Adjusting To Changes In Life Quotes

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Don't live the same day over and over again and call that a life. Life is about evolving mentally, spiritually, and emotionally.
Germany Kent
Cross a man and you struggle, one of you wins, you adjust and go on - or you lie there dead. Cross a woman and the universe is changed, once again, for cold anger requires an eternal vigilance in all matters of slight and offense
Gregory Maguire (Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (The Wicked Years, #1))
You cannot change the wind, but you can adjust the sails.
Elizabeth Edwards (Resilience: The New Afterword)
There are two kinds of anger: hot and cold. Boys and girls experience both, but as they grow up the anger separates according to the sex. Boys need hot anger to survive. They need inclination to fight, the drive to sink the knife into the flesh, the energy and initiative of fury. It's a requirement of hunting, of defense, of pride. Maybe of sex too. And girls need cold anger. They need the cold simmer, the ceaseless grudge, the talent to avoid forgiveness, the sidestepping of compromise. They need to know when they say something that they will never back down, ever, ever. It's the compensation for a more limited scope in the world. Cross a man and you struggle, one of you wins, you would adjust and go on -- or you lie there dead. Cross a woman and the universe is changed, once again, for cold anger requires an eternal vigilance in all matters of slight and offense.
Gregory Maguire (Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (The Wicked Years, #1))
When the winds of life blow hard and hit your boat, you've got to adjust your sails to keep afloat.
Mouloud Benzadi
Do you remember the time you told me you were afraid that you were a series of nasty surprises for me?” he asks him, and Jude nods, slightly. “You aren’t,” he tells him. “You aren’t. But being with you is like being in this fantastic landscape,” he continues, slowly. “You think it’s one thing, a forest, and then suddenly it changes, and it’s a meadow, or a jungle, or cliffs of ice. And they’re all beautiful, but they’re strange as well, and you don’t have a map, and you don’t understand how you got from one terrain to the next so abruptly, and you don’t know when the next transition will arrive, and you don’t have any of the equipment you need. And so you keep walking through, and trying to adjust as you go, but you don’t really know what you’re doing, and often you make mistakes, bad mistakes. That’s sometimes what it feels like.
Hanya Yanagihara (A Little Life)
Those who can not adjust to change will be swept aside by it. Those who recognize change and react accordingly will benefit.
Jim Rogers (A Gift to My Children: A Father's Lessons for Life and Investing)
Basic personality traits develop early in life and over time become inviolable, hardwired. Most people learn little from experience, rarely thinking of adjusting their behavior, see problems as emanating from those around them, and keep on doing what they do in spite of everything, for better or worse.
A.S.A. Harrison (The Silent Wife)
After a great blow, or crisis, after the first shock and then after the nerves have stopped screaming and twitching, you settle down to the new condition of things and feel that all possibility of change has been used up. You adjust yourself, and are sure that the new equilibrium is for eternity. . . But if anything is certain it is that no story is ever over, for the story which we think is over is only a chapter in a story which will not be over, and it isn't the game that is over, it is just an inning, and that game has a lot more than nine innings. When the game stops it will be called on account of darkness. But it is a long day.
Robert Penn Warren (All the King's Men)
People that hold onto hate for so long do so because they want to avoid dealing with their pain. They falsely believe if they forgive they are letting their enemy believe they are a doormat. What they don’t understand is hatred can’t be isolated or turned off. It manifests in their health, choices and belief systems. Their values and religious beliefs make adjustments to justify their negative emotions. Not unlike malware infesting a hard drive, their spirit slowly becomes corrupted and they make choices that don’t make logical sense to others. Hatred left unaddressed will crash a person’s spirit. The only thing he or she can do is to reboot, by fixing him or herself, not others. This might require installing a firewall of boundaries or parental controls on their emotions. Regardless of the approach, we are all connected on this "network of life" and each of us is responsible for cleaning up our spiritual registry.
Shannon L. Alder
I guess it’s a lot better to initiate change while you can than it is to try to react and adjust to it. Maybe we should move our own Cheese.” “What
Spencer Johnson (Who Moved My Cheese?: An A-Mazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life)
Life is a series of adjustments; You can make changes along the way, but if you dodn't start moving forward you'll never get anywhere!
Kimora Lee Simmons (Fabulosity: What It Is and How to Get It)
Be yourself....and make the world adjust!
Germany Kent
A sad fact, of course, about adult life is that you see the very things you'll never adapt to coming toward you on the horizon. You see them as the problems they are, you worry like hell about them, you make provisions, take precautions, fashion adjustments; you tell yourself you'll have to change your way of doing things. Only you don't. You can't. Somehow it's already too late. And maybe it's even worse than that: maybe the thing you see coming from far away is not the real thing, the thing that scares you, but its aftermath. And what you've feared will happen has already taken place. This is similar in spirit to the realization that all the great new advances of medical science will have no benefit for us at all, thought we cheer them on, hope a vaccine might be ready in time, think things could still get better. Only it's too late there too. And in that very way our life gets over before we know it. We miss it. And like the poet said: The ways we miss our lives are life.
Richard Ford
Wisdom comes from making mistakes, having the courage to face them, and make adjustments moving forward based upon the knowledge aquired through those experiences.
Ken Poirot
They are quiet for a long time. “Do you remember the time you told me you were afraid that you were a series of nasty surprises for me?” he asks him, and Jude nods, slightly. “You aren’t,” he tells him. “You aren’t. But being with you is like being in this fantastic landscape,” he continues, slowly. “You think it’s one thing, a forest, and then suddenly it changes, and it’s a meadow, or a jungle, or cliffs of ice. And they’re all beautiful, but they’re strange as well, and you don’t have a map, and you don’t understand how you got from one terrain to the next so abruptly, and you don’t know when the next transition will arrive, and you don’t have any of the equipment you need. And so you keep walking through, and trying to adjust as you go, but you don’t really know what you’re doing, and often you make mistakes, bad mistakes. That’s sometimes what it feels like.” They’re silent. “So basically,” Jude says at last, “basically, you’re saying I’m New Zealand.
Hanya Yanagihara (A Little Life)
If you are thinking about making some adjustments in you life to allow you to help change the world, my heartfelt recommendation is not to spend too much time thinking about it. Just dive in.
John Wood (Leaving Microsoft to Change the World: An Entrepreneur's Odyssey to Educate the World's Children)
Tolstoy said, 'The antagonism between life and conscience may be removed either by a change of life or by a change of conscience.' Many of us have elected to adjust our consciences rather than our lives. Our powers of rationalization are unlimited. They allow us to live in luxury and indifference while others, whom we could help if we chose to, starve and go to hell.
Randy Alcorn (Money, Possessions, and Eternity: A Comprehensive Guide to What the Bible Says about Financial Stewardship, Generosity, Materialism, Retirement, Financial Planning, Gambling, Debt, and More)
In the end, it seems to me that forgiveness may be the only realistic antidote we are offered in love, to combat the inescapable disappointments of intimacy." “Women’s sense of integrity seems to be entwined with an ethic of care, so that to see themselves as women as to see themselves in a relationship of connection…I believe that many modern women, my mother included, carry within them a whole secret New England cemetery, wherein that have quietly buried in many neat rows– the personal dreams they have given up for their families…(Women) have a sort of talent for changing form, enabling them to dissolve and then flow around the needs of their partners, or the needs of their children, or the needs of mere quotidian reality. They adjust, adapt, glide, accept.” “The cold ugly fact is that marriage does not benefit women as much as it benefits men. From studies, married men perform dazzingly better in life, live longer, accumulate more, excel at careers, report to be happier, less likely to die from a violent death, suffer less from alcoholism, drug abuse, and depression than single man…The reverse is not true. In fact, every fact is reverse, single women fare much better than married women. On average, married women take a 7% pay cut. All of this adds up to what Sociologists called the “Marriage Benefit Imbalance”…It is important to pause here and inspect why so women long for it (marriage) so deeply.
Elizabeth Gilbert (Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage)
The neurons that do expire are the ones that made imitation possible. When you are capable of skillful imitation, the sweep of choices before you is too large; but when your brain loses its spare capacity, and along with it some agility, some joy in winging it, and the ambition to do things that don't suit it, then you finally have to settle down to do well the few things that your brain really can do well--the rest no longer seems pressing and distracting, because it is now permanently out of reach. The feeling that you are stupider than you were is what finally interests you in the really complex subjects of life: in change, in experience, in the ways other people have adjusted to disappointment and narrowed ability. You realize that you are no prodigy, your shoulders relax, and you begin to look around you, seeing local color unrivaled by blue glows of algebra and abstraction.
