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Blink 3 of 8 - The 5 AM Club
by Robin Sharma
The Power of No summary
James Altucher and Claudia Azula Altucher
Because One Little Word Can Bring Health, Happiness and Abundance
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4.1 (79 ratings)
11 mins
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What is The Power of No about?
The Power of No (2014) offers a holistic, intuitive approach towards health, abundance and happiness: Say no to the things that are causing you harm and slowing you down so that you have the energy to say yes to the things that you find uplifting.
About the Author
James Altucher is an entrepreneur, chess master, spiritual teacher and writer who has written twelve books, including the best sellers Choose Yourself and I Was Blind but Now I See.
Claudia Azula Altucher is an author as well as a teacher of yoga, meditation and spirituality. She is also the author of 21 Things Before Starting an Ashtanga Yoga Practice.
Table of Contents
Key idea 1 of 4
Saying no to bad relationships leads to health and true love.
We all know that there are some things that we should do more often than others, but in the end it all comes down to everyday choices. When faced with these choices, it’s easy to get pulled into situations you would rather avoid or to ignore your well-being. But if you want to get the most out of life, you should choose life.
Choosing life means not pursuing habits that quite literally cause you to die, like poor nutrition or smoking. By abstaining from harmful foods and smoking, you are less likely to die from heart disease or lung cancer, and will have chosen life.
Another way to choose life is by ridding yourself of negative and abusive people. Say no to the people who drain your positive energy or stir up feelings of guilt or fear. It frees up resources, like your time and energy, that can be directed towards your inner circle.
But how do you know who belongs in your inner circle? This exercise will help you figure it out:
List all the people you engage with at least five times per week. Then rate how these encounters make you feel on a scale from one to ten (ten being the best).
Start focusing on the people you’ve ranked higher than eight by spending more time with them. Spend less time with everyone else on your list, and distance yourself even farther from those ranked lower than five.
Taking distance from these kinds of people may be a challenge at first, and like any major change in behavior, starting to say no might require you to overcome destructive behavioral patterns. Take one of the authors, Claudia: She had always pursued unavailable men. In the most extreme case, she pursued someone for almost two years, convinced she was in love with him despite having seen him just four times!
Eventually, she realized that she was addicted to unattained love, and started saying no – first to this particular man and then to her addiction.
To say no to her addiction, she went to a support group, which helped her prepare for a real relationship based on love, honor and respect. She’s now been happily married for over five years.
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Who should read The Power of No
- Anyone who wants to live a happier, healthier, more abundant life
- Anyone who feels they say yes too often
- Spiritually inclined people looking to have more meaningful and positive experiences
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