongo.

• Busara kubwa kichwani  haina faida kama moyoni hamna chembe ya wema.

• Maisha ni safari, na dunia ni matembezi kwa wanadamu – maskani yao ya milele yako peponi.

• Hapana mtu ambaye atabaki duniani.

• Mwana wa mhunzi asiposana huvukuta.

• Mali bila daftari hupotea bila habari.

• Hakika mtu anayehesabu mapato na matumizi yake yake hafi maskini.

• Mtu hushindwa kujua pato lake mwenyewe huonyesha uchache wa uangalifu.

• Mali hufidia roho, lakini roho haifidiwi na kitu.

• Moyo hauhimili mshawasha wa mfululizo; hasa mshawasha wenyewe ukitokana na mtu anayempenda  au tamaa ya utajiri.

• Mwanadamu ameumbwa kwa heri na shari; Hasa kwa heri.

• Lugha ni pingamizi kubwa kwa watu duniani.

• Kula uhondo kwataka matendo; asiye matendo hula uvundo.

• Tamaa ya mali ni kubwa; mioyo mingi haitoshewi na mali; walakini, kwa kweli fikira ya mali isiyo kadiri ni mzigo usio chukulika.

• Nusu ya hasara ya mwanadamu hutokea kwa sababu wenyewe hawataki kutumia vipawa vyote walivyopewa.

• Onyo la bure likikataliwa huleta majuto ya milele.

• Turufu humwenda kwa mchezaji siku zote.

• Kuna mambo yanayofaa na yasiyofaa ushirika; ndoa ni moja ya jambo lisilofaa ushirika.

• Ushirika katika ndoa unapasa wanayama na ndege.

• Mwanaume hakukusudiwa kwa fahali wa kila mtamba, wala mwanamke kuwa tembe la kila jogoo.

• Mawazo mabaya hurusha usingizi

• Kutazama hatari usoni kunavunja moyo wa mtu.

• Wanauma waninda mbaya ufisadi unapo wapofusha.

• Kilio cha kujisingizia hakina machozi wala matanga.

• Asiyefurahia heri ya mwenziwe, shari yake kumhadhibikia.

• Atakae makaa ya mgomba hapati kitu ila jivu tupu.

• Bahari haiweki amana na kitu kieleacho kwa kuwa alielea aliokoka.

• Mwanadamu haishiwi na uchafu kama kilihafu.

• Hapana mtu mwema aliyetayari kuungama kwa makusudi aadhibiwe; wala mtu asiyejisingiziaa wema makusidi asiadhibiwe.

• Bila ujasiri nadra mtu kafanikiwa

• Mwenye saburi hukidhiwa haja zake.

• Neno takatifu gumu kufahamika, lakini linatija kwa wajisumbuao kulifasiri.

Umbuji wa Shabaan Robert ulionikosha katika kitabu hiki

“Ilikuwa si desturi ya Rai kusema maneno na kuacha wengine watende maneno, lakini alifanya matendo akaacha watu wengine waseme maneno.”

“Salama ya maisha yao ilikuwa bora kuliko faida iliyopotea umaskini umetengana hatua moja tu  na utajiri.”

“Kama uzuri ulio peponi wamejaliwa malaika, karibu uzuri wote ulio duniani alijaliwa msichana huyo. Uzuri wake ulikuwa haalingani na uzuri wa mwanamke yeyote aliosifiwa kuwa mzuri katika zama zake… matamko yake yalikuwa kama mafuatano ya muziki.”

“Moyo wa Adili ulitekwa na mapenzi ya tamasha hiyo. Akili yake ilipotea na nuru ya macho yake ilizimika kitambo ila ilikuwa mara ya kwanza mshale wa mapenzi kupenya moyoni mwake. ulipenya katikati ya moyo wake.”

“Kila tendo jema au baya ni mfano kwa raia wake. Kwa sababu ya maisha ya milele ibada ya mizimu ilikuwa maangamizi na uimamu wa ukwabwere ujinga mtupu.”