Nicholson Baker (The Mezzanine)
But being with you is like being in this fantastic landscape,' he continuous slowly. 'You think it's one thing, a forest, and then suddenly it changes, and it's a meadow, or a jungle, or cliffs, or ice. And they are all beautiful, but they're strange as well, and you don't have a map, and you don't understand how you got from one terrain to the next so abruptly, and you don't know when the next transition will arrive, and you don't have any of the equipment you need. And so you keep walking through, and trying to adjust as you go, but you don't really know what you're doing, and often you make mistakes, bad mistakes. That's sometimes what it feels like.' They're silent. 'So basically,' Jude says at last, 'basically you're saying I'm New Zealand.
Hanya Yanagihara (A Little Life)
It’s good if you can accept your life—you’ll notice Your face has become deranged trying to adjust To it. Your face thought your life would look Like your bedroom mirror when you were ten. That was a clear river touched by mountain wind. Even your parents can’t believe how much you’ve changed.
Robert Bly (Morning Poems: A Sensational Daily Poetry Collection on Waking, Mourning, and the Mystery of Creation)
My life's a tangle of past and present, like two separate puzzles with their pieces tumbled together. Nothing fits.
Emily Murdoch (If You Find Me)
My character was tested because I didn’t think I would have to compromise so much of who I was as a person. I changed so much because I gave so much of me and lost myself in the process. Sadly, when I lost myself, I did not notice. It just happened; it was more of a habit I formed to adjust. I was damaged from the inside out because my life wasn’t mine anymore. I was someone I had to be; not who I wanted to be. I wasn’t someone that made “me” happy. I made everyone else happy, and it wasn’t enough. Losing yourself is scary.
Charlena E. Jackson
I learned much later to worship her, just as I learned to delight in cleanliness, knowing, even as I learned, that the change was adjustment without improvement.
Toni Morrison (The Bluest Eye)
Poetry could surely slow a guy down.
Will Willingham (Adjustments)
We have the fascinating ability to come to terms with the drastic changes of life. We modify, alter, and adjust…
Nyla K. (For the Fans)
Believe me, most people resist change, even when it promises to be for the better. But change will come, and if you acknowledge this simple but indisputable fact of life, and understand that you must adjust to all change, then you will have a head start.
Arthur Ashe
Flexibility is a learned mental skill. In today’s dynamic world, your effectiveness as a professional depends on your readiness to adjust quickly to the moments of need or opportunity, adversity, and change.
Jennifer Touma (Moment of Impact: Harness the Explosive Power of Three to Maximize Your Mind, Life, and Business)
Life is perphas after all simply this thing and then the next. We are all of us improvising. We find a careful balance only to discover that gravity or stasis or love or dismay or illness or some other force suddenly tows us in an unexpected direction. We wake up to find that we have changed abruptly in a way that is perculiar and inexplicable. We are constanly adjusting, making it up, feeling our way forward, figuring out how to be and where to go next. We work it out, how to be happy, but sooner or later comes a change-sometimes something small, sometimes everything at once- and we have to start over again, feeling our way back to a provisional state of contentment.
Anne Giardini (The Sad Truth About Happiness)
It's amazing how people can find all the mistakes in the world concerning another person, but look into the mirror every day without making changes within. Stop looking down your nose at others, What does that achieve? We all can make room for improvements. Most of the time it starts with a little attitude adjustment.
Amaka Imani Nkosazana (Sweet Destiny)
Conflicting egos destroy many relationships. Lasting, stable marriages are a true treasure because they demand that both parties adjust to the constant cellular flux of their partner as they metaphase through changing seasons of life.
Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
Things fucking change, dude! Life changes. Priorities change. Pre-fucking-conceived notions change. You have to adjust and change with them or your ass gets left behind.
K. Bromberg (Crashed (Driven, #3))
Poetry can be a peculiar gateway, Will. It can be a way into all kinds of things that don’t seem to have a way in, or that we don’t even know we want in.
Will Willingham (Adjustments)
Friends who love us know that motherhood is about transitioning--and adjusting, constantly, to those changes. We must become masters of change because that is what life demands of us.
Meg Meeker (The 10 Habits of Happy Mothers: Reclaiming Our Passion, Purpose, and Sanity)
Many things are spoken out loud, but be careful of those words that you whisper to yourself. You have the ability to uplift yourself or condemn yourself. If your thoughts are depressingly running across your mind. You need to make adjustments and change your way of thinking.
Amaka Imani Nkosazana
Adjusting to a world that is continually inconsistent and untrustworthy is a major problem for the borderline. The borderline’s universe lacks pattern and predictability. Friends, jobs, and skills can never be relied upon. The borderline must keep testing and retesting all of these aspects of his life; he is in constant fear that a trusted person or situation will change into the total opposite—absolute betrayal. A hero becomes a devil; the perfect job becomes the bane of his existence. The borderline cannot conceive that individual or situational object constancy can endure. He has no laurels on which to rest. Every day he must begin anew trying desperately to prove to himself that the world can be trusted. Just because the sun has risen in the East for thousands of years does not mean it will happen today. He must see it for himself each and every day. CASE
Jerold J. Kreisman (I Hate You--Don't Leave Me: Understanding the Borderline Personality)
Our Lord did not come to this planet, live a perfect life, and become a worthy atonement for the sins of the world so that those who become His children can merely be well adjusted, live morally upright lives, and enjoy personal happiness and success. He died to redeem us from the penalty and power of a sinful heart that keeps us from being useful servants of the living God.
Jim Berg (Changed into His Image: God's Plan for Transforming Your Life)
...while she respected all of the Seven, her relationship with Illium was different. He’d been the first one she’d truly come to know, his humor and wit critical in helping her adjust to this new life. Even among the Seven, he seemed to hold a special place: no one was ever angry at Bluebell. The idea that power might change him, chill that joyous heart was even worse than the thought of losing him to it.
Nalini Singh (Archangel's Enigma (Guild Hunter, #8))
Like walking in the darkness-- When you walk there long enough, You adjust to it. You forget how dark it is. Then, a glimpse of day! How bright he is! Illuminating everything, My love, my life, my light. But all too soon the curtain falls Bringing back the darkened night. Unaccustomed to it now. Where once it was a peaceful place, It seems as dark as dark can be. Never quite as comfortable On this strange familiar path Fumbling in the dark and watching now For new light to help me find my way.
Kate McGahan
Imagine a peaceful river running through the countryside. That’s your river of well-being. Whenever you’re in the water, peacefully floating along in your canoe, you feel like you’re generally in a good relationship with the world around you. You have a clear understanding of yourself, other people, and your life. You can be flexible and adjust when situations change. You’re stable and at peace. Sometimes, though, as you float along, you veer too close to one of the river’s two banks. This causes different problems, depending on which bank you approach. One bank represents chaos, where you feel out of control. Instead of floating in the peaceful river, you are caught up in the pull of tumultuous rapids, and confusion and turmoil rule the day. You need to move away from the bank of chaos and get back into the gentle flow of the river. But don’t go too far, because the other bank presents its own dangers. It’s the bank of rigidity, which is the opposite of chaos. As opposed to being out of control, rigidity is when you are imposing control on everything and everyone around you. You become completely unwilling to adapt, compromise, or negotiate. Near the bank of rigidity, the water smells stagnant, and reeds and tree branches prevent your canoe from flowing in the river of well-being. So one extreme is chaos, where there’s a total lack of control. The other extreme is rigidity, where there’s too much control, leading to a lack of flexibility and adaptability. We all move back and forth between these two banks as we go through our days—especially as we’re trying to survive parenting. When we’re closest to the banks of chaos or rigidity, we’re farthest from mental and emotional health. The longer we can avoid either bank, the more time we spend enjoying the river of well-being. Much of our lives as adults can be seen as moving along these paths—sometimes in the harmony of the flow of well-being, but sometimes in chaos, in rigidity, or zigzagging back and forth between the two. Harmony emerges from integration. Chaos and rigidity arise when integration is blocked.
Daniel J. Siegel (The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind)
So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.
