True even for non-low stakes.............

 

When stakes are low, possibility is our playground. Curiosity is our guide. Mistakes are data. And the real reward is in watching yourself evolve.

-Tanmay Vora, from here

On trying.................

 The odds increase, the more you try.

-James Clear

Try differently................

 You’re more likely to unlock a big leap in performance by trying differently than by trying harder. You might be able to work 10% harder, but a different approach might work 10x better. Remain focused on the core problem, but explore a new line of attack. Persistence is not just about effort, but also strategy. Don’t merely try harder, try differently.

-James Clear

Like it's not 100%....................?

 Cutting calories by 25% can slow the rate of aging in humans and lead to a significant reduction in mortality risk, according to a new study from Columbia University.

-as lifted from here

Experimenting...................

 via

"So the conclusion is not, 'Do nothing and a great idea will come to you.'  The conclusion is, 'Do everything because you never know where the great idea will come from.'" . . . "Remember:  It's easy to experiment, but hard to change.  None of these people started with a grand vision and then worked toward it.  These people were not goal setters or planners; they were adventurers." . . . "Each quandary is a call for experimentation.  Each experiment a question put to the world.  Each answer is a journey.  Let life plan the itinerary.  Your job is to pack light and bring a camera."

Dale Dauten, The Max Strategy:  How A Businessman Got Stuck At An Airport And Learned To Make His Career Take Off

Rewards and risks...............

History shows that the way innovators make ideas into practical and affordable products or processes is trial and error. Edison understood that, as does Jeff Bezos, who made plenty of mistakes on his way to huge success. Says Bezos: ‘Our success at Amazon is a function of how many experiments we do per year, per month, per week.’ Among Silicon Valley’s best features is a forgiveness of going bust at least once. Capital there is patient and takes risks.

-Matt Ridley. as culled from this essay on unleashing trial and error, serendipity, speed, and innovation

Work..................................

“I would like my life to be a statement of love and compassion--and where it isn't, that's where my work lies.” 

-Ram Dass

I would vote........................

...........................................for some sustained incremental tinkering, before embarking on some grand plan:

Such problems are easier to diagnose than to cure. Reforming American healthcare will require an almighty effort. With politics gridlocked and soaking in lobbyist money, it’s not obvious that the US government is capable of running the kind of healthcare system that works elsewhere — even if Congress decides to try. But try it must, because the status quo is a tragedy.

News you can use......................

According to the National Weather Service, more than half of flood-related drownings take place after a vehicle has been driven into flood water. “A mere [six] inches of fast-moving flood water can knock over an adult,” the agency warns. Think your car is any safer? “It takes just 12 inches of rushing water to carry away most cars and just two feet of rushing water can carry away SUVs and trucks.”

-cut and pasted from here

Uh-oh............................

     True listening, total concentration on the other, is always a manifestation of love.  An essential part of true listening is the discipline of bracketing, the temporary giving up or setting aside of one's own prejudices, frames of reference and desires so as to experience as far as possible the speaker's world from the inside, stepping inside his or her shoes. . . . Since true listening is love in action, nowhere is more appropriate than in marriage.

-M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

Epidemic..................................

That Summer Rush published his own 363-page opus on the epidemic:  An Account of the Bilious Remitting Yellow Fever, as It Appeared in the City of Philadelphia in the Year 1793.  He explained in the preface that it had been delayed "by the want of health" and that he had gone ahead and published it "under the great disadvantages, of having been hastily copied from my notes, amid frequent professional interruptions," only because the end of summer was fast approaching, and if the yellow fever returned, he wanted the nations's capital, and all American port cities, to have his account as a resource.

-Stephen Fried,  Rush:  Revolution, Madness & The Visionary Doctor Who Became A Founding Father

So, imagine you are the leading medical practitioner in a city of 50,000 and five thousand citizens die in a single summer from yellow fever.  Further, you have no idea of its actual cause (a virus spread by infected mosquitoes.  Please remember that the existence of viruses wasn't discovered for another hundred years), nor do you have any idea of a cure (there still isn't one).   Although he tried various concoctions, including the use of mercury chloride, purging and blood-letting were the main tools in his medicine bag.  It is a miracle more didn't die. 