“Hapana jibu la haraka. Tumia wakati upendao wa kufikiri nimesema neno la Mungu. Mungu hachelei tisho la mwanadamu, kazi ya mikono yake mwenyewe neno takatifu. Neno takatifu gumu kufahamika, lakini linatija kwa wajisumbuao kulifasiri.”

“Hunde alikuwa kiumbe cha mwisho katika wanaume walikuwa na sura mbaya… alikuwa hatazamiki kwa ubaya, licha ya yeye kumtazama mtu.”

“Wanawake hukutana na mikasa mingi mibaya duniani. Mioyo yao huelemea na haja zisizokubalika; masikio yao hutuwa  uziwi kwa maombi ya baraka, na miili yao ni mawindo ya jeuri daima.”

“Malkia wa Majini alitabasamu akasema, “ usiseme kikembe mwanangu. Wema wako ulikuwa asilia, nawe ulitangulia kuutenda; na wa binti yangu ulikuwa wa kuigiza, nae ametenda nyuma. Asili na uijagi ni vitu mbalimbali. Havilingani wala havitalinganika milele.”

“… katika ini alifumwa na mshale, na moyoni mwake mishono ya maumivu makali.”

“Tazama adhama na tabia ya Adili. Alikuwa tayari kujikalifu takalifu ilipomlazimu, kujidhabibu dhabihu ilipotakiwa; na kusamehe msamaha ilipobidi.”

“Alipogeuka kwa ndugu zake Adili , Rai alionya, kama wavivu walijitahidi kuwa hodari; ilikuwa kinyume hodari kuwa mvivu; kama waovu walitaka kuwa wema, ilichukiza wema kuwa wovu; kama masikini walitafuta  utajiri; ilikuwa ujinga matajiri kufuja walichokuwa nacho; kama mbegu iliongezwa mchanga, ilikuwa harabu mtu kuwa ndugu yake; pia ilikuwa aibu kubwa sana kwa wazuri kutenda maovu.”

“Aha, ilikuwa furaha kubwa ilioje! Mioyo miwili  ya mapeni iliyopoteana ilikutana tena. Neno halikuwezekana kusemeka. Walitazama wakichekana. Walishikana mikono wakabusiana. Walikuwa katika siku bora ya maisha yao.”

    Tenzi

Tenzi #1

Miguu ya msichana, Na mwendo alikwenda,

Adili alipoona moyo wake ulimshinda.

Alikuwa na miguu mfano wa charahani,

Wala ulimwengu huu, hajatokea kifani,

Alipendeza hatua wakati alipokwenda,

Chini viatu chalia, mithali kama kinanda.

Alikwenda kwa madaha, mwanamke mwenye enzi,

Yaliompa furaha kila mwenye kubarizi.

Tenzi #2

Nala sumu ndugu zangu,

Msambe naona tamu.

Takalifu kubwa kwangu,

Kuadhibu yangu damu.

Sina raha ndugu zangu,

Neno hili kwangu gumu.

Tenzi #3

Mawe huwa dhahabu,

Au jabari na chuma,

Dhambi yake hukoma.

Nishani zake thawabu,

Na heshima ya daima.

Marejeo zaidi 

1. Shaaban bin Robert, Wikipedia, 4 February 2024

Be a maker who makes something interesting people want, show your craft, practice your craft, and the right people will eventually find you.

If someone is talking a lot about how honest they are, they’re probably dishonest.

When someone spends too much time talking about their values or they’re talking themselves up, they’re covering for something.

Sharks eat well but live a life surrounded by sharks.

You cannot hide anything from yourself. Your failures are written within your psyche, and they are obvious to you.

You will not respect yourself if you have too many moral shortcomings.

The worst outcome in this world is not having self esteem.

If you don’t love yourself, who will?

You just have to be very careful about doing things you’re fundamentally not going to be proud of because they will damage you.

The closer you want to get to me, the better your values have to be.

