Almost everyone in modern life has some degree of stress and worry. In recent months, I've discovered the philosophy of 'Stoicism' and it offers an amazingly helpful technique for dealing with the troubles of modern life.

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When the United States just originated, it was common for poor European immigrants to sign indentured servitude contracts. These contracts were sold by captains of ships and would state that in exchange for passage to the new world, the immigrant agreed to work a set number of years once they arrived in the new world.

Upon landing in America, these people would essentially become slaves for the length of the contract.

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What follow are my personal notes and direct quotes from the amazing book Beyond Success and Failure: Ways to Self-Reliance and Maturity.  I read quite a few books each year and along the way I do lots of highlighting and typically write notes into a Google Document.

This time around I figured that it would be better to just put the notes on Taming Life since others may find this information valuable.

Overview: The book helps people who are depressed, anxious, nervous, etc overcome these tendencies and become more self-reliant.  Much of what causes unhappiness is firmly rooted in childhood patterns people carry with them into adulthood. These tendencies can be overcome with a combination of awareness and hard work.

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Every once in a while I come across a book that blows me away and completely shifts my point of view. One such book is Beyond Success and Failure: Ways to Self-Reliance and Maturity.

The book discusses problems that are at the root of a lot of unhappiness in our daily lives and offers solutions for overcoming these problems.

What I find particularly interesting is how much of the book's information was foreign to me even though I've read a lot of self-help books over the past couple of decades.  The book was originally published in 1966 and appears to be another example of modern culture forgetting the wisdom our grandparents once possessed.

What follows are valuable lessons from the book and a few observations I've made. Note that in addition to this article I've posted lots of valuable quotes from the book.

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One thing I've struggled with much of my life is long-term goal setting. I knew that long-term goals would help structure my life but I would often get tripped up with problems I hit along the way.

Lately I've been experimenting with a technique that's much more visual, and it's been working beautifully.

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Modern life is busy. Insanely busy.

However, much of the craziness is self-imposed. Or at we least passively allow it to continue.

You do have the power to reign it in you know...

Turn off the TV. Don't check Facebook. Turn off email notifications. Check emails and texts every few hours instead of constantly. Delay responding to people. Cut back on the junk surfing. Quit reacting. 

Quit consuming for a one damn minute.

What's that sound? It's the sound of silence. Foreign isn't it?

It's even a little disconcerting.

Does the thought of being out of the loop make you nervous? Good. That means you're addicted to the madness. And addicts aren't in control of their lives, they just live for the next hit.

Don't give outside forces the reigns then complain about how things turn out.

Step up to the plate and take back your life.

Working on a team that’s split between two or more locations can pose many challenges and can be made worse when management doesn’t recognize the inherent problems introduced.

Split teams aren’t simply one team in two locations; they are essentially two teams with different work cultures that happen to have the same goal.

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In the last week I've learned more about niche site building, nullified some theories and refined others. The net result is that I've decided to switch from a ‘niche site’ building strategy to one of ‘niche-authority site’ building.

This shift not only makes sense because of my personal sensibilities, but I think it makes sense from a long-term business perspective also.

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