Trying to learn......................

 

...............................something every day.

crafting a gift...............

 

No matter how marvellous the mountain-top epiphany, no matter how deep the vigil in the forest, if you cannot craft a gift from the experience, in the end the encounter will never quite accomplish itself.

-Martin Shaw

Minimizing regret, or..........................

 

.................................learning from Alfred Nobel.

When drinking largely sobers us..............

 

A little learning is a dangerous thing;

Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:

There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,

And drinking largely sobers us again.

Fired at first sight with what the Muse imparts,

In fearless youth we tempt the heights of Arts;

While from the bounded level of our mind

Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind,

But, more advanced, behold with strange surprise

New distant scenes of endless science rise!

So pleased at first the towering Alps we try,

Mount o’er the vales, and seem to tread the sky;

The eternal snows appear already past,

And the first clouds and mountains seem the last;

But those attained, we tremble to survey

The growing labours of the lengthened way;

The increasing prospect tires our wandering eyes,

Hills peep o’er hills, and Alps on Alps arise! -Alexander Pope

The catch.....................

 

Everyone has something to teach you, even if neither of you realizes it.

The catch is: it’s not their job to show you, it’s your job to figure out what you can learn.

-Mark Manson, from here

downstream......................

 

And that’s the funny thing: so many of our problems aren't even the actual problem. They are the downstream effect of some deeper, unseen problem. And the work to actually fix the problem usually has way less to do with fixing and way more with simply learning how to see it clearly in the first place.

-Mark Manson, from this episode

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

a healthy outlook.............

 

Since failure is inevitable, we would all benefit from learning how to fail better.

     On a trading desk, you are taught to expect to be wrong.  Surprisingly, that attitude is rare elsewhere in finance.  This is a shame because a healthy outlook on failure benefits businesses, governments, and just about everyone.

-Barry Ritholtz,  How Not To Invest: The Ideas, Numbers, and Behaviors That Destroy Wealth—And How To Avoid Them

Thirty five lessons......................

 

........................................from 35 years.

trying new things.............

 

On coping properly.......................

 

When I started law practice, I had respect for the power of genetic evolution and appreciation of man’s many evolution-based resemblances to less cognitively-gifted animals and insects. I was aware that man was a “social animal,” greatly and automatically influenced by behavior he observed in men around him. I also knew that man lived, like barnyard animals and monkeys, in limited-size dominance hierarchies, wherein he tended to respect authority and to like and cooperate with his own hierarchy members while displaying considerable distrust and dislike for competing men not in his own hierarchy.

But this generalized, evolution-based theory structure was inadequate to enable me to cope properly with the cognition I encountered. I was soon surrounded by much extreme irrationality, displayed in patterns and subpatterns. So surrounded, I could see that I was not going to cope as well as I wished with life unless I could acquire a better theory-structure on which to hang my observations and experiences. 

-Charlie Munger, from the opening of his speech, The Psychology of Human Misjudgment

begin with our own.................

 

There is much of mankind that a man can only learn from himself.  Behind every man's external life, which he leads in company, there is another which he leads alone, and which he carries with him apart. We see but one aspect of our neighbor, as we see but one side of the moon; in either case there is also a dark half, which is unknown to us.  We all come down to dinner, but each has a room to himself.  And if we would study the internal life of others, it seems essential that we should begin with our own.

-Walter Bagehot

the ocean of the unknown.........

 

There are frontiers where we are learning, and our desire for knowledge burns.  They are in the most minute reaches of the fabric of space, at the origins of the cosmos, in the nature of time, in the phenomenon of black holes, and in the workings of our own thought processes.  Here, on the edge of what we know, in contact with the ocean of the unknown, shines the mystery and beauty of the world, and its breathtaking.

-Carlo Rovelli, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

life its ownself................

 

Sometimes life sends you back to where you began so you can choose a different path forward.

The most important lessons in life can’t be taught. Only learned.

-Patrick Rhone

To the very last...................

 

     When Einstein died, his greatest rival, Bohr, found for him words of moving admiration.*  When a few years later Bohr in turn died, someone took a photograph of his blackboard in his study.  There's a drawing on it.  A drawing of the "light-filled box" in Einstein's thought experiment.  To the very last, the desire to challenge one-self and understand more.  And to the very last: doubt.

-Carlo Rovelli, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

*"With the death of Albert Einstein, a life in the service of science and humanity which was as rich and fruitful as any in the whole history of our culture has come to an end. Mankind will always be indebted to Einstein for the removal of the obstacles to our outlook which were involved in the primitive notions of absolute space and time." -Niels Bohr

the moral.....................

 

What matters is the moral.  If you got everything else wrong from The Odyssey, but you left understanding the importance of perseverance, the dangers of hubris, the risks of temptation and distraction, then you really learned something.

-Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic

imitation......................

 

We learn best through other people.  Our ability to learn from each other greatly exceeds our ability to solve problems on our own. . . . "The secret to our species' success lies not in our raw, innate intelligence or in any specialized mental abilities," writes Harvard anthropologist Joseph Henrich.  Instead, he argues it's the ability to learn easily from the innovations of others that makes us uniquely capable as a species. . . . Imitation is the foundation for human ingenuity.

-Scott H. Young, Get Better at Anything

Learned skills.......................

 

Once upon a time, social skills were acquired and honed during front porch conversations with neighbors, Little League games, bowling tournaments, poker or bridge nights, board games, and club meetings.

Those weren’t just meetings and events. They were training sessions in the soft skills that often are missing in the modern workplace. In those old-fashioned exchanges, we learned how to read one another, how to listen and tell jokes and stories along with how to deliver or receive sensitive news. Those are skills that require practice, often involving more than a few fumbles, and are rarely completely mastered.

-Michael Wade

First, ourselves....................

 

People can change. The only limit on what you can learn in a lifetime is how many years you get. There is not a hard stop on openness or curiosity. Change is difficult but people can change. It is right to ask them to do so because things change when people change.

It is right to ask ourselves to change, too. There are a few things in my life, in my heart, that are non-negotiable. The rest is up for discussion. It is good to require ourselves to be humble and curious and willing to learn. It is good to say things like I don’t know. I was wrong. I’m sorry. I’m learning. I could have done better. I will do better.

-Annie Mueller

part of the journey.................

 

     Being a trailblazer often means venturing into the unknown, where the way forward isn't always clear.  You'll encounter dead ends, false starts, and paths that seem promising but ultimately lead nowhere.  This is all part of the journey.  Each setback and wrong turn is not a failure, but a lesson that brings you closer to finding your true path.  The key is to keep moving, keep exploring, and learn from every experience along the way.

-George Raveling, What You're Made For: Powerful Life Lessons from My Career in Sports