On guarantees............................

"Only one thing is ever guaranteed, that is that you will definitely not achieve the goal if you don’t take the shot."
-Wayne Gretzky

He was, I think, the first Canadian forward to play a true team game", said hockey writer and former NHL goalie Ken Dryden. The focus of the game prior to Gretzky's arrival, he said, especially among the Canadian teams, was on the player with the puck—in getting the puck to a star player who would make the big play. "Gretzky reversed that. He knew he wasn't big enough, strong enough, or even fast enough to do what he wanted to do if others focused on him. Like a magician, he had to direct attention elsewhere, to his four teammates on the ice with him, to create the momentary distraction in order to move unnoticed into the open ice where size and strength didn't matter. . . . Gretzky made his opponents compete with five players, not one, and he made his teammates full partners to the game. He made them skate to his level and pass and finish up to his level or they would be embarrassed."

Trying...........................

"Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up.  Day by day, and at the end of the day - if you live long enough - like most people, you will get out of life what you deserve."

-Charlie Munger

Imagine that..............................

     Richard Wiseman, a professor at the University of Hertfordshire, did a study of lucky and unlucky people to see if it was just random chance, spooky magic ... or if there were real differences that caused such different results in life.  It turns out luck isn't just serendipity or due to the paranormal.  A lot of it is about the choices people make.
     Studying over a thousand subjects, Wiseman found that lucky people maximize opportunities.  The study showed that they are more open to new experiences, more extroverted, and less neurotic.  They listen to their hunches.   Most of all, Wiseman says, lucky people just try stuff.


-Eric Barker, Barking Up The Wrong Tree:  The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Success Is (Mostly) Wrong

On seeking answers.....................

     How about the experts?  Their confusion is more sophisticated, wrapped in impressive jargon and elaborate mental construction.  They have predetermined belief systems into which they try to squeeze you.  It seems to work for a while and, then, it is just back to one's original state.
     It used to be that we could count on social institutions, but they have had their day;  nobody trusts them anymore.  We now have more watchdogs than institutions.  The hospitals are monitored by multiple agencies.  Nobody has time for the patients, who get lost in the shuffle.  Look down the corridors.  There are no doctors or nurses.  They are in the offices doing paperwork.  The whole scene is dehumanized.
     "Well,"  you say, "there have to be some experts who have the answers."  When upset, you go to a doctor or a psychiatrist, an analyst, a social worker, or an astrologer.  You take up religion, get philosophy, take the Erhard Seminars Training, tap yourself with EFT.  You get your chakras balanced, try some reflexology, go for ear acupuncture, do iridology, get healed with lights and crystals.
     You meditate, chant a mantra, drink green tea, try the Pentecostals, breathe in fire, and speak in tongues.  You get centered, learn NLP, try actualizations, work on visualizations, study psychology, join a Jungian group.  You get Rolfed, try psychedelics, get a psychic reading, jog, jazzercise, have colonics, get into nutrition and aerobics, hang up-side down, wear psychic jewelry.  Get more insight, bio-feedback, Gestalt therapy.
     You see your homeopath, chiropractor, naturopath.  You try kinesiology, discover your Enneagram type, get your meridans balanced, join a consciousness-raising group, take tranquilizers.  You get some hormone shots, try cell salts, have your minerals balanced, pray, implore, and beseech.  You learn astral projection.  Become a vegetarian.  Eat only cabbage.  Try macrobiotics, go organic, eat no GMO.  Meet up with Native American medicine men, do a sweat lodge.  Try Chinese herbs,  moxiocombustion, shiatsu, acupressure, feng shui.  You go to India.  Find a new guru.  Take off your clothes.  Swim in the Ganges.  Stare at the sun.  Shave your head.  Eat with your fingers, get really messy, shower in cold water.
     Sing tribal chants.  Relive past lives.  Try hypnotic regression.  Scream a primal scream.  Punch pillows.  Get Feldenkraised.  Join a marriage encounter group.  Go to Unity.  Write affirmations.  Make a vision board.  Get re-birthed.  Cast the I Ching.  Do the Tarot cards.  Study Zen.  Take more courses and workshops.  Read lots of books.  Do transactional analysis.  Get yoga lessons.  Get into the occult.  Study magic.  Work with a kahuna.  Take a shamanic journey.  Sit under a pyramid.  Read Nostradamus.  Prepare for the worst.
     Go on a retreat.  Try fasting.  Take amino acids.  Get a negative ion generator.  Join a mystery school.  Learn a secret handshake.  Try toning.  Try color therapy.  Try subliminal tapes.  Take brain enzymes, anti-depressants, flower remedies.  Look into strange fermented oddities from faraway places.  Hold hands in a circle and get high.  Renounce sex and going to the movies.  Wear some yellow robes.  Join a cult.
     Try the endless varieties of psychotherapy.  Take wonder drugs.  Subscribe to lots of journals.  Try the Pritikin diet.  Eat just grapefruit.  Get your palm read.  Think New Age thought.  Improve the ecology.  Save the planet.  Get an aura read.  Carry a crystal.  Get a Hindu sidereal astrological interpretation.  Visit a transmedium.  Go for sex therapy.  Try Tantric sex.  Get blessed by Baba Somebody.  Join an anonymous group.  Travel to Lourdes.  Soak in the hot springs.  Join Arica.  Wear therapeutic sandals.  Get grounded.  Get more prana and breathe out that stale black negativity.  Try golden needle acupuncture.  Check out snake gallbladders.  Try chakra breathing.  Get your aura cleaned.  Meditate in Cheops, the great pyramid in Egypt. ...
     Intuitively, we know that somewhere there is an ultimate answer.  We stumble down dark byways into cul-de-sacs and blind alleys;  we get exploited and taken, disillusioned, fed up, and we keep on trying.
     Where is our blind spot?  Why can't we find the answer? ...
     Maybe the solution is not "out there," and that's why we can'f find it.  Maybe we have so many belief systems that we are blinded to the obvious.

