Ah! I just found out that the book Think and Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill, that I bought the other day on Amazon is available for free in pdf e-book format from MySelfDevelopment.net.
Oh well, let me synthesize happiness. A hard copy is probably better to have than an e-book anyways

Quote of the Night

Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.
- Abraham Lincoln

I’ve been following a comic from a South African illustrator and animator, Mike Scott, for a while now. His comic Bru and Boegie is really quite brilliant.
Anyways, the other night I got to chat with Mike at the recent Cape Town 27 Dinner and offered to hook his website up with RSS, so now, drum roll please….., Bru and Boegie, the kiffest comic in the world, is available in RSS. Neato

Also, in keeping the spirit of the occasion todays quote of the night will be something humorous. Here it is, two for one special, ’cause they’re just so damn good.

I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; I am a vegetarian because I hate plants.
- A. Whitney Brown

The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at and repair.
- Douglas Adams

I can’t help but be struck by the truthfulness of this quote.

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.
- Ambrose Redmoon

I’m cutting this one close. I’ve just come back from the Cape Town 27 Dinner. This is a morph from the geek dinner concept, but check out the link and if you’re in the Cape Town or Johannesburg area, log your name in the wiki and join us. It’s an awesome event, where you get to meet and chat with some great people around dinner.
It’s nearly midnight for me, so I wanted to get the quote of the night out before it’s too late, otherwise it’ll be a quote of tomorrow morning.
So, here it is. It’s a bit overused quote, but oh so true and very important.

Imagination is more important than knowledge…
- Albert Einstein

Life is not about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.
- George Bernard Shaw

In light of yesterday’s quote of the night, I thought I’d share a secret interest of mine.

Throughout my childhood and high school days, I was never much into books and reading. In fact, I don’t think I read any of my setwork books completely, from cover to cover.
However, since the first Harry Potter movie came out and my niece started reading the books and was carrying on about it and the movie and they missed out so many details, etc, I decided to read the book she had and see what all the fuss was about.

It was the first book I couldn’t put down, and so from there I read the other books my niece had up till book 3, and then she got book 4 and I read that one also, and then there were no more, so I read them all over again, and then I couldn’t wait any longer for the rest to be published, so I went a searching.

I went a searching on Kazaa, and found a fanfiction book and was naiive enough to think it was the next one in the series, but justifiably so, it was brilliant. And so I came to find out about the huge world of fanfiction that surrounds the Harry Potter series. I dove right in.

I stop staving them to my PC after about 40 books from 25 authors, so I must have probably read about 80+ full length fanfiction novels and about 50 smaller, incomplete books to date and I’m still reading them, not at the fervency and I once used to, but once in a while I’ll browse around and read something from the fanfiction community.

This not only got me enjoying reading other “more senior” novels (usually suggestions from my sister), but also got me interested in writing. As yet, I haven’t written any books or anything, but it’s something I’m interested in. At the moment the only writing I do is blogging, but, hey, it’s a start.

Some of my friends and family know I’ve read Harry Potter and they know I really like it, but I don’t think they realize how deep my interest went as a result of community of fanfictions. It’s a bit embarrassing, as I’m 24 and these are seen as kids books, even though the fanfictions generally aren’t. They include themes and go to places the original books can’t due to them being targeted to kids.

Anyways, so that’s my secret. Comments welcome.

Wow, this is a great one.

Self-consciousness is the enemy of all art, be it acting, writing, painting, or living itself, which is the greatest art of all.
- Ray Bradbury

I’ve always loved quotes, and over about the past 2 years have been collecting those quotes that I’ve come across that just “clicked” with me. You know, those quotes you read, and you don’t need to have had personal experience with it to just know it’s true.

I try, mostly unsuccessfully, to read a quote every night and just think, or meditate, about it before going to sleep at night. Try to internalize it.
The reason I don’t do it in the morning to get me started on my day, is that as soon as I start my day, I’m distracted immediately by my work, and whatever I’ve read is completely out my mind. I’m a guy, I can’t think of more than one thing at a time

So, what I want to do is commit myself to posting a “quote of the night” every evening (South African time), so that, a) in case anyone is interested they can subscribe to the quote of the night I myself will be pondering on and b) so that I don’t forget for myself to keep up with it.

So… without further ado, the first quote of the night is.

Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value.
- Albert Einstein

Hmm…

I’ve just been listening to an audio recording of The Happiness Show, episode number 123, where George Ortega and Claudia Bassin chat with guest Ed Smith about happiness, success and choosing the right job.
Ed suggested a technique for choosing the right job, that sounded really neat to me, so I thought I’d give it try. Here’s how it goes.

1. Throughout 10 days look for things around you interest you.
2. Any potential job or career attracts your attention, write it down on a piece of scrap paper and put it away in an envelope you keep with you.
3. Each day set aside the pieces of scrap papers you’ve collected, and at the end of the 10 days, you should have 10 piles of paper scraps of things that you piqued your interest at some point.
4. Chuck all the piles together and jumble them up.
5. One by one open each scrap of paper, and see if those things still interest you and set them aside. You might find some ridiculous job choices, as you are writing these job choices down on impulse throughout the 10 day period, but if something still strikes a chord with you 10 days later, that must mean something.
6. From those scraps that still strike a chord with you, try to find similarities and overlaps. There’s the career for you.

Ok, so in my previous post I mentioned I’m pursueing personal development. I also mentioned I’ve been reading a couple of personal development blogs, I also mention that I bought a whole bunch of books recently.
Well, here’s my my personal development resource list. If you can recommend anything else, please do.

Blogs
- Steve Pavlina.com
- Life Coaches Blog
- LifeDev
- Ririan Project

Blogs (Still to get and read)
- Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (Harper Business Essentials) - Jim Collins
- Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t - Jim Collins
- Good to Great and the Social Sectors: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great - Jim Collins
- Endless Referrals, Third Edition - Bob Burg
- Think and Grow Rich - Napoleon Hill
- Richest Man in Babylon - George S. Clason
- The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People - Stephen R. Covey

I know those aren’t a lot of resources about personal development, but I don’t want to just read and read and read, and not actually try to integrate the concepts into my daily life.
If there is anyone actually reading this, what do you think? Is there anything better I you think I should be looking at?

Update: I actually forgot the other book I wanted to buy, was Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren. I added it to my wishlist on Amazon, till when I finally finish reading the books I already ordered.