BE PATIENT

Great people have great outcomes. You just have to be patient.

Everybody wants to get rich immediately, but the world is an efficient place; immediate doesn’t work.

The most common bad advice I hear is “You’re too young”.

Most of history was built by young people. They just got credit when they were older.

The only way to truly learn something is by doing it. Yes, listen to guidance. But don’t wait.

People are oddly consistent, karma is just you, repenting your patterns, virtues, and flaws until you finally get what you deserve. Always pay it forward. And don’t keep count.

Your real resume is just a catalogue of all your suffering.

Anything you’re given doesn’t matter. You have to do hard things anyway to create your own meaningful life.

Money buys your freedom in the material world.

The solution to making everybody happy is to give them what they want.

JUDGEMENT 

There’s no shortcut to smart.

You don’t get rich by spending your time to save money.

You get rich by saving your time to make money.

Hard Work is overrated. How hard you work matters a lot less in the modern economy.

Judgment is underrated.

Wisdom is knowing the long-term consequences of your actions.

Wisdom applied to external problems is judgment.

Without hard work, you’ll develop neither judgment nor leverage.

The direction you’re leading in matters more than how fast you move, especially with leverage.

Picking the direction you’re leading in for every decision is far, far more important than how much force you apply.

How to Think Clearly

A clear thinker is a better compliment than a smart one.

If someone is using a lot of fancy words and a lot of big concepts, they probably don’t know what they’re talking about.

The smartest people can explain things to a child.

The smartest thinkers are clear thinkers.

If you can’t drive concepts from the basics as you need them, you’re lost. You’re just memorizing.

Clear thinkers appeal to their authority.

By not having a strong sense of self or judgements or mind presence. The “ money mind” will always respond with this regurgitated emotional response to what it thinks the world should be. This happens a lot of times when people are mixing politics and business.

One definition of a moment of suffering is “ the moment when you see things exactly the way they are.”

The moment of suffering – when you’re in pain – is a moment of truth. It is a moment where you’re forced to embrace reality the way it is.

You can only make progress when you’re starting with the truth.

The hard thing is seeing the truth. To see the truth, you have to get your ego out of the way because your ego doesn’t want to face the truth.

The smaller you can make your ego, the less conditioned you can make your reactions, and the less desires you can have about the outcome you want, the easier it will be to see the reality.

What we wish to be true clouds our perception of what is true. Suffering is the moment when we can no longer deny reality.

What you feel tells you nothing about the facts – it merely tells you something about your estimate of the facts.

Very smart people tend to be weird since they insist on thinking everything through for themselves.

Cynicism is easy. Mimicry is easy. optimistic contractions are the rarest bleed.

Shed your Identity to see Reality.

Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are. –  Buddist saying.

Any belief you took in a package is suspect and should be re-evaluated from base principles.

Creating identities and labels locks you in and keeps you from seeing the truth.

To be honest, speak without identity.

If all your beliefs line up into neat little bundles, you should be highly suspicious.

We each have a contrarian belief society rejects. But the more our own identity and local tribe reject it, the more read it likely is.

Facebook redesigns, Twitter redesigns. Personalities and teams also need redesigns. There are no permanent solutions in a dynamic system.

Learn the skills of Decision Making.

The classical virtues are all decision making heuristics to make one optimize for the long term rather than for the short term.

Self-serving conclusions should have a high bar.

Almost all biases are time-saving heuristics. For important decisions, discard memory and identity, and focus on the problem.

 “ you should never, ever fool anybody, and you’re the easiest person to fool.”  – Richard Feynman

The moment you tell somebody something dishonest, you’ve lied to yourself. Then you’ll start believing your lie, which will disconnect you from reality and take you down the wrong road.

I never ask if “ I like it” or ‘ I don’t like it”. I think this is what it is or this is what it isn’t – Richard Feynman

Praise specifically, criticize generally.

Charisma is the ability to project confidence and love at the same time.

It is always possible, to be honest and positive.

You’re paid to be right when the other people are wrong.