Eugene H. Peterson (The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language)
We are undone by the specificity of our dreams. Reality can never live up to the shining edifices we forge inside our fantasies: Life, in all its confusing complexity, is destined to be a disappointment in comparison. The lottery winner discovers that the riches don’t equal happiness; the longed-for baby is colicky and sour; losing fifty pounds still doesn’t bring you love; winning the election doesn’t trigger societal change. Life is a constant emotional calibration, then: the tiny adjustments we make every day as we come up against our discontents. We ride this seesaw, between hope and disenchantment, seeking some sort of equilibrium.
Janelle Brown (What Kind of Paradise)
Fungi are veteran survivors of ecological disruption. Their ability to cling on—and often flourish—through periods of catastrophic change is one of their defining characteristics. They are inventive, flexible, and collaborative. With much of life on Earth threatened by human activity, are there ways we can partner with fungi to help us adapt? These may sound like the delirious musings of someone buried up to their neck in decomposing wood chips, but a growing number of radical mycologists think exactly this. Many symbioses have formed in times of crisis. The algal partner in a lichen can’t make a living on bare rock without striking up a relationship with a fungus. Might it be that we can’t adjust to life on a damaged planet without cultivating new fungal relationships
Merlin Sheldrake (Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures)
Never row upstream and fight the currents of life, or passively wait for the tides to change. To get to your destination, calibrate your inner compass, adjust your sails to the winds, and look up at the guidance of the stars.
Anthon St. Maarten
If you want someone else to behave differently, the only workable strategy is to adjust your own behaviour. You cannot productively control, own, change, press, or motivate someone else. These are things we can only do for ourselves.
Kevin Horsley (The Happy Mind: A Simple Guide to Living a Happier Life Starting Today)
Reflecting on various aspects of our lives is essential for a person to grow and adjust to changing phases in their life. Self-analysis entails examining a person’s existing level of self-esteem and documenting the inner voice that speaks to a person, which is frequently either affirming of self-defeating. Failure to periodically engage in self-analysis, make crucial revisions in our personas, and modify our thinking patterns when we encounter transformative events in life can lead to mood disorders, burnout, and other emotional maladies.
Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
Look everywhere. There are miracles and curiosities to fascinate and intrigue for many lifetimes: the intricacies of nature and everything in the world and universe around us from the miniscule to the infinite; physical, chemical and biological functionality; consciousness, intelligence and the ability to learn; evolution, and the imperative for life; beauty and other abstract interpretations; language and other forms of communication; how we make our way here and develop social patterns of culture and meaningfulness; how we organise ourselves and others; moral imperatives; the practicalities of survival and all the embellishments we pile on top; thought, beliefs, logic, intuition, ideas; inventing, creating, information, knowledge; emotions, sensations, experience, behaviour. We are each unique individuals arising from a combination of genetic, inherited, and learned information, all of which can be extremely fallible. Things taught to us when we are young are quite deeply ingrained. Obviously some of it (like don’t stick your finger in a wall socket) is very useful, but some of it is only opinion – an amalgamation of views from people you just happen to have had contact with. A bit later on we have access to lots of other information via books, media, internet etc, but it is important to remember that most of this is still just opinion, and often biased. Even subjects such as history are presented according to the presenter’s or author’s viewpoint, and science is continually changing. Newspapers and TV tend to cover news in the way that is most useful to them (and their funders/advisors), Research is also subject to the decisions of funders and can be distorted by business interests. Pretty much anyone can say what they want on the internet, so our powers of discernment need to be used to a great degree there too. Not one of us can have a completely objective view as we cannot possibly have access to, and filter, all knowledge available, so we must accept that our views are bound to be subjective. Our understanding and responses are all very personal, and our views extremely varied. We tend to make each new thing fit in with the picture we have already started in our heads, but we often have to go back and adjust the picture if we want to be honest about our view of reality as we continually expand it. We are taking in vast amounts of information from others all the time, so need to ensure we are processing that to develop our own true reflection of who we are.
Jay Woodman
At its core, Stoicism, like the sturdy oak tree, stands firm amidst the torrential downpour of life’s distractions. It teaches us that while we may not command the winds to change, we possess the power to adjust our sails, to guide our minds through the tumultuous sea of life’s happenings.
Kevin L. Michel (The Power of the Present: A Stoic's Guide to Unyielding Focus)
The old intergenerational give-and-take of the country-that-used-to-be, when everyone knew his role and took the rules dead seriously, the acculturating back-and-forth that all of us here grew up with, the ritual post-immigrant struggle for success turning pathological in, of all places, the gentleman farmer's castle of our superordinary Swede (a character). A guy stacked like a deck of cards for things to unfold entirely differently. In no way prepared for what is going to hit him. How could he, with all his carefully calibrated goodness, have known that the stakes of living obediently were so high? Obedience is embraced to lower the stakes. A beautiful wife. A beautiful house. Runs his business like a charm... This is how successful people live. They're good citizens. They feel lucky. They feel grateful. God is smiling down on them. There are problems, they adjust. And then everything changes and it becomes impossible. Nothing is smiling down on anybody. And who can adjust then? Here is someone not set up for life's working out poorly, let alone for the impossible. ... the tragedy of the man not set up for tragedy -- that is every man's tragedy.
Philip Roth (American Pastoral)
We tend to make adjustments in our lives to get by, to survive. Sometimes we don't actually heal. We make changes. We deny. We mask. We cover up. We hide things. I could not change the fact Shellie committed suicide while I was away no more than I could change the fact she left me the poem. Eventually, I put the poem away to separate Shellie and the thoughts of her from my day-to-day life. I quit carrying a wallet because the wallet reminded me of the poem, and the poem reminded me I was helpless.
Scott Hildreth (Broken People)
Life's full of events - they occur and you adjust, you roll and move on. But at some point you realize some events are actually developments. You realize there's a big plan out there you know nothing about, and a development is a first step in that new direction. Sometimes things feel like big-time developmens but in time you adjust, you find a new way and realize they didn't throw you off course, they didn't change you. They were just events. The tricky part is telling the difference between the two.
Adam Johnson (Fortune Smiles)
I think it is cruel to expect the constant presence of any one family member (to tend to the ill). Just as we have to breathe in and breathe out, people have to "recharge their batteries" outside the sickroom at times, live a normal life from time to time; we cannot function efficiently in the constant awareness of illness. I have heard many relatives complain that members of the family went on pleasure trips over weekends or continued to go to the theater or movie. They blamed them for enjoying things while someone at home was terminally ill. I think it is more meaningful for the patient and his family to see that the illness does not totally disrupt a household or completely deprive all members of any pleasurable activities; rather, the illness may allow for a gradual adjustment and change toward the kind of home it is going to be when the patient is no longer around...The family too has a need to deny or avoid the sad realities at times in order to face them better when their presence is really needed.
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (On Death and Dying: What the Dying Have to Teach Doctors, Nurses, Clergy and Their Own Families)
There’s freedom in acceptance. I realize everything has changed and I’ve tried to adjust my outlook accordingly. But I still grieve her. I grieve the loss of her and what might have been. And as time goes by and the grief fades but doesn’t quite disappear, I’ve learned not to fight it. I lost the love of my life, and I will always feel her loss.
Sylvain Reynard (Gabriel's Promise (Gabriel's Inferno, #4))
The physicists called it an adjustment of quantum emphasis. But the effect was to change the role of the observer. Of you and me. For the will of the observer to matter. So man could control his environment directly through the force of his desire, rather than through machinery.” I had the feeling that if I died he would carry on saying his piece to my corpse. “Unfortunately that wheel wasn’t just turned—it was set turning. It hasn’t stopped. In fact, like so many things in nature, the process has a tipping point and we’re reaching it. The fractures in the world, in the walls between mind and matter, between energy and will, between life and death, they’re all growing. And everything is in danger of falling through the cracks. Each time these powers, the ability to influence energy or mass or existence, are used, the divergence grows. These are the magics you know as being fire-sworn, or rock-sworn, or as necromancy and the like. The more they are used, the easier they become, and the wider the world is broken open. And this Dead King of yours is just another symptom. Another example of a singular force of will being used to change the world and, in doing so, accelerating the turn of that wheel we released.
