%% ID: 13204969 Updated: 2022-01-28 %% ![](https://readwise-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/static/images/article1.be68295a7e40.png) # About Title: [[Other/Obsidian Starter Vault(Second Brain)/Readwise/Articles/The Skill of Awareness Will Change Your Life]] Author: [[dariusforoux.medium.com]] Category: #articles Number of Highlights: ==30== Last Highlighted: *2021-11-22* Readwise URL: https://readwise.io/bookreview/13204969 Source URL: https://dariusforoux.medium.com/the-skill-of-awareness-will-change-your-life-20d272320dd1 # Highlights your finances, health, or relationships, always revolve around the skill of awareness. ^278320369 --- He lost a lot of money this year with crypto trading and chasing meme stocks so he asked about my process. ^278320370 --- I’ve consistently closed trades with profits ranging from 20% to 60%. And I haven’t closed a trade with more than a 10% loss in two years ^278320371 --- Without awareness, I wouldn’t learn as much as I did. ^278320372 --- To improve something, observe yourself first ^278320373 --- . What’s your aim ^278320374 --- any pursuit of excellence will fail unless you have a damn good reason ^278320375 --- I knew that it would be extremely difficult to sell books or courses without writing effective articles. So I had enough incentive to work on my craft. ^278320376 --- process, I look at a few examples of people I can study. I only look at the top 1% of performers because I only want to learn from the best. ^278320377 --- They assume that you can learn everything from others. That’s not true. ^278320378 --- We can’t learn talent. I can’t come up with the same stories as Stephen King no matter how much I try. ^278320379 --- separate skill from talent. What are things I can duplicate? What are things I can’t? ^278320380 --- best writers are all true to their voice and style. ^278320381 --- To write better articles, I needed to focus on confidence over pure writing skill. ^278320382 --- I think about long-term sustainability. I want to make the principles I learn from others mine. ^278320383 --- Learning something from someone else is great. But it’s better if you create your own principles based on what you’ve learned ^278320384 --- That way you remember what you’ve learned better. And you can only apply what you remember. ^278320385 --- I consistently practice awareness to make sure I’m not wasting my time. I’m consistently observing my thoughts and behavior ^278320386 --- quickly step in when I’m deviating from the above process. ^278320387 --- Through awareness, I learned I was only getting confused and I learned nothing. I saw conflicting principles and couldn’t see how I could use anything to improve. I also noticed I got distracted by secondary aspects like how many followers someone has and what they do on social media. This was a waste of time. ^278320388 --- I adjusted my behavior. I only looked at three writers ^278320389 --- Once I was done, I stopped studying all writers and focused on my own writing ^278320390 --- you want to improve your awareness, the best way is to start meditating more ^278320391 --- When you meditate, you practice a skill. You’re not necessarily becoming less stressed or anxious. ^278320392 --- that’s not the purpose of meditatio ^278320393 --- Gaining peace of mind and having less stress is a side-effect of meditation ^278320394 --- You become good at catching destructive thought patterns within your consciousness. ^278320395 --- You are your own worst enemy. It’s a platitude I really subscribe to. ^278320396 --- Everyone knows you will never improve or achieve anything if you quit ^278320397 --- awareness is the most versatile skill I can think of. There’s nothing else I use so often in life. ^278320398