If you can be more right and more rational, you’re going to get non-linear returns in your life.

The more you know, the less you diversify.

Collect Mental Models

During decision–making, the brain is a memory prediction machine.

10 Models for decion making

• Evolution

• Inversion

• Complexity theory

• Economics

• Compound interest

• Calculus

• Basic mathematics

• Falsifiability

• Principal-agent problem.

Being successful is just about not making mistakes. It’s not about having current judgment. It's about avoiding incorrect judgements.

Ignore the risk, the market will decide.

Microeconomics and game theory are fundamental.

You can't be successful in business or even navigate most of our modern capitalist society without an extremely good understanding of supply– and–demand, labour vs capital, game theory, and those kinds of things.

“If you want it done, then go. And if not, then send.” – Julius Caesar.

If you can’t decide, the answer is NO.

Simple heuristic; if you’re evenly split on a difficult decision, take the path more painful in the short term.

What are the most efficient ways to build a new mental mode?

Read a lot – just read.

Reading science, math, and philosophy one hour per day will likely put ypu at the upper echelon of human success within seven years. 

Learn to love reading.

Read what you love, until you love to read.

Reading a book isn’t a race – the better the book, the more slowly it should be absorbed.

Real people don’t read an hour a day. Real people, I think, read a minute a day or less.

“ As long as I have a book in my head, I don’t feel like I'm wasting time” – Charlie Munger.

Pointing out obvious exceptions implies either the target isn’t smart or you aren’t.

The number of books completed is a vanity metric. As you know more, you leave more books unfinished. Focus on new concepts with predictive power.

If they wrote it to make money, don’t read it.

What can I do for the next sixty days to become a clearer, more independent thinker?  

Read the greats in math, science, and philosophy. Ignore your contempories and news. Avoid tribal identification. Put truth above social approval.

Study logic and math, because once you’ve mastered them, you won’t fear any book.

When it comes to reading, make sure your foundation is very, very high quality.

The best way to have a high-quality foundation is to stick to science and to stick to the basics.

When solving problems; the older the problem, the older the solution.

You know that song you can’t get out of your head? All thoughts work that way careful what you read.

A calm mind, a fit body, and a house full of love. These things cannot be bought they must be earned.

HAPPINESS

The three big ones in life are wealth, health, and happiness. We pursue them in that order, but their importance is reversed.

Learning happiness.

Don't take yourself so seriously. You’re just a monkey with a plan.

Happiness is learned,

Maybe hapiness is not something you inherit or even choose, but a highly personal skill that can be learned, like fitness or nutrition.

Happiness is a default state. Happiness is there when you remove the sense of something missing in your life.

Happiness is the state when nothing is missing. When nothing is missing, your mind shuts down and stops running into the past or future to regret something or to plan something.

Every positive thought even has a seed of a negative thought within it and vice versa, which is why a lot of greatness in life comes out of suffering.

You have to view the negative before you can aspire to and appreciate the positive.

Happiness is not about positive thoughts. It’s not about negative thoughts.It'ss about the absence of desire, especially the absence of desire for external things.

Happiness is mainly not suffering, not desiring not thinking too much about the future or the past, and embracing the present moment and the reality of what is, and the way it is.

If you ever want to have peace in your life, you have to move beyond good and evil.

Nature has no concept of happiness or unhappiness.

Everything is perfect exactly the way it is. It is only in our particular minds we are unhappy or not happy, and things are perfect or imperfect because of what we desire.

The world just reflects your feelings to you, reality is neutral. Reality has no judgements.

You’re born, you have a whole set of sensory experiences and stimulations ( lights, colours, and sounds), and then you die. How you choose to interpret them is up to you – you have that choice.

Life is just the way it is. When you accept that, you have no cause to be happy or unhappy, those things almost don’t apply,  

Happiness is what is there when you remove the serve that something is missing in your life.

We think of ourselves as fixed and the world as malleable but it’s we who are malleable and the world is largely fixed.

