My best mentor is a mechanic - and he never left the sixth grade. By any competency measure, he doesn't have it. But the perspective he brings to me and my life is, bar none, the most helpful.
To me, meditation is simply silencing or focusing the mind.
The first thing successful people do is view failure as a positive signal to success.
To inspire a singularity of focus, a challenge must be important to you and it must be something you feel you should do now in this moment. If it's trivial or not time-bound, you won't engage. So in selecting your next challenge in life, choose one that is meaningful and will demand your complete concentration.
We should not seek to tune out the realists' whines or taunts, as they may provide good instruction.
People who label themselves as 'realists' are usually accurate - they see to the real edge of what they know, understand, or believe. At best, these folks tend to be caring worriers.
