The only right answer to someone trying to "test" your friendship with them is to end it. Real friends don't play mind games. #orangebook #Friendship #MindGames #Trust

It's easy to marry, it's hard to marry well. It's easy to invest, it's hard to be free. It's easy to meet people, it's hard to have real friends. It's easy to read books, it's hard to have original thoughts. It's easy to make money, it's hard to have a real impact. #orangebook #Marriage #Friendship #Impact

I was once a big advocate of "helping people when no one else believes in them," but experience taught me that the kind of people who get back on track and take responsibility for where they are in life after getting some unexpected help once are extremely rare; in most cases, when people start believing that they are special, and that someone will help them no matter what, and they double down on their irresponsible decisions, and as time passes, you realize that you haven't been helping them at all, quite the opposite. I still hope to look back many years from now, realize that my help was actually a catalyst for greater positive change, and be proven wrong. #orangebook #HelpingOthers #PersonalGrowth #Responsibility

Talent comes from desire to get better, and desire to get better comes from pain for not being enough. #orangebook #Talent #Growth #Motivation

A lot of people are setting low expectations for themselves because they can't handle the pressure, but life becomes so much more fun once you decide instead to grow more mental strength and "talent," by investing in yourself until you can fearlessly tackle the challenging problems that the confident version of yourself would choose to tackle without hesitation. #orangebook #MentalStrength #SelfInvestment #ChallengeYourself

The smarter you are, the more you need to grow the courage to be wrong, or you're gonna spend your whole life overthinking every decision instead of acting or speaking up when it matters, and end up missing out on life itself. #orangebook #Courage #Growth #DecisionMaking

One of the saddest things in life is people who grew up without experiencing what it was like to have a loving family or a real friend, and who ended up living their adult years in very dysfunctional relationships that they deemed "normal." #orangebook #FamilyRelationships #Friendship #MentalHealth

Most people who tell you what you can't do are actually saying what they can't do; that's why talented people are so much more fun to be around, they don't see limits, they see potential, in themselves, in others. #orangebook #Potential #Limits #Talent

Foolish decisions often come from having too much free time, that's when you overthink the details that don't matter, that's when you seek unnecessary stimulation to escape your boring daily life, that's when you destroy what you've built without noticing it until it's too late. #orangebook #FreeTime #Overthinking #SelfDestruction

People often act shocked and disillusioned by how little their ex-business partners or ex-coworkers care about them once they are no longer working together; but that's simply the limits of the aligned financial incentives, and the older you get, the more obvious it is that genuine friendships are so much more rare than professional and financial opportunities. #orangebook #Friendships #Business #Incentives

If your work environment is transforming you into someone you don't like, and yet you choose to stay, you don't get to complain about the family and friends you won't have many years from now; life is quite simple, you choose who you want to be, you pay the price to get there, and you attract the people you deserve. #orangebook #WorkEnvironment #PersonalGrowth #LifeChoices

It's actually not surprising that a lot of smart people who are successful in their career are struggling with their relationships; genuine bonds often require the very opposite of what you need to succeed professionally, it's not about efficiency, it's not about making calculated long-term moves, it's not about being transactional and capturing value, it's about being emotionally present in a world that teaches you to be emotionally detached, it's about giving without worrying about what's in it for you, it's about not having an agenda and genuinely loving and caring about the other person. #orangebook #Relationships #Career #EmotionalIntelligence

Lack of success is lack of focus and wrong priorities. No one ever got talented by spending their time admiring talented people. No one ever got healthy without sticking to some "boring" eating, training, sleeping habits. No one ever got wealthy by constantly spending their money on their mimetic desires. No one ever got loved without commitment and efforts to become a person worthy of love. No one ever built long-lasting meaningful friendships without getting their personal life in order first. No one ever got clear-minded without spending extended amounts of time alone. No one ever got the life they wanted without overcoming their fears and making painful choices. No one ever got things done without occasionally temporarily ignoring the rest of the world. #orangebook #Focus #Discipline #Self-improvement

A happy mind is just a side effect of playing life on the right difficulty level. #orangebook #HappyMind #DifficultyLevel #LifeChoices

You should never worry about other people judging you; the ones whose judgment might mean something definitely don't have time to judge you; they are minding their own business, they are enjoying their time with people they love, they are living the life they want. A lot of "social anxiety" is actually just life telling you that you are spending too much time either on social media or around average minds with no meaningful purpose. Confident and talented people are often believed to be judgmental, but anyone with self-confidence and talent knows that when you know you have potential, you don't waste it on judging others; being judgmental is mostly a sign that you gave up on achieving anything noteworthy. #orangebook #SelfConfidence #SocialMedia #Judgment

People who couldn't marry well will keep warning you against marriages; people who couldn't invest well will keep warning you that everything is a scam; people who couldn't get what they want from life will keep warning you that you won't be able to do it either. Pessimism and cynicism are just common signs that you are failing in life. Don't get annoyed, and don't take it personally either. #orangebook #Marriage #Investment #LifeAdvice

You are wealthy when you have health, money, time, love, and purpose. #orangebook #Wealth #Health #Purpose

You naturally grow all the courage you need when you don’t have any other choice. #orangebook #Courage #Resilience #Necessity

You'd be surprised by how much of what is framed as "ambition" is actually driven by people who are still compensating for insecurities they had as kids: attention they didn't have, freedom they didn't experience, love they didn't feel, respect they didn't get. In a society obsessed with money, once you have enough of it, you can say anything and people will believe you; history is written by the victors, and "success" is defined by the wealthy; the real motivations are never as pretty as the stories they came up with in retrospect. #orangebook #Ambition #Insecurities #Success

Every day is actually a great day when you don't take for granted the gift of being alive. #orangebook #Gratitude #Mindfulness #Appreciation