-David R. Hawkins,   Letting Go:  The Pathway Of Surrender

Ed Note:  Only tried twenty out of the more than 140 - so far.

In praise of worms (and stuff)...................?

It is probably not just worms. The impoverishment of our gut flora — the bacteria in our intestines — in the modern world, as a result of excessive hygiene and antibiotics, looks increasingly likely to be the cause of various other health issues, including obesity and possibly autism, though early experiments on the latter are inconclusive. Open Biome is a “stool bank” that will supply you with faecal transplants from healthy people to enrich your gut garden. It will also pay good money for faecal donations from healthy people. Now there’s a tip you did not expect to read in The Times.

I do hope you enjoy your lunch.

-concludes this Matt Ridely post

All you need to know.................

.........................................about regret minimization - here.

"So I wanted to project myself forward to age 80 and say, 'Okay, now I’m looking back on my life. I want to have minimized the number of regrets I have.'  I knew that when I was 80 I was not going to regret having tried this. I was not going to regret trying to participate in this thing called the Internet that I thought was going to be a really big deal. I knew that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not ever having tried. I knew that that would haunt me every day, and so, when I thought about it that way it was an incredibly easy decision.”

Do it anyway.........................

"Success cannot be guaranteed.  There are no safe battles."

-attributed to Winston Churchill

Try..............................

While there, the older Adams received a message from home reporting that the expenses of war had exhausted the loans he had secured in Amsterdam;  America could no longer pay its bills.  Adams would have to return to Holland.  He was in no condition for an ice-bound passage northward, and he felt there was little chance of success.   Nevertheless, as he wrote in his journal, "no man knows what he can bear until he tries," a sentiment that might have been translated into Latin in order to decorate the family coat of arms.

-James Traub,  John Quincy Adams:  Militant Spirit

possible........................

“Nothing [...] will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must be first overcome.” 

-Samuel Johnson, source and interesting back story here