Appropriate advice for....................

 

....................................kids of all ages:

When my kids were growing up we used to try to teach our kids “practice ignore” where they would just ignore a sibling or another kid who was annoying them. 

The process...............

 Why is improvement hard?

Part of the issue is everyone wants to improve, but nobody wants to destroy. Change often requires destruction. Or, at least, unlearning.

Let's call it gentle elimination. You may have to leave little habits, update current beliefs, eliminate comfortable patterns. When you want better outcomes, your daily norms may need to change. The process of improvement is not just about adding things you like.
Sometimes habits and patterns belong to who you were, not who you are trying to be. If you'd like something better, then a routine you are comfortable with may have to die.

-James Clear, from today's effort

war and peace.................

 

The most sophisticated villain creation happens in your own head.  You split yourself into parts and declare war.  The disciplined self fights the lazy self.  The ambitious self quarrels with the comfortable self.  The good self goes to war with the bad self.

This internal villainization feels productive because you're fighting your demons and conquering weakness.  You declare war on procrastination, make it the enemy, and fight it with willpower and discipline.  It fights back by getting stronger.  The harder you battle, the more energy you feed it.  Your resistance becomes its fuel.

Every internal villain follows the same pattern.  The more you fight anxiety, the more anxious you become about being anxious.  The more you battle negative thoughts, the more mental energy you spend thinking negative thoughts.  The more you battle against your body, the more your body wars against you. . . .

The solution is integration and understanding that your procrastination is trying to protect yourself from judgment, your anxiety is trying to keep you safe, and your comfortable self is trying to preserve energy for survival.

They are merely parts of you serving outdated functions.  Fighting them creates internal civil war, but understanding them creates internal peace.  The issue is peace doesn't provide the same chemical hit as war, so most people keep fighting themselves until they die.

-Stan Taylor, The Black Book of Power

let it go.........

 

Don't be afraid of verbal abuse or criticism.

     Only the morally weak feel compelled to defend or explain themselves to others.  Let the quality of your deeds speak on your behalf.  We can't control the impressions others form about us, and the effort to do so only debases our character.

     So, if anyone should tell you that a particular person has spoken critically of you, don't bother with excuses or defenses.  Just smile and reply, "I guess that person doesn't know about all my other faults.  Otherwise he wouldn't have mentioned only these."

-Attributed to Epictetus, from A Manual for Living

Faithfulness.................

 

     Faithfulness is not blind belief; it consists of steadfastly practicing the principle of shunning those things which are not within your control, leaving them to be worked out according to the natural system of responsibilities.  Cease trying to anticipate or control events.  Instead accept them with grace and intelligence.

-Epictetus, A Manual for Living

On avoiding anxiety-merchants................

 

I’m not going to link to any of these contagious anxiety-spreading pieces, for the same reason I don’t go around actively sneezing in people’s faces when I catch a cold. But it’s fair to say I find the topic a little triggering. Because this basic stance toward life – the anxious attempt to scramble to a place of psychological safety, to avoid being condemned to disaster and cast into the void – goes back a long way with me. So it all feels rather personal, and important for me to say that you don’t, actually, have to live like this. It won’t make you happier. It probably won’t even aid your career. You have the option of living with vastly more creativity and calm than the anxiety-merchants would have you believe – provided you can summon the strength of mind to screen them out.

-Oliver Burkeman, from this edition

Let it go...............

 

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

-William James, The Principles of Psychology

Hallelujah........................

 

This world is full of conflicts and full of things that cannot be reconciled. But there are moments when we can … reconcile and embrace the whole mess, and that’s what I mean by ‘Hallelujah.'

-Leonard Cohen, as channeled by Tim Ferriss

Let it go...................

 

There is too much tendency to look inward at one's own moods, and to try to evaluate them.  To stand on the outside and try to look inside is futile; whatever was there will go away.  This also applies to a nebulous thing described as "Happiness."  To try to identify it is like turning on a light to look at the darkness.  Analyze it, and it is gone.

-Striking Thoughts: Bruce Lee's Wisdom for Daily Living

seek..................

 

     Spirituality is one of those realities that you have only so long as you seek it; as soon as you think you have it, you've lost it.  In rediscovering this basic spiritual insight, the earliest members of Alcoholics Anonymous tapped the essence of open-endedness that characterizes a spirituality of imperfection.  Spirituality is boundless, unable to be fenced in:  We do not capture it; it captures us.  As much as we might like to "wrap things up," to lock spirituality in and hold it fast, it will forever escape our grasp.

