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CHOOSE HAPPINESS - John Samuel Gray

"Your Good Life Starts Upstairs"

I am so incredibly proud and honoured that I know this author personally. He is a young man that is taking massive action towards his dreams and helping others. It is honestly inspiring to see his persistence and hard work. This book is all about gaining power over your OWN emotions. I strongly recommend EVERYONE read it. Below I will share the highlights that I took away. Keep in mind each individual will find something specific to them, hence why it's important to read it on your own. PS. Page numbers are in brackets!

  • We Always Have A Choice (3)

  • We Choose What We Think About (4)

  • We must first work to maintain constant awareness of what's happening in out heads. (4)

  • Whenever possible, stop problems at the source, before they are even created. (7)

  • I never said it was easy to choose what we think about. But I promise you that you always have the choice. (8)

  • We have to keep our living room (mind) homey, clean, and with the right Feng Shui. (10)

  • Major Distraction #1.5: Business Advertising (11)

    • Advertising is a scary thing.

    • they plant a desire for them in our minds.

  • Major Distraction #3: Ourselves (12)

    • The mean side of ourselves can do the most destruction in our heads since they know us best.

  • Our physical worlds are our mental worlds. (13)

    • Literally, everything in the world was imagined before it was created.

  • As long as we maintain control over our minds, we have full control over our lives. (15)

  • It is important that we work to live in a constantly "closed" state. (21)

  • Action/ Goal Alignment (A/G ALN) Part Two (25)

    • 1. Sequencing (26)

      • The One Thing

      • The chances are that not trying to achieve this goal at all would cause us a much scarier outcome than giving our best to achieve it and failing.

    • 2. Focus (27)

      • Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, the world's two richest men, were once asked to write down on a piece of paper the reason for success in one word. Without collaboration, they both wrote down "focus."

    • 3. Patience (28)

  • How To Keep Our Living Rooms Clean (29)

    • 1. Priming

      • Short

      • Gratitude

      • Goal

    • 2. Mindfulness (30)

      • instead of actively creating our lives, we passively live them, letting ourselves become the product of our environments. (31)

    • 3. Meditation

      • best priming routine

      • 20 - 30 minutes a day

    • As a bonus tip, it's also best we don't plan for the future or worry about the past when we're in public. People are attracted to those enjoying themselves in the present moment. (37)

    • If we expect magic, we will find it. (39)

    • practice EXTREME ENTHUSIASM. (39)

    • Ask questions. (41)

    • This book should really be built like a pyramid. (49)

    • You can't build good ideas in a dirty living room. (49)

    • Treat others as they would want to be treated (not how you would want to be treated.) (52)

    • We lose our own identity because how we act is entirely based on what those around us need. (53) *Actors

    • How To Adjust Adaptation (56)

      • 1. Ensure you're controlling your environment, not the other way around. (57)

      • 2. Filter out feedback properly.

        • The cliché here is: don't care what other people think. I think it should be changed to something closer like: listen to everything everyone expresses (with words or body language) because feedback is extremely important, but don't follow all feedback, filter it carefully. We should never disregard our environment. We either listen to it and let it go or listen to it and make an adjustment. (59)

  • this lens is able to have a focusing effect. (67)

  • First, you clean your mind, then you put awesome stuff in it, and finally, you go about life, deflecting all of the non-awesome stuff. (70)

  • The most important step in this whole book is this one: being able to fend off distractions. (70)

  • feedback can often be more useful than any other reflection methods in our lives. (87)

  • The reality is that we are all free to create our own measuring sticks. (93)

  • It's good to introduce the new habit before dropping the old habit. (95)

  • Conclusion (97)

    • 1. Control

    • 2. Deflection

    • 3. Defense

    • 4. Intruders

  • It's not even happiness but instead, control over our lives. (103)

  • First, we want to work as hard at the start of the adoption period to get the momentum going as strong as possible. We want to move forward with the strongest push from the start that we can muster. The second part is being patient. (106)

  • The best part of compounding is time. (107)

  • Persistance

    • Persistence is just not giving up on a goal until we reach it. (107)

  • Discipline (108)

    • Discipline implies consistency: us working towards our goal without taking breaks. (109)

    • When we stop progress, we have to waste all the energy we used to get started in the first place all over again. (109)

    • Discipline means daily work towards any goal. (110)

    • We never stop needing discipline. (110)

  • This is an extremely dangerous way to live, thinking "there is always going to be next year." (111)

  • The, later on, we move along the chessboard, the more energy is required to change any of our habits at all. (112)

  • I remind myself of the fixed number of heartbeats I have for that day. Whether I like it or not, my number of heartbeats for the day is shrinking by the minute, and I will never get them back. (113)

  • Fear is an indicator of something we should move towards, not away from. (114)

  • Goals without plans are just dreams. And keeping dreams as dreams is never as fun as turning them into reality. (115)

  • Setting goals allow us to have control over what happens in our lives. But focusing on goals required us to make trade-offs. It requires us to be patient. (115)

  • No one will create a happy life for you. (116)

  • Advice is a broken system. (121)

  • Ultimately, only you know what to do. It's your life. (121)

  • Remember, if we turn ourselves into happiness finding machines, it's impossible to be in a situation we can't enjoy somehow. (126)

  • But, we must always remember, that at any time, we always have the choice to change our expectation to match the reality around us, if we're ever feeling unhappy. (129)


I hope these highlights inspire you to take the time to read the book for yourself. There are so many things he talks about and explains, that you can relate back to your life to fully understand it. Because when speaking about the mind, something invisible to us, it is hard to comprehend. I really did love this book. I have read so many books and listened to so many videos about this kind of stuff, but John Samuel Gray introduced me to new ideas or different ways to see something, which is why I am so thankful for this book.


I hope you enjoy it just as much as me!! Find it here!

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