Real happiness only comes as a side-effect of peace.

A rational person can find peace by cultivating indifference to things outside their control.

Happiness is Choice

Happiness, love and passion… aren’t things you find – they are choices you make.

Happiness is a choice you make and a skill you develop.

We crave experiences that will make us present, but the cravings themselves take us from the present moment.

A lot of unhappiness comes from comparing things from the past to the present.

Anticipation for our vices pulls us into the future. Eliminating vices makes it easier to be present.

Enlightenment is the space between your thoughts.

What if this life is a paradise we were promised, and we’re just squandering it?

Happiness Requires Peace

The anxiety is making you unhappy.

A happy isn’t someone happy all the time; it’s someone who effortlessly interprets evenin un such a way that they don’t lose their innate peace.

Every Desire is a Chosen Unhappiness

•  The idea you’re going to change something in the outside world, and that is going to bring you the peace, everlasting joy, and happiness you deserve, is a fundamental delusion we all suffer from.

• The fundamental delusion: there is something out there that will make you happy and fulfilled forever.

• Desire is a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want.

• When you’re young and healthy, you can do more. By doing more, you’re taking on more desires. You don’t realize this is slowly destroying your happiness.

• Younger people are less happy but more healthy. Older people are more happy but less healthy.

• When you’re young, you have time. You have health but you have no money. When you’re middle aged, you have money and you have health, but you have no time. When you’re old, you have money and you have time, but you have no health. So the trifecta is trying to get all three at once.

• By the time people realize they have enough money, they’ve lost their time and their health.

Success Does not earn Happiness

• Happiness is being satisfied with what you have.

• Success comes from dissatisfaction choose.

• Confucius says you have two lives, and the second one begins when you realize you only have one.

• The problem with getting good at a game, especially one with big rewards, is you continue playing it long after you have outgrown it.

• Survival and replication drive put us on the work treadmill. Hedonic adaptation keeps us there the trick is knowing when to jump off and play instead.

• All of man’s troubles arise because he cannot sit in a room quietly by himself.

• The irony is the way most of us try to find peace is through war.

• Peace is not a guarantee; it is always flowing.

• You can get almost anything you want out of life, as long as it’s one thing and you want it far more than anything else.

• Peace is happiness at rest, and happiness is peace in motion.

• You can convert peace into happiness anytime you want. But peace is what you want most of the time. If you’re a peaceful person, anything you do will be a happy activity.

Envy is the Enemy of Happiness

• The enemy of peace of mind is expectations drilled into you by society and other people.

• Training yourself to be happy is completely internal. There is no external progress, no external validation. You’re competing against yourself – it is a single-player game.

• The reality is life is a single-player game. You’re born alone. you are going to die soon. You are gone in three generations, and nobody cares. Before you showed up, nobody cared. It’s all single-player.

• Perhaps one reason why yoga and meditation are hard to sustain is they have no extrinsic value parody single-player games.

• Jealousy, it’s such a poisonous emotion because, at the end of the day, you’re no better off with jealousy. You’re unhappier and the person you’re jealous of is still successful or good-looking or whatever they are.

Happiness is Built by Habits 

• Peace and happiness are skills.

• You can increase your happiness over time, and it starts with believing you can do it.

• Maybe it’s politically incorrect to say you should choose your friends very wisely. But you shouldn’t choose them haphazardly based on who you lie next to or who you happen to work with.

• The people who are the most happy and optimistic choose the right five chimps.

• The first rule of handling conflict is: don’t hang around people who constantly engage in conflict.

• If you can’t see yourself working with someone for life, don’t work with them for a day.

• Stop asking why and start saying wow. The world is such an amazing place.

• When we get something, we assume the world owes it to us. If you are present, you’ll realize how many gifts and how much abundance there is around us at all times.

• The most important trick to being happy is to realize happiness is a skill you develop and a choice you make.

• If you have peace of body, it’s easier to have peace of mind.

