10. Feel Free to Leapfrog
11. Actually, You’re Underwhelmed
12. Quit Buying Groceries at the Quickie Mart
13. Cantsayno Syndrome
14. Minimum Daily Requirement
15. Time Boulders
16. You’re Not Overwhelmed, You’re Overwrought
Pause: All I Have
17. Reimagining Well-Being
18. Activating Your Well-Being
19. In Search of a Fainting Couch
20. HALTT
21. Getting Out of the Urgency Trap
22. Your Well-Being
23. Delegation for Recovering Perfectionists
24. Hire Geniuses
25. Delegate It. Really. You Can Do This.
Pause: Another Person
26. You’re Not Thinking What You Think You’re Thinking
27. New Thought versus Old Tapes
28. How My Intuition Led Me to Live in Paradise
29. Ten Ways to Cultivate Your Intuition
30. The Intuition Killers
31. Values-Based Decision Making
32. Happy Grown-Up Naked Time
33. There’s No More-Perfect You
Pause: The Desert
34. Nothing Bad Is Happening
35. Your Slightly Future Self
36. You’re Ready Now
37. Set Good, Better, Best Goals
38. The Inevitable Backlash
39. The Inevitable Backlash, Part 2: The Inside Job
40. What Are You Afraid Might Happen?
41. New Pain Is Worse Than Old Pain
42. The Middle Way
43. Being Decisive
44. That Little Kid Looks So. . .
Pause: Too Much
45. Five Ughs and Three Ahhs
46. Consider Future Costs, Not Sunk Costs
47. The Seven Kinds of Clutter Nobody Ever Talks About
48. Clutter Dive
49. Clearing Out Your Dream Closet
50. A Few Remarkably Destructive Communication Habits to Stop Right Now
51. No More Rehearsing Conversations
52. Greet Your Mistakes with Grace
Pause: Not Exactly What I Had Planned
53. Test-Drive a Bigger Goal
54. Life Does Not Move in One Direction
55. You’re Getting Paid in the Currency You’re Asking For
56. Swatting Away Success
57. An Antidote to the Fear
58. Will Success Make You Selfish?
Pause: The Talent Box
59. Your Tribe Is Looking for You
60. Sam’s Twenty Guidelines for Successful Tribe Building and Management
61. Of Course You’re Concerned about Not Fitting In
62. Be the Elusive Rainbow Sparkles Unicorn
63. Are You in the Right Tribe?
64. There I Am
65. You Can’t Take Everyone with You
Conclusion: My Perfect Life
Acknowledgments
Index
About the Author
I WANT TO RAISE A GLASS and say that I am so impressed with you right now.
I am impressed that you have committed your time, your intellect, and your emotional availability to this — this project of you. This project of you moving through your life in a way that feels better, calmer, kinder, more like the real you, less reactive, less self-sacrificing, more self-nourishing, and with more laughter.
Before we begin, I want you to see an email exchange I had with a potential client recently when he wrote to me about an online workshop I was offering:
Hi Sam,
While I applaud your efforts and wholeheartedly agree with your philosophy, the bottom line is that you are a motivational speaker and people feed off of your energy because that is something that they cannot provide for themselves. It’s not about the book or the event, it’s about your personality and charisma. . . .The problem is, once the book is read and the event attended we are usually back to square one.
Anyway, I wish you success in your efforts and I will continue to watch your webinars, you are really quite therapeutic but unless you are going to move in with me and give me a kick in the pants 24/7, this stuff usually doesn’t work.
— B.
Here’s what I wrote back:
Hi B.
I think that what you are saying is exactly true — but only for about 80 percent of my audience.
That 80 percent attend a training or they read a book, they get excited . . . and then they go right back to their same old patterns and nothing changes.
As near as I can tell, that 80 percent number is true for all personal development stuff, from gym memberships to preachers to diet plans to financial strategies to everything else on the planet. Shoot — most of us wear only 20 percent of our wardrobe most of the time; the other 80 percent goes unworn.
And I think that’s fine.
If 80 percent of my audience are going to use me as a source of temporary inspiration and entertainment, well, then — what’s wrong with that?
The remaining 20 percent, though . . . they actually do it.
They take the strategies and ideas I teach, and they run with them, and they change.
They double their income.
They get out of destructive relationships.
They publish their book.
They get their “dream” business up and running.
My experience is that when people — well, I was going to write “are ready to change,” but I mean more than that — when change becomes mandatory for them, they find the teacher who’s right for them and they change.
So,