Mark Lawrence (Emperor of Thorns (Broken Empire, #3))
Other people are not here to fulfill our needs or meet our expectations, nor will they always treat us well. Failure to accept this will generate feelings of anger and resentment. Peace of mind comes with taking people as they are and emphasizing the positive. Cheaters prosper; many of them do. And even if they don’t they are not going to change, because, as a rule, people don’t change—not without strong motivation and sustained effort. Basic personality traits develop early in life and over time become inviolable, hardwired. Most people learn little from experience, rarely think of adjusting their behavior, see problems as emanating from those around them, and keep on doing what they do in spite
A.S.A. Harrison (The Silent Wife)
Life has had to deal with environmental change, especially climate change, since the beginning of its existence on Earth. Species adjust or go extinct, and both have happened. For life-forms with our kinds of cells—eukaryotic, the kind with distinct organelles—the average existence of a species is about 1 million years, and, on average, one species goes extinct a year, at least of the species we have named and know, including those we know only from fossil records." -Dan Botkin, excerpt from THE MOON IN THE NAUTILUS SHELL.
Daniel B. Botkin (Moon in the Nautilus Shell: Discordant Harmonies Reconsidered: From Climate Change to Species Extinction, How Life Persists in an Ever-Changing World)
Telling women’s stories was—and would always be—Jackson’s major fictional project. As she had in The Road Through the Wall and the stories of The Lottery, with Hangsaman Jackson continued to chronicle the lives of women whose behavior does not conform to society’s expectations. Neither an obedient daughter nor a docile wife-in-training, Natalie represents every girl who does not quite fit in, who refuses to play the role that has been predetermined for her—and the tragic psychic consequences she suffers as a result. During the postwar years, Betty Friedan would later write, the image of the American woman “suffered a schizophrenic split” between the feminine housewife and the career woman: “The new feminine morality story is . . . the heroine’s victory over Mephistopheles . . . the devil inside the heroine herself.” That is precisely what happens in Hangsaman. Unfortunately, it was a story that the American public, in the process of adjusting to the changing roles of women and the family in the wake of World War II, was not yet ready to countenance.
Ruth Franklin (Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life)
Things fucking change, dude! Life changes. Priorities change. Pre-fucking-conceived notions change. You have to adjust and change with them or your ass gets left behind.
K.Bromberg
I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination. ‘’Jimmy Dean
Benjamin Smith (MINDSET: How Positive Thinking Will Set You Free & Help You Achieve Massive Success In Life)
Life is boring when everything is perfect. Life is exciting and joyful when we continuously adjust and change to overcome the imperfection in life.
Debasish Mridha
If I were facing a firing squad, I’d ask them to hold on just one second, because I have a wedgie and it is very uncomfortable. Let me adjust myself, and then you can shoot me.
Jarod Kintz (Who Moved My Choose?: An Amazing Way to Deal With Change by Deciding to Let Indecision Into Your Life)
changing a default setting involves three steps: new exposures, reflection, and commitment to change.
Rad Wendzich (Your Default Settings: Adjust Your Autopilot to Build a More Stable and Impactful Life)
Chess is a miniature version of life. To be successful, you need to be disciplined, assess resources, consider responsible choices and adjust when circumstances change.
Susan Polgar
Going forward, you must adjust to the new reality, be more self directed, and learn to be productive under the reign of uncertainty, unpredictability, and unstable times.
Jennifer Touma (Moment of Impact: Harness the Explosive Power of Three to Maximize Your Mind, Life, and Business)
But, as I’d come to realize about life during a war, nothing stayed the same for long. Just when you thought you’d adjusted and adapted and found a way to cope, the situation changed.
Hazel Gaynor (When We Were Young & Brave)
Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn’t something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn’t get in, and walk through it, step by step.
Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)
The feeling that you are stupider than you were is what finally interests you in the really complex subjects of life: in change, in experience, in the ways other people have adjusted to disappointment and narrowed ability. You realize that you are no prodigy, your shoulders relax, and you begin to look around you, seeing local color unrivaled by blue glows of algebra and abstraction.
Nicholson Baker (The Mezzanine)
AFFIRM TO YOURSELF 'I am free of criticism. I have given up complaining and blaming. I easily adjust myself to change. My life enjoys divine guidance; therefore, I always head in the right direction.
Sirshree (365 HAPPY QUOTES – DAILY INSPIRATIONS FROM SIRSHREE)
I’ve had time to recover and grow and move on with my life, but—I never do. Never. What I’ve done is adjust. Bend. Amend. Change. Learn to live without the things I once had. That’s what you do when you lose people you love. They say that once someone dies, they’re always with you in spirit; it’s something I know to be true, because I feel my parents every second of every day. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. It only hurts less.
Sara Ney (The Failing Hours (How to Date a Douchebag, #2))
The seasons change to teach us the very inevitability of change. Our duty is to adjust our sails and flow with the current of change – adjust and learn, adapt and modify to the newness that life presents from time to time.
Sanchita Pandey (Lessons from My Garden)
Today, I take the time to get my friends and acquaintances current on the shifts in my inner life. I communicate clearly and openly. I allow time for people to adjust to the ways in which I have changed. I, too, adjust to the change in others.
Julia Cameron (Transitions)
Will asked the same questions as many times as he’d read the verse. What did Keats want to do, why would it take so many years, and what the hell ever got done just because a guy decided to overwhelm himself in poetry called by an old fashioned word?
Will Willingham (Adjustments)
I think of our backyard pond growing up. Of the goldfish we'd bring home, bobbing in plastic bags on the surface of the water. My dad explained they needed time to adjust to the temperature of the pond before being released. If such a small creature required such care, imagine the complex process a victim must word through in order to integrate back into daily life. There is no right way, there is only listening to what is good and comfortable for your body. Maybe now you are terrified, bobbing inside the clear plastic container around you, thinking, I am trapped, this is not how it's supposed to be. Just remember: the temperature is slowly changing, you are adjusting. You will make it into that pond. With a little more time, you'll be free.
Chanel Miller (Know My Name)
Once you have an image of what the inside of your drawers will look like, you can begin folding. The goal is to fold each piece of clothing into a simple, smooth rectangle. First, fold each lengthwise side of the garment toward the center (such as the left-hand, then right-hand, sides of a shirt) and tuck the sleeves in to make a long rectangular shape. It doesn’t matter how you fold the sleeves. Next, pick up one short end of the rectangle and fold it toward the other short end. Then fold again, in the same manner, in halves or in thirds. The number of folds should be adjusted so that the folded clothing when standing on edge fits the height of the drawer. This is the basic principle that will ultimately allow your clothes to be stacked on edge, side by side, so that when you pull open your drawer you can see the edge of every item inside. If you find that the end result is the right shape but too loose and floppy to stand up, it’s a sign that your way of folding doesn’t match the type of clothing.
Marie Kondō (The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing (Magic Cleaning #1))
My definition: A transition is a vital period of adjustment, creativity, and rebirth that helps one find meaning after a major life disruption. But how do you enter this mysterious state? Does it happen inevitably or do you somehow have to decide? And if so, how do you do that?
Bruce Feiler (Life Is in the Transitions: Mastering Change at Any Age)
I had a choice. I could remain steadfast in my believe that I preferred to be single and probably end up a miserable, lonely bastard for the rest of my life. Or I could accept that the wind blew in change whenever it felt like it and you either adjusted or fought against it to your ruin.
Samantha Young (Skies Over Caledonia (The Highlands, #4))
Every man is the sum total of his reactions to experience. As your experiences differ and multiply, you become a different man, and hence your perspective changes. This goes on and on... So it would seem foolish, would it not, to adjust our lives to the demands of a goal we see from a different angle every day? How could we ever hope to accomplish anything... The answer, then, must not deal with goals at all... We do not strive to be firemen, we do not strive to be bankers, nor policemen, nor doctors. WE STRIVE TO BE OURSELVES. But don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean that we can’t BE firemen, bankers, or doctors...but that we must make the goal conform to the individual, rather than make the individual conform to the goal... Beware of looking for goals: look for a way of life. Decide how you want to live and then see what you can do to make a living WITHIN that way of life.
Hunter S. Thompson
The impact created by change in your habits is similar to the effect of shifting the route of an airplane by just a few degrees. Imagine you are flying from Los Angeles to New York City. If a pilot leaving from L.A.X. adjusts the heading just 3.5 degrees south, you will land in Washington, D.C., instead of New York. Such a small change is barely noticeable at takeoff - the nose of the airplane just moves a few feet - but when magnified across the entire United States, you end up hundreds of miles apart. Similarly, a slight change in your daily habits can guide your life to a very distant destination.
James Clear (Atomic Habits)
If all change is sea change, he thought on the train back to Mortlake, then he could describe his own crisis – whatever it had been – as distributed rather than catastrophic. Sea change precludes the single cause, is neither convulsive nor properly conclusive: perhaps, like anyone five fathoms down into their life, he had simply experienced a series of adjustments, of overgrowths and dissolvings – processes so slow they might still be going on, so that the things happening to him now were not so much an aftermath as the expanding edge of the disaster itself, lapping at recently unrecognisable coasts.