• The more you judge, the more you separate yourself. You’ll feel good for an instant because yourself good about yourself thinking twice better than someone else. Later, you’re going to feel lonely. Then, you see negativity everywhere. The world just reflects your feelings on you.

• The more secrets you have, the less happy you’re going to be.

• Recover time and happiness by minimizing your use of these three smartphone apps: Phone, calendar, and alarm clock.

• No exceptions – all screen activities are linked to less happiness, and all non-screen activities are linked to more happiness.

• It’s the news’ job to make you anxious and angry. But its underlying scientific, economic, educational and conflict trends are positive, are positive, stay optimistic.

• Increase serotonin in the brain without drugs: sunlight, exercise, positive thinking, and tryptophan.

• Self-discipline is a bridge to a new self-image.

• Politics, academics, and social status are all zero-sum games; positive-sum games create positive people.

Find Happiness in Acceptance

• In any situation in life, you always have three choices; you can change it, you can accept it, or you can leave it.

• Being peaceful comes from having your mind clear of thoughts.

• There is no legacy.

• We don’t always get what we want, but sometimes what is happening is for the best. The sooner you can accept it as a reality, the sooner you can adapt to it.

SAVING YOURSELF

• Saving yourself.

• All you should do is what you want to do. If you stop trying to figure out how to do things the way other people want you to do them. You get to listen to the little voice inside your head that wants to do things a certain way. then, you get to be you.

• Be yourself with passionate intensity.

• No one in the world is going to beat you at being you.

• Your goal in life is to find the people, business, project, or art that needs you the most.

• There is something out there just for you. What you don’t want to do is build checklists and decision frameworks built into what other people are doing. You’re never to be them; you’ll never be good at being somebody else.

• You make an original contribution, you have to be irrationally obsessed with something.

• Nothing like a health problem to turning up the contrast dial for the rest of your life.

• When everyone is sick, we no longer consider it a disease.

• Diet and nutrition are like politics: everybody thinks they’re an expert.

• Most fit and healthy people focus more on what they eat than how much. Quality control is easier than quantity control.

• World’s simplest diet: the more processed the food, the less one should consume.

• The harder the workout, the easier the day.

• To stay flexible is to stay young.

• The best workout for you is one you’re excited enough to do every day.

• “Easy choice, hard life; hard choices, easy life.” – Jerzy Gregorek

• If you make the easy choices right now, your overall life will be a lot harder.

Meditation + Mental Strength

• Meditation is intermittent fasting for the mind.

• Emotion is our evolved biology predicting the future impact of a current event. In modern settings, it’s usually exaggerated or wrong.

• Why is meditation so powerful? Because your breath is one of the few places where your autonomic nervous system meets your voluntary nervous system. It’s involuntary, but you can also control it.

• Our bodies have the last touch with the cold – the cold is important because it can activate the immune system.

• Most of our suffering comes from avoidance.

• Too much sugar leads to a heavy body, and too many distractions lead to a heavy mind.

• Time spent undistracted and alone, in self-examination journaling, meditation resolves the unresolved and takes us from mentally fat to fit.

• Life-hack: when in bed, meditate; either you will have a deep meditation or fall asleep – vctory either way.

• Meditation is turning off society and listening to yourself; it only works when done for its own sake.

• Hiking is walking meditation, journaling is writing meditation; praying is gratitude meditation; showering is accidental meditation; and sitting quietly is direct meditation.

Naval Ravikant

Choosing to Build Yourself

• The greatest superpower is the ability to change yourself.

• Life is going to play out the way it’s going to play out. There will be some good and some bad. Most of it is usually just up to your interpretation.

• Habits are everything -everything we are.

• You become your habits.

• To have peace of mind, you have to have peace of body first.

• Impatience with actions, patience with results.

• Anything you have to do, just get it done.

• Nivi once said: that inspiration is perishable; when you have inspiration act on it right then and there. 

Choosing to Grow Yourself

• Scott Adams famously said, set up systems, not goals.

