More Today We Are Rich

This book Today We Are Rich is excellent, just excellent. Much of it is admittingly self-help, positive thinking, rah-rah kind of stuff. But when it comes from a former Yahoo executive who worked with Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, it is louder. Some thoughts:

• You should be as careful about what you put into your mind as about what you put into your mouth. Your mind is a machine. When you ingest a piece of information, your mind goes to work, chewing on it, digesting it, and then converting it into a thought. When good stuff goes into your mind, good thoughts emerge. People who maintain purposeful diets of positive stimuli think healthy thoughts (49).

• I’ve never met any devil’s advocates with many good ideas. Usually they are compensating for their lack of creativity by being nitpicky. Their negativity isolates them over time, as idea people eventually shun them. They end up with a point of view that’s anti-change, anti-risk, anti-new (98).

• Almost any negative thought pattern can be broken with thoughts of gratitude. When you “think thanks”, you dial into what you have instead of what you lack. The effect is immediate—you feel positive (132).

• No matter how hard you try, there will be times when you give and give and never get thanked enough. As long as you hold on to the egotistical notion that you should receive gratitude in return for your charity, you are setting yourself up to move backwards in the development of your generosity (161).