M. John Harrison (The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again)
We can only create new connections between things that are already stored in our brains. The same applies to our settings. We can’t change our beliefs or habits to a different course of action if we don’t know our options. To change a default setting, then, you must first realize that there’s another way.
Rad Wendzich (Your Default Settings: Adjust Your Autopilot to Build a More Stable and Impactful Life)
Consider yourself and the cello. As you play the music moves out to the listener, and also enters the core of your own being, for somehow you are tuned to the cello. Well, I am persuaded that this is because you are a chord. I am a chord. Our DNA dictates our physicality-made up of billions of little notes-on a basic level. Add to that our geography, background et cetera, and you have your original score. Life is the layering of chords, but the underlying one that we are will never change. This brings us to string theory and love. Our personal chord resonates with the personal ones of others, and sometimes we encounter another person who is completely harmonious with us. It is a dominant, overwhelming attraction on the DNA level. However, such a person can appear to be our opposite-and that's where this 'opposites attract' notion comes from-because they have tuned their chord in a different way. In reality, we are attracted to the person we have chosen not to become, an alternative adjustment to a chord that is nearly the same as our own. The clashing portions of the chords sounding together advance the richness of it. So when you make love you aren't expressing emotions or showing affection, you are merging melodies. You are players in the same symphony.
Sarah Emily Miano (Encyclopaedia Of Snow)
I want to show it's possible to be happy and enjoy life, even if things seem awful. Did you know that, after a few years, lottery winners go back to the exact same levels of happiness as before they won? And people in serious accidents do, too, once they've adjusted to their changed lives? Happiness is a state of mind, Annie.
Eva Woods (Something Like Happy)
There is a vast difference between being a Christian and being a disciple. The difference is commitment. Motivation and discipline will not ultimately occur through listening to sermons, sitting in a class, participating in a fellowship group, attending a study group in the workplace or being a member of a small group, but rather in the context of highly accountable, relationally transparent, truth-centered, small discipleship units. There are twin prerequisites for following Christ - cost and commitment, neither of which can occur in the anonymity of the masses. Disciples cannot be mass produced. We cannot drop people into a program and see disciples emerge at the end of the production line. It takes time to make disciples. It takes individual personal attention. Discipleship training is not about information transfer, from head to head, but imitation, life to life. You can ultimately learn and develop only by doing. The effectiveness of one's ministry is to be measured by how well it flourishes after one's departure. Discipling is an intentional relationship in which we walk alongside other disciples in order to encourage, equip, and challenge one another in love to grow toward maturity in Christ. This includes equipping the disciple to teach others as well. If there are no explicit, mutually agreed upon commitments, then the group leader is left without any basis to hold people accountable. Without a covenant, all leaders possess is their subjective understanding of what is entailed in the relationship. Every believer or inquirer must be given the opportunity to be invited into a relationship of intimate trust that provides the opportunity to explore and apply God's Word within a setting of relational motivation, and finally, make a sober commitment to a covenant of accountability. Reviewing the covenant is part of the initial invitation to the journey together. It is a sobering moment to examine whether one has the time, the energy and the commitment to do what is necessary to engage in a discipleship relationship. Invest in a relationship with two others for give or take a year. Then multiply. Each person invites two others for the next leg of the journey and does it all again. Same content, different relationships. The invitation to discipleship should be preceded by a period of prayerful discernment. It is vital to have a settled conviction that the Lord is drawing us to those to whom we are issuing this invitation. . If you are going to invest a year or more of your time with two others with the intent of multiplying, whom you invite is of paramount importance. You want to raise the question implicitly: Are you ready to consider serious change in any area of your life? From the outset you are raising the bar and calling a person to step up to it. Do not seek or allow an immediate response to the invitation to join a triad. You want the person to consider the time commitment in light of the larger configuration of life's responsibilities and to make the adjustments in schedule, if necessary, to make this relationship work. Intentionally growing people takes time. Do you want to measure your ministry by the number of sermons preached, worship services designed, homes visited, hospital calls made, counseling sessions held, or the number of self-initiating, reproducing, fully devoted followers of Jesus? When we get to the shore's edge and know that there is a boat there waiting to take us to the other side to be with Jesus, all that will truly matter is the names of family, friends and others who are self initiating, reproducing, fully devoted followers of Jesus because we made it the priority of our lives to walk with them toward maturity in Christ. There is no better eternal investment or legacy to leave behind.
Greg Ogden (Transforming Discipleship: Making Disciples a Few at a Time)
Revise what you need to as changes occur and new information becomes available. Be willing to go back, look again, and consider where and how you can make adjustments in order to stay in alignment with your vision, mission, passion, and purpose. Rather than rehashing the past, know that your life is a working draft and you can revise the story you write about it. Let the revising begin.
Susan C. Young
Deliberate practice involves well-defined, specific goals and often involves improving some aspect of the target performance; it is not aimed at some vague overall improvement. Once an overall goal has been set, a teacher or coach will develop a plan for making a series of small changes that will add up to the desired larger change. Improving some aspect of the target performance allows a performer to see that his or her performances have been improved by the training. Deliberate practice is deliberate, that is, it requires a person’s full attention and conscious actions. It isn’t enough to simply follow a teacher’s or coach’s directions. The student must concentrate on the specific goal for his or her practice activity so that adjustments can be made to control practice.
K. Anders Ericsson (Peak: Unleashing Your Inner Champion Through Revolutionary Methods for Skill Acquisition and Performance Enhancement in Work, Sports, and Life)
I wish I could answer your question. All I can say is that all of us, humans, witches, bears, are engaged in a war already, although not all of us know it. Whether you find danger on Svalbard or whether you fly off unharmed, you are a recruit, under arms, a soldier." "Well, that seems kinda precipitate. Seems to me a man should have a choice whether to take up arms or not." "We have no more choice in that than in whether or not to be born." "Oh, I like choice, though," he said. "I like choosing the jobs I take and the places I go and the food I eat and the companions I sit and yarn with. Don't you wish for a choice once in a while ?" She considered, and then said, "Perhaps we don't mean the same thing by choice, Mr. Scoresby. Witches own nothing, so we're not interested in preserving value or making profits, and as for the choice between one thing and another, when you live for many hundreds of years, you know that every opportunity will come again. We have different needs. You have to repair your balloon and keep it in good condition, and that takes time and trouble, I see that; but for us to fly, all we have to do is tear off a branch of cloud-pine; any will do, and there are plenty more. We don't feel cold, so we need no warm clothes. We have no means of exchange apart from mutual aid. If a witch needs something, another witch will give it to her. If there is a war to be fought, we don't consider cost one of the factors in deciding whether or not it is right to fight. Nor do we have any notion of honor, as bears do, for instance. An insult to a bear is a deadly thing. To us... inconceivable. How could you insult a witch? What would it matter if you did?" "Well, I'm kinda with you on that. Sticks and stones, I'll break yer bones, but names ain't worth a quarrel. But ma'am, you see my dilemma, I hope. I'm a simple aeronaut, and I'd like to end my days in comfort. Buy a little farm, a few head of cattle, some horses...Nothing grand, you notice. No palace or slaves or heaps of gold. Just the evening wind over the sage, and a ceegar, and a glass of bourbon whiskey. Now the trouble is, that costs money. So I do my flying in exchange for cash, and after every job I send some gold back to the Wells Fargo Bank, and when I've got enough, ma'am, I'm gonna sell this balloon and book me a passage on a steamer to Port Galveston, and I'll never leave the ground again." "There's another difference between us, Mr. Scoresby. A witch would no sooner give up flying than give up breathing. To fly is to be perfectly ourselves." "I see that, ma'am, and I envy you; but I ain't got your sources of satisfaction. Flying is just a job to me, and I'm just a technician. I might as well be adjusting valves in a gas engine or wiring up anbaric circuits. But I chose it, you see. It was my own free choice. Which is why I find this notion of a war I ain't been told nothing about kinda troubling." "lorek Byrnison's quarrel with his king is part of it too," said the witch. "This child is destined to play a part in that." "You speak of destiny," he said, "as if it was fixed. And I ain't sure I like that any more than a war I'm enlisted in without knowing about it. Where's my free will, if you please? And this child seems to me to have more free will than anyone I ever met. Are you telling me that she's just some kind of clockwork toy wound up and set going on a course she can't change?" "We are all subject to the fates. But we must all act as if we are not, or die of despair. There is a curious prophecy about this child: she is destined to bring about the end of destiny. But she must do so without knowing what she is doing, as if it were her nature and not her destiny to do it. If she's told what she must do, it will all fail; death will sweep through all the worlds; it will be the triumph of despair, forever. The universes will all become nothing more than interlocking machines, blind and empty of thought, feeling, life...