• The correct environment programs the brain, but the clever brain can choose its upcoming enviroment.

• If there is something you want to do later, do it now. The is no later.

• Social approval is inside to herd. If you want social approval, definitely go read what the heart is reading.

• For self-improvement without self-discipline, update your self-image.

• Grind and sweat, toil and bleed, face the abyss it’s all part of becoming an overnight success.

• Nature speaks in mathematics.

• Mathematics is a fundamental language of nature.

• Choosing to free yourself.

• The hardest thing is not doing what you want – it’s knowing what you want.

• If you hurt other people because they expect of you, that’s completely their problem it has nothing to do with you.

• Courage isn’t charging into a machine gun nest. Courage is not caring what other people think.

• Value your time. It is all you have. It’s more important than your money. It’s more important than your friends, It’s more important than anything. Your time is all you have. Do not waste your time.

• Valuing your time doesn’t mean you can’t relax. As long as you’re doing what you want, it’s not a waste of your time. But if you’re not spending your time doing what you want, and you’re not earning, and you’re not learning – what the heck are you doing?

• Don’t spend your time making other people happy. Other people being happy is their problem. It’s not your problem. If you are happy, it makes other people happy. If you’re happy, other people will ask you how you become happy and they might learn from it, but you are not responsible for making other people happy.

Freedom from Anger

•  Anger is a precursor to violence.

• Anger is a loss of control over the situation.

• Anger is a contract you make with yourself to be in physical, and emotional turmoil until reality changes.

• Anger is its punishment. An angry person trying to push your head below water is drowning at the same time.

Freedom from Employment

• People who live below their means enjoy the freedom that people busy upgrading their lifestyles can’t fathom.

• Once you’re truly controlled by your fate, for better or for worse, you’ll never let anyone else tell you what to do.

• A taste of freedom can make you unemployable.

• The mind should be a servant and a tool, not a master.

• A busy mind accelerates the passage of subjective time.

• There is no endpoint to self awareness and self-discovery.

• The modern struggle: lone individuals summoning inhuman willpower, fasting, meditating and excercising… up against armies of scientists and statisticians weaponizing abundant food, screens, and medicine into junk food, clickbait news, infinite porn, endless games, and addictives.
  
  

PHILOSOPHY 

• The real truths are heresies. They cannot be spoken. Only discovered, whispered, and perhaps read.

 The Meaning of Life

• Osho said: it is like writing on water ot building houses on sand; there is no meaning to life; there is no purpose to life.

• What we do as living systems you create, whether it’s through competitors, civilization, art, mathematics, or creating a family – you accelerate the heat of the death of the universe.

Live by your Values.

• Honesty is a core, core, core value by honesty. I mean I want to be able to just be one. I never want to be in an environment or around people where I have to watch about I say.

• Before you can lie to another, you must first lie to yourself.

• All benefits in life come from compound interest, whether in money, relationships, love, health, activities or habits.

• As investor Charlie Munger said, “To find a worthy mate, be worthy of a worthy mate.”

Rational Buddhism

•  the older the question, the older the answers.

• Rational Buddhism to naval: means understanding the internal work Buddhism esponses to make yourself happier, better off, more present and in control of your emotions- being a better human being.

• Everyone starts innocently. Everyone is corrupted. Wisdom is the discending of vices and the return to virtue, by way of knowlodge.

• Wisdom is to understand the long-term consequences of your actions.

• If wisdom could be imported through words alone,  we’d all be done here.

The Present is all We Have

• There is nothing but this moment. No one has ever gone back in time, and no one has ever been able to successfully predict the future in any way that matters. Literally. The only thing that exists is this exact point where you are in space at the exact time you happen to be here.

• You’re doing and being reborn at every moment. It’s up to you whether to forget or remember that.

• All death means is that there are no more future moments.

• Inspiration is perishable – act on it immediately.

• The democratization of technology allows anyone to be a creator, entrepreneur, or scientist. The future is brighter.

• Health, love, and your mission in that order. Nothing else matters.