Your mindset plays an important role in your life. Why? Because your mindset determines how you make decisions. The right mindset leads you to make the right decisions while the wrong mindset leads you to make the wrong ones. They lead you to different kinds of life with a wider gap over time.
A good way to grow as a person, I believe, is reading books. Reading a good book is like listening to someone’s life advice. You might not be able to meet the author in person, but by reading his/her book, you can get invaluable advice for your life.
I have always been a proponent of having side projects. Recently, I found something that strengthens my belief in it. It’s an article by Mailchimp’s co-founder Ben Chestnut. Here is the quote that I’m interested in:
Do you want to have a better future? One thing you should do for that is investing. That means making some sacrifice now (e.g. setting aside a portion of your income) for a greater reward in the future (e.g. your retirement fund). The best investment, however, is not a financial instrument. The best investment is yourself.
In How to Find Your Best Possible Life, I wrote that you need to think out of the box to find your best possible life. You need to think about possible alternatives to your current life. If you don’t, you could be optimizing the wrong version of your life.
Do you want to live your best possible life? If so, then there is a danger related to it that you need to be aware of. To explain it, I’d like to use a concept in mathematics called local maxima.