Philip Pullman (The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials, #1))
But if it turns out that she really can adjust them from without? Reshuffle the deck of his past, leave a few cards out, sub in several from a sunnier suit, where was the harm in that? Harm had to be the opposite, didn’t it? Letting the earliest truth metastasize into something that might kill you? The gangrenous spread of one day throughout the life span of a body— wasn’t that something worth stopping?
Karen Russell (Vampires in the Lemon Grove: Stories)
Without sex, the only way for bacteria to adapt is through mutation, which is caused by reproductive error or environmental damage. Most mutations are hurtful; they make for even less successful bacteria—though eventually, with luck, a mutation would arise that made for a more heat-resistant bacterium. Asexual adaptation is problematic because the dictate of the world, “Change or die,” runs directly counter to one of the primary dictates of life: “Maintain the integrity of the genome.” In engineering, this type of clash is called a coupled design. Two functions of a system clash so that it is not possible to adjust one without negatively affecting the other. In sexual reproduction, by contrast, the inherent scrambling, or recombination, affords a vast scope for change, yet still maintains genetic integrity.
Seth Lloyd (Programming the Universe: A Quantum Computer Scientist Takes on the Cosmos)
Family is the nucleus unit of any society. Although modern science allows us to create life in a petri dish, I believe God designed humans—like all other animals—to be born of a male and a female union in the context of family according to His divine plan for our spiritual development. Family grounds us and grows us. We first learn how to relate to others through our family relationships. We learn to change and adapt according to the needs of our family. For instance, a mother will notice the subtle moves and shiftings of her baby in her womb. As the baby squirms and moves about, the mother will adjust her body to make the baby more comfortable. Sometimes I think back to the days when I carried my own babies. Tending to their tiniest needs, I began to understand that God tends to our smallest needs just as well.
Taffi Dollar (Embracing the Love God Wants You to Have: A Life of Peace, Joy, and Victory)
I suppose a part of me wished when I put my key in the door, it would magically open into a different apartment, a different life, a place so bright with joy and excitement that I'd be temporarily blinded when I first saw it. I pictured what a documentary film crew would capture in my face as I glimpsed this whole new world before me, like in those home improvement shows Reva liked to watch when she came over. First, I'd cringe with surprise. But then, once my eyes adjusted to the light, they'd grow wide and glisten with awe. I'd drop the keys and the coffee and wander in, spinning around with my jaw hanging open, shocked at the transformation of my dim, gray apartment into a paradise of realized dreams. But what would it look like exactly? I had no idea. When I tried to imagine this new place, all I could come up with was a cheesy mural of a rainbow, a man in a white bunny costume, a set of dentures in a glass, a huge slice of watermelon on a yellow plate—an odd prediction, maybe, of when I'm ninety-five and losing my mind in an assisted-living facility where they treat the elderly residents like retarded children. I should be so lucky, I thought. I opened the door to my apartment, and, of course, nothing had changed.
Ottessa Moshfegh (My Year of Rest and Relaxation)
On every trip to Kya's, Tate took school or library books, especially on marsh creatures and biology. Her progress was startling. She could read anything now, her said, and once you can read anything you can learn everything. It was up to her. "Nobody's come close to filling their brains," he said. "We're all like giraffes not using their necks to reach the higher leaves." Alone for hours, by the light of the lantern, Kya read how plants and animals change over time to adjust to the ever-shifting earth; how some cells divide and specialize into lungs or hearts, while others remain uncommitted as stem cells in case they're needed later. Birds sing mostly at dawn because the cool, moist air of morning carries their songs and their meanings much farther. All her life, she'd seen these marvels at eye level, so nature's ways came easily to her.
Delia Owens (Where the Crawdads Sing)
For many of us who are still adjusting to the very real way that our friends becoming mothers often means 'losing' them as friends, yet another announcement can feel like a bell tolling on that friendship. We've heard our friends say to us, 'It's not going to change anything,' and we know that they mean it at the time, but they're probably going to move towards a new circle of friends who are mothers, and that's how it needs to be. And we're not mothers.
Jody Day (Living the Life Unexpected: How to find hope, meaning and a fulfilling future without children)
Pay attention to your dreams and follow them closely to where they may lead you. No matter how crazy or seemingly impossible they appear — to you or the world. Yet, be open to the possibility that the road, even the destination will likely be different than what you had imagined. Then it matters not what actually happens. For the journey becomes the destination, constantly metamorphosing with each and every step along the way. You see, taking a bold leap into the unknown means trusting that you will either land on a feathered bed or you will come to realise that you can fly, perhaps toward undreamed of heights. This, as I conceive, is what flowing through a full life entails: Acknowledging the risks of seeking to materialise your dreams, courageously embracing the uncertainty rather than fearing it, and confidently going for the jump anyway. Abandon the comfort. Float away. Adjust the sails according to the Winds of Change.
Omar Cherif
Top 10 Reasons to Establish Written Goals for Your Life       10. Written goals strengthen your character by promoting a long-term perspective.       9. Written goals allow you to lead your life as opposed to simply managing it.       8. Written goals provide internal, permanent, and consistent motivation.       7. Written goals help you stay focused—to concentrate on what’s most important.       6. Written goals enhance your decision-making ability.       5. Written goals simultaneously require and build self-confidence.       4. Written goals help you create the future in advance.       3. Written goals help you to control changes—to adjust your sails, to work with the wind rather than against it.       2. Written goals heighten your awareness of opportunities that are consistent with your goals.       1. And finally, the most important benefit of setting effective goals is the person you become as a result of the pursuit!
Tommy Newberry (Success Is Not an Accident: Change Your Choices; Change Your Life)
In such cases, however, there is no change to serve as a signal that something important has happened. Because the challenge we face is purely subjective, it is not likely to call forth a plan the way an external change does. So we lack a road map by which we can track our progress. We do not have anything to prepare for or any future to adjust to. We have only the gradual (or sudden) discovery that our lives, as we have been living them, aren't workable or livable as is any longer.
William Bridges (The Way Of Transition: Embracing Life's Most Difficult Moments)
If we adjust our posture, it will change the way we speak. If we adjust our posture, it will change the way we listen. If we adjust our posture, we will see the person, not the category they fall into. This is true of race, religion, political affiliation, sexual orientation, socioeconomic background, and any other category we can dream up. Doing life with people who don't look or think or vote like us is the whole point - it's our call to arms! Love thy neighbor wasn't a suggestion; it was a command, you guys. How in the world are you going to love your neighbor if you don't KNOW your neighbor? I don't mean waving hello at the grocery store; I mean actually pushing ourselves outside of our comfort zone and DOING LIFE with different kinds of people... even if we wonder if they're getting it all wrong. Heck, ESPECIALLY if we think they're getting it all wrong. We need to be in a wider community not because we're attempting to sharpen their clarity on a subject but because we're hoping to soften the edges of our own hearts.
Rachel Hollis (Girl Wash your Face)
We must adjust our emotive outlook before drowning in bitterness and choking on despair. We must periodically weed out pangs of disenchantment and scour disillusionment from our hearts in order to console and replenish the depleted resolve of our spirit. Finding ourselves crippled by physical injury, weakened by illness, or left stranded in a vulnerable emotional condition brought on by grief, disappointment, and other physiological or psychological crisis, we must each examine our values and update our mythological mental maps in order to generate a source of stirred concentrate steeling a rejuvenated march onward. Perhaps our sources of revitalizing energy will stem from gaining a new perspective on ancient challenges, by establishing new hopes and dreams, or by delving a lofty purpose behind our efforts. Alternatively, perhaps we only develop the resolve to resume our scrupulous assault on the important issues of life by orchestrating a fundamental transformation of the self, a complete restructuring of our values and goals.
Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
Relationship with God is not only expressed in the creation of Scripture, it is also part of the intention of Scripture. Consider that to understand Romans as Paul would have wanted his letter understood is to grasp the kinds of ordinary human changes-in thought, feeling, action-encouraged in it. Also consider that the book of Revelation is designed to enthrall us in the imagination of heaven and to adjust our lives accordingly. The denunciations of the prophets are structured to grip us with a sense of condemnation and sincere repentance.
James C. Wilhoit (Discovering Lectio Divina: Bringing Scripture into Ordinary Life)
Competition is the spice of sports; but if you make spice the whole meal you'll be sick. The simplest single-celled organism oscillates to a number of different frequencies, at the atomic, molecular, sub-cellular, and cellular levels. Microscopic movies of these organisms are striking for the ceaseless, rhythmic pulsation that is revealed. In an organism as complex as a human being, the frequencies of oscillation and the interactions between those frequencies are multitudinous. -George Leonard Learning any new skill involves relatively brief spurts of progress, each of which is followed by a slight decline to a plateau somewhat higher in most cases than that which preceded it…the upward spurts vary; the plateaus have their own dips and rises along the way…To take the master’s journey, you have to practice diligently, striving to hone your skills, to attain new levels of competence. But while doing so–and this is the inexorable–fact of the journey–you also have to be willing to spend most of your time on a plateau, to keep practicing even when you seem to be getting nowhere. (Mastery, p. 14-15). Backsliding is a universal experience. Every one of us resists significant change, no matter whether it’s for the worse or for the better. Our body, brain and behavior have a built-in tendency to stay the same within rather narrow limits, and to snap back when changed…Be aware of the way homeostasis works…Expect resistance and backlash. Realize that when the alarm bells start ringing, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re sick or crazy or lazy or that you’ve made a bad decision in embarking on the journey of mastery. In fact, you might take these signals as an indication that your life is definitely changing–just what you’ve wanted….Be willing to negotiate with your resistance to change. Our preoccupation with goals, results, and the quick fix has separated us from our own experiences…there are all of those chores that most of us can’t avoid: cleaning, straightening, raking leaves, shopping for groceries, driving the children to various activities, preparing food, washing dishes, washing the car, commuting, performing the routine, repetitive aspects of our jobs….Take driving, for instance. Say you need to drive ten miles to visit a friend. You might consider the trip itself as in-between-time, something to get over with. Or you could take it as an opportunity for the practice of mastery. In that case, you would approach your car in a state of full awareness…Take a moment to walk around the car and check its external condition, especially that of the tires…Open the door and get in the driver’s seat, performing the next series of actions as a ritual: fastening the seatbelt, adjusting the seat and the rearview mirror…As you begin moving, make a silent affirmation that you’ll take responsibility for the space all around your vehicle at all times…We tend to downgrade driving as a skill simply because it’s so common. Actually maneuvering a car through varying conditions of weather, traffic, and road surface calls for an extremely high level of perception, concentration, coordination, and judgement…Driving can be high art…Ultimately, nothing in this life is “commonplace,” nothing is “in between.” The threads that join your every act, your every thought, are infinite. All paths of mastery eventually merge. [Each person has a] vantage point that offers a truth of its own. We are the architects of creation and all things are connected through us. The Universe is continually at its work of restructuring itself at a higher, more complex, more elegant level . . . The intention of the universe is evolution. We exist as a locus of waves that spreads its influence to the ends of space and time. The whole of a thing is contained in each of its parts. We are completely, firmly, absolutely connected with all of existence. We are indeed in relationship to all that is.
George Leonard
Alone for hours, by the light of the lantern, Kya read how plants and animals change over time to adjust to the ever-shifting earth; how some cells divide and specialize into lungs or hearts, while others remain uncommitted as stem cells in case they’re needed later. Birds sing mostly at dawn because the cool, moist air of morning carries their songs and their meanings much farther. All her life, she’d seen these marvels at eye level, so nature’s ways came easily to her. Within all the worlds of biology, she searched for an explanation of why a mother would leave her offspring.
Delia Owens (Where the Crawdads Sing)
Aswepulluptothe industrial facility that houses the newspaper’s operations, I feel immense dread. It is because my life is utterly changed, and yet returning to work symbolises picking up the reins of continuity. It trivialises Victoria’s death. How can resuming work and paying the bills be more important than mourning the loss of one’s own child? Such grief will take a lifetime. If I get out of the car and go in through the entrance, it means suppressing that grief. It means the farce begins of having people think that you accept she is dead. And it is the beginning of ‘After’.
Linda Collins (Loss Adjustment)
They are quiet for a long time. 'Do you remember the time you told me you were afraid that you were a series of nasty surprises for me?' he asks him, and Jude nods, slightly. 'You aren’t,' he tells him. 'You aren’t. ‘Being with you is like being in this fantastic landscape,’ he continues, slowly. ‘You think it’s one thing, a forest, and then suddenly it changes and it’s a meadow, or a jungle, or cliffs of ice. And they’re all beautiful, but they’re strange as well, and you don’t have a map, and you don’t understand how you got from one terrain to the next so abruptly, and you don’t know when the next transition will arrive, and you don’t have any of the equipment you need. And so you keep walking through, and trying to adjust as you go, but you don’t really know what you’re doing, and often you make mistakes, bad mistakes. That’s sometimes what it feels like.’ They’re silent. ‘So basically,’ Jude says at last, ‘basically, you’re saying I’m New Zealand.’ It takes him a second to realize Jude is joking, and when he does he begins to laugh, unhingedly, with relief and sorrow, and he turns Jude toward him and kisses him. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Yes, you’re New Zealand.
Hanya Yanagihara (A Little Life)
Life is perhaps after all simply this thing and then the next. We are all of us improvising. We find a careful balance only to discover that gravity or stasis or love or dismay or illness or some other force suddenly tows us in an unexpected direction. We wake up to find that we have changed abruptly in a way that is peculiar and inexplicable. We are constantly adjusting, making it up, feeling our way forward, figuring out how to be happy, but sooner or later comes a change-sometimes something small, sometimes everything at once-and we have to start over again, feeling our way back to a provisional state of contentment.
Anne Giardini (The Sad Truth About Happiness)
Naturalization, on the other hand, also proved to be a failure. The whole naturalization system of European countries fell apart when it was confronted with stateless people, and this for the same reasons that the right of asylum had been set aside. Essentially naturalization was an appendage to the nation-state's legislation that reckoned only with "nationals," people born in its territory and citizens by birth. Naturalization was needed in exceptional cases, for single individuals whom circumstances might have driven into a foreign territory. The whole process broke down when it became a question of handling mass applications for naturalization: even from the purely administrative point of view, no European civil service could possibly have dealt with the problem. Instead of naturalizing at least a small portion of the new arrivals, the countries began to cancel earlier naturalizations, partly because of general panic and partly because the arrival of great masses of newcomers actually changed the always precarious position of naturalized citizens of the same origin. Cancellation of naturalization or the introduction of new laws which obviously paved the way for mass denaturalization shattered what little confidence the refugees might have retained in the possibility of adjusting themselves to a new normal life; if assimilation to the new country once looked a little shabby or disloyal, it was now simply ridiculous. The difference between a naturalized citizen and a stateless resident was not great enough to justify taking any trouble, the former being frequently deprived of important civil rights and threatened at any moment with the fate of the latter. Naturalized persons were largely assimilated to the status of ordinary aliens, and since the naturalized had already lost their previous citizenship, these measures simply threatened another considerable group with statelessness.
Hannah Arendt (The Origins of Totalitarianism)
films like The Never-Ending Story (1984), Stranger than Fiction (2006), and The Adjustment Bureau (2011). Have you seen any of these films? Then you understand hermeneutics. In each case, the story revolves around a protagonist engaging his own life as a fictional story being written either in this world or in another, seemingly by someone else. As he reads and interprets the text of his life, however, he discovers that its story or plot changes. He discovers the circle or loop of hermeneutics. He discovers that as he engages his cultural script as text creatively and critically he is rereading and rewriting himself. He is changing the story.
Whitley Strieber (The Super Natural: A New Vision of the Unexplained)
Language learning never stops. No matter how much you know, there will always be more to learn. Nothing can change that, and the most successful language learners such as Kató Lomb recognise that and adjust accordingly, right from the start. Learning a new language is an endlessly exciting and rewarding journey. As you set out on it, you can look forward to the exhilarating rush of learning new words, and the immense satisfaction of forming whole sentences and making yourself understood. These highs will always eclipse the lows, as you will realise one day that you can’t imagine what life was like when you couldn’t speak the language you’re learning now.
