There’s never a time when we’ll say, “Now’s a good time for some misfortune.” It just happens, and sometimes all at once. And there’s only one response.

Try to improve yourself and your momentum, not circumstances you can’t control.

How Much of a Perfectionist Am I? (Quiz Link)

The second book I wrote was about perfectionism. Weird, isn’t it? I mean, not too many people think about it let alone write a book about it. But that’s because perfectionism is one of those “affects everything” traits that rarely gets credit for the destruction it can cause in a human life.

I made a quiz based on the science of perfectionism that assesses how perfectionistic a person’s mind is. It includes questions based on each of the five subsets I discuss in my book, How to Be an Imperfectionist. Ultimately, I created this quiz for these reasons:

Last week in the newsletter, I mentioned that life has been difficult for me lately, to the point where it’s comical. I won’t get into more details, because they don’t matter. Perspective matters. I’ve seen it by creating momentum every day in this storm.

Something else happened on Mother’s Day to help my perspective even more.

Charlie Munger is a 98-year-old billionaire investor, best friend of Warren Buffett, and vice chairman of the multinational conglomerate holding company Berkshire Hathaway. He is one of the most successful people in the history of the world in terms of wealth, health, and longevity. Munger has exceeded the typical person’s wildest expectations.

Why would someone so fortunate, who has crushed most conceivable expectations for a human life, say something as tame as “have low expectations?”

Here’s the problem: Low expectations are commonly misconstrued with ideas of low effort, apathy, and indifference to results. But quickly, let’s question these ideas.

I’m excited!

The Magic of Momentum is available in paperback! Click here to buy it.

The hardest part about writing books comes afterwards, when you have to figure out how to present them to the masses. This is especially difficult for me, as I never pick topics for SEO or popularity.

And that brings us to momentum. Nobody writes about momentum. Nobody searches for it, either. I looked, and there were only a handful of books about it, none of them popular.

Despite that, I found the concept of momentum fascinating and bursting with potential, in large part due to my experiences with it.

I’ll never forget the day (Dec 28, 2012) that I turned one push-up into a full workout (that I couldn’t do previously). That was 100% momentum, not habit. In fact, my habit at that time was to not succeed in that situation. Momentum proved stronger than my habit!

I’ve also noticed how easy it is to accept that “this is a bad day” or “this is a good day.” That’s momentum, too, and it tends to make small things into much bigger, weightier things.