Damon D'Amore

* On the Illusion of Choice (YouTube video): “Young people have the illusion of choices. But if you want to be good, you have no choices.”

*On Creating Good Stories: “We are vehemently faithful to our own view of the world, our story. We want to know what new story we’re stepping into before we exit the old one. We don’t want an exit if we don’t know exactly where it is going to take us, even—or perhaps especially—in an emergency.“

* Your Whole Life Is Borrowed Time: “The universe is not at all sentimental—aliveness is always going to be an arbitrary status that can be revoked at any time. No recourse, no due process.”

* It Sounds Crazy: “It’s a rare person who wants to hear what he doesn’t want to hear.”

* Nature Shows How This All Works: “The only thing that matters is where you are in the long run.”

* How To Take Notes While Reading: “While reading, I take notes. I circle words I need to look up. I star points that I think are critical to the argument. I underline anything that strikes me as interesting. I comment like a madman in the margins. I try to tease out assumptions, etc.”

* Why Your Inner Circle Should Stay Small: “Carefully curate your most trusted, inner circle and you’ll be surprised at how much more valuable you’ll become to the larger community of people in the world who care about the same things you do.”

* The Last Time Always Happens Now: “The point isn’t to make life into a series of desperate goodbyes. You can go ahead and do the thing more or less normally. You might find, though, that when you frame it as a potential last time, you pay more attention to it, and you appreciate it for what it is in a way you normally don’t.”

* How to Make Smart Decisions Without Getting Lucky: “Few things will change your trajectory in life or business as much as learning to make effective decisions. Yet no one really teaches us what it means to make consistently high-quality decisions.”

* Why People Feel Like Victims: “You only need to spend only a few minutes watching or reading the news, in any country, to hear and see victimhood raging.”

* History’s Seductive Beliefs: “The biggest takeaway from history is that the characters change but their behaviors don’t. They’re the same today as they were 100 years ago and will be 100 years from now.”

* A Lesson in Friendship: “For the longest time I thought that avoiding vulnerability was strength. It’s not.”

* Rules, Truths and Beliefs (1 of 2)

* Little Flaws (2 of 2)

* The Messy Middle: “Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture”

* How To Recover from Pandemic-Induced Mind Fog: “It’s a house of cards really, and the breeze gets stronger every year, as technology draws us further from what’s optimal for our well-being.”

* Advice for Curious People: “If you want to make progress in any area, you need to be willing to give up your best ideas from time to time.”

* The Psychological Price of Entrepreneurship: “People who are on the energetic, motivated, and creative side are both more likely to be entrepreneurial and more likely to have strong emotional states. Those states may include depression, despair, hopelessness, worthlessness, loss of motivation, and suicidal thinking.”

* The Importance of Knowing Yourself: “Don’t let anyone decide who you are.”

* How to Remember What You Read: “What you read can give you access to untold knowledge. But how you read changes the trajectory of your life.”

* You Must Be The Master Of Your Own Kingdom (video): Guy Ritchie on the Joe Rogan show (12 mins)

* The Philosophy of Self Improvement: “There’s humility in determining what it is you can actually manage that is why you aim low.”

* Become an Uncertainty Killer: “You have to make sure that information is flowing in a way so that you become a trusted resource wherever you go.”

* How the End-of-History Illusion Prevents You From Shaping Your Future Self: “If we make decisions without thinking about our future selves, we may end up living life in a reactive way, without proper planning or opportunities for personal growth. ”

* The Highest Forms of Wealth: “Money buys happiness in the same way drugs bring pleasure: Incredible if done right, dangerous if used to mask a weakness, and disastrous when no amount is enough.”

* Nothing Really Has a Name: “Looking at the world like that comes with a certain kind of relief to the compulsive mapper, because what’s right in front of you is never as busy as the map.”

* How to Get out of Your Own Head: “The thinking mind has no master plan, just ideas.”

* How to Think: “Poor thinking has a cost. When it comes to thinking the mind has an optimal way to be operated. When operated correctly you’ll find yourself with plenty of free time. When operated incorrectly, most of your time will be consumed correcting mistakes.”

* Casualties of Perfection: “There is no perfect species, one adapted to everything at all times. The best any species can do is to be good at some things until the things it’s not good at suddenly matter more.”