Alex Rawlings (How to Speak Any Language Fluently: Fun, stimulating and effective methods to help anyone learn languages faster)
Whether working in the yard or just going about the daily business of life, you are continually adjusting, trimming, touching, shaping, and tinkering with the wealth of things around you. It may be difficult for you to know when to stop. We are all torn between the extremes of taking care of things and leaving them alone, and we question whether many things could ever get along without us. We find ourselves with pruning shears in hand, snipping away at this or that, telling ourselves that we're only being helpful, redefining something else's space, removing that which is unappealing to us. It's not that we really want to change the world. We just want to fix it up slightly. We'd like to lose a few pounds or rid ourselves of some small habit. Maybe we'd like to help a friend improve his situation or repair a few loose ends in the lives of our children. All of this shaping and controlling can have an adverse affect. Unlike someone skilled in the art of bonsai gardening, we may *unintentionally* stunt much natural growth before it occurs. And our meddling may not be appreciated by others. Most things will get along superbly without our editing, fussing, and intervention. We can learn to just let them be. As a poem of long ago puts it, "In the landscape of spring, the flowering branches grow naturally, some are long, some are short.
Gary Thorp (Sweeping Changes: Discovering the Joy of Zen in Everyday Tasks)
The beauty of theatre was that it was a moving, changing art form—only those who watch the same performance night in after night out see the real naturalistic drama at work—the small changes, adjustments, changes in articulation or intonation, the addition of a cough or hiccup, a longer pause rife with more (or less) meaning, the character’s movement across the stage a step slower, a step closer to the audience, the change of a word here and there, an overall change in mood and tone, the actors becoming (or not) the characters more fully, blending in with them, losing themselves in the lines, in the characterizations, in a drama that is simultaneously unfolding and becoming more and more verisimilitudinous as time marches on. This is the real narrative—while the character changes on stage in an instant, the play changes slowly, unnoticeably (unnoticeable to those closest to it perhaps), like the face of a man in his thirties, like his beliefs about life, his motives, all slowly as if duplicating itself day by day, filling itself and becoming more and more itself, the rehearsal of Self, the dress rehearsal of Self, the performance of Self, the extended performance of Self, the encore…—it appears to be the same show, played over and over again with the same details to different crowds, and yet something happens. Something changes. It is not the same show.
John M. Keller
...Mother had always advised against sharing domestic troubles outside the family. They would only return as unwelcome rumor. But I trusted Eleanor, so when we stopped to admire the waves crashing and the cry of the seagulls, I spoke of the changes in my marriage, hoping for some insight to my dilemma. 'My dear,' Eleanor said, 'you can't expect a marriage to remain as it is in the beginning. If your souls continued to burn for each other in that way, you would be cinders.' 'Then what is the point? Why do we marry for life, only to see love fade away?' 'Ah, but true love doesn't fade away. It changes, deepens. It seems to disappear at times, only to come back in a different way. Think of early love like a wave in the ocean, building and building until it tumbles from its own height. Then the calm, the drawing back, only to swell and crash again. When you get past the breakers, you don't feel the crash, but the water is still lifting and falling in life's rhythm.' ...I adjusted my hat to better shield my eyes from the blinding sun. 'It seems I pushed through the breakers only to find my husband wasn't with me on the other side.' 'Then you must swim until you find him.' Eleanor kicked seaweed from the path of sandpipers, skittering from approaching foam. 'Don't be tempted back into the breakers, seeking another for the journey. You may find the ocean spits you back out.
Tracey Enerson Wood (The Engineer's Wife)
Guilt plays a pro-social function in strengthening relationships; it encourages taking responsibility, motivates amendatory behaviors such as apology or confession, leads to higher quality solutions to crises and is associated with more constructive anger management … Guilt is also associated with positive empathy and the ability to acknowledge and understand others’ points of view. In contrast shame is associated with responses that are injurious to social relationships… Shame, too, seems to be a driving force in traumatized behavior. Negotiation feels like a defeat, a reminder of the earlier violation. Giving in, adjusting, and changing feel life-threatening. Difference, as to the Supremacist, becomes a threat.
Sarah Schulman (Conflict Is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair)
Nature vs. nurture is part of this—and then there is what I think of as anti-nurturing—the ways we in a western/US context are socialized to work against respecting the emergent processes of the world and each other: We learn to disrespect Indigenous and direct ties to land. We learn to be quiet, polite, indirect, and submissive, not to disturb the status quo. We learn facts out of context of application in school. How will this history, science, math show up in our lives, in the work of growing community and home? We learn that tests and deadlines are the reasons to take action. This puts those with good short-term memories and a positive response to pressure in leadership positions, leading to urgency-based thinking, regardless of the circumstance. We learn to compete with each other in a scarcity-based economy that denies and destroys the abundant world we actually live in. We learn to deny our longings and our skills, and to do work that occupies our hours without inspiring our greatness. We learn to manipulate each other and sell things to each other, rather than learning to collaborate and evolve together. We learn that the natural world is to be manicured, controlled, or pillaged to support our consumerist lives. Even the natural lives of our bodies get medicated, pathologized, shaved or improved upon with cosmetic adjustments. We learn that factors beyond our control determine the quality of our lives—something as random as which skin, gender, sexuality, ability, nation, or belief system we are born into sets a path for survival and quality of life. In the United States specifically, though I see this most places I travel, we learn that we only have value if we can produce—only then do we earn food, home, health care, education. Similarly, we learn our organizations are only as successful as our fundraising results, whether the community impact is powerful or not. We learn as children to swallow our tears and any other inconvenient emotions, and as adults that translates into working through red flags, value differences, pain, and exhaustion. We learn to bond through gossip, venting, and destroying, rather than cultivating solutions together. Perhaps the most egregious thing we are taught is that we should just be really good at what’s already possible, to leave the impossible alone.
Adrienne Maree Brown (Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds)
The Resemblance Between Your Life And A Dog I never intended to have this life, believe me— It just happened. You know how dogs turn up At a farm, and they wag but can’t explain. It’s good if you can accept your life—you’ll notice Your face has become deranged trying to adjust To it. Your face thought your life would look Like your bedroom mirror when you were ten. That was a clear river touched by mountain wind. Even your parents can’t believe how much you’ve changed. Sparrows in winter, if you’ve ever held one, all feathers, Burst out of your hand with a fiery glee. You see them later in hedges. Teachers praise you, But you can’t quite get back to the winter sparrow. Your life is a dog. He’s been hungry for miles, Doesn’t particularly like you, but gives up, and comes in.
Robert Bly (Morning Poems: A Sensational Daily Poetry Collection on Waking, Mourning, and the Mystery of Creation)
With one final flip the quarter flew high into the air and came down on the mattress with a light bounce. It jumped several inches off the bed, high enough for the instructor to catch it in his hand. Swinging around to face me, the instructor looked me in the eye and nodded. He never said a word. Making my bed correctly was not going to be an opportunity for praise. It was expected of me. It was my first task of the day, and doing it right was important. It demonstrated my discipline. It showed my attention to detail, and at the end of the day it would be a reminder that I had done something well, something to be proud of, no matter how small the task. Throughout my life in the Navy, making my bed was the one constant that I could count on every day. As a young SEAL ensign aboard the USS Grayback, a special operation submarine, I was berthed in sick bay, where the beds were stacked four high. The salty old doctor who ran sick bay insisted that I make my rack every morning. He often remarked that if the beds were not made and the room was not clean, how could the sailors expect the best medical care? As I later found out, this sentiment of cleanliness and order applied to every aspect of military life. Thirty years later, the Twin Towers came down in New York City. The Pentagon was struck, and brave Americans died in an airplane over Pennsylvania. At the time of the attacks, I was recuperating in my home from a serious parachute accident. A hospital bed had been wheeled into my government quarters, and I spent most of the day lying on my back, trying to recover. I wanted out of that bed more than anything else. Like every SEAL I longed to be with my fellow warriors in the fight. When I was finally well enough to lift myself unaided from the bed, the first thing I did was pull the sheets up tight, adjust the pillow, and make sure the hospital bed looked presentable to all those who entered my home. It was my way of showing that I had conquered the injury and was moving forward with my life. Within four weeks of 9/11, I was transferred to the White House, where I spent the next two years in the newly formed Office of Combatting Terrorism. By October 2003, I was in Iraq at our makeshift headquarters on the Baghdad airfield. For the first few months we slept on Army cots. Nevertheless, I