-Kurtz and Ketcham, The Spirituality of Imperfection: Storytelling and the Search for Meaning

Really good advice.........

 

paradox........

Perhaps the greatest paradox in the story of spirituality is the mystical insight that we are able to experience release only if we ourselves let go.  This is the paradox of surrender.  Surrender begins with the acceptance that we are not in control of the matter at hand—in fact, we are not in absolute control of anything.

-Kurtz and Ketcham, The Spirituality of Imperfection: Storytelling and the Search for Meaning

hard enough to control your own.................

 

      The fact is, it is impossible to control someone else's thoughts.  Therefore, fearing what other people think, or trying to control their thoughts, is a complete waste of your time.

     You will never feel in control of your life, your feelings, your thoughts, or your actions until you stop being consumed with or trying to control what other people think about you.

-Mel Robbins, The Let Them Theory

Imperfection...............

 

     To deny imperfection is to disown oneself, for to be human is to be imperfect.  Spirituality, which is rooted in and revealed by uncertainties, inadequacies, helplessness, the lack and the failure of control, supplies a context and suggest a way of living in which our imperfections can be endured.  Spiritual sensibilities begin to flower when the soil is fertilized with the understanding that "something is awry."  There is, after all, something "wrong" with us.

-Kurtz and Ketcham, The Spirituality of Imperfection

your personal balance sheet..........

 

The most valuable financial asset is not needing to impress anyone.  

Not needing to impress other people, especially strangers, is an asset on your personal balance sheet that can be more valuable than anything else.

When you don't feel the need to impress other people, your desires fall. When your desires fall, your satisfaction with what you already have grows.  It is really that simple.

-Morgan Housel

Checking in with.......................

 

.......................................Alan Watts:

. . . only doubtful truth needs defense.

. . . to know truth one must first get rid of knowledge . . .

Logic, intelligence, and reason are satisfied, but the heart goes hungry.

Man, as a being of sense, wants his life to make sense, and he has found it hard to believe that it does so unless there is more than what he sees—unless there is an eternal order and an eternal life behind the uncertain and momentary experience of life-and-death.

If happiness always depends on something expected in the future, we are chasing a will-o'-the-wisp that ever eludes our grasp . . .

For it is the essence of scientific honest that you do not pretend to know what you do not know, and of the essence of scientific method that you do not employ hypotheses which cannot be tested.

At once new myths come into being—political and economic myths with extravagant promises of the best of futures in the present world.  These myths give the individual a certain sense of meaning by making him part of a vast social effort, in which he loses something of his own emptiness and loneliness.  Yet the very violence of these political religions betrays the anxiety beneath them—for they are but men huddling together and shouting to give themselves courage in the dark.

Faith, on the other hand, is an unreserved opening of the mind to the truth, whatever it may turn out to be.  Faith has no preconceptions; it is a plunge into the unknown.  Belief clings, but faith lets go.

Belief has thus become an attempt to hang on to life, to grasp and keep it for one's own.  But you cannot understand life and its mysteries as long as you try to grasp it.

To "have" running water you must let go of it and let it run.  The same is true of life and of God.

your innate humanness...................

 

There's a common illusion that spiritually evolved, loving people never have any negativity, as though they are already angelic.  They get annoyed that they still have negative feelings, and then it's compounded by their guilt and self-frustration.  They have to realize that feelings are transitory, whereas their intention to evolve remains constant.  Let go of feeling guilty that you are still just an ordinary human despite your angelic ambitions!  Having compassion towards your innate humanness, its nervous system, and the brain function that goes with it allows for greater equanimity.  Heavenly ambitions do not necessarily make us angels!

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

conquer the need..................

 

     The next time you face a political dispute or a personal disagreement, ask yourself: Is there any reason to fight about this?  Is arguing going to help solve anything?  Would an educated or wise person really be as quarrelsome as you might initially be inclined to be?  Or would they take a breath, relax, and resist the temptation for conflict?  Just think of what you could accomplish—and how much better you would feel—if you could conquer the need to fight and win every tiny little thing.

-Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic

demands....................

 

If we accept that life is imperfect, we'll make fewer self-defeating demands for perfection on ourselves and others.

-Brad Jacobs

stop digging.................

 

Today, give yourself the most simple and doable of tasks: just don't make stuff worse.  Whatever happens, don't add angry or negative emotions to the equation.  Don't react for the sake of reacting.  Leave it as it is.  Stop digging.  Then plan your way out.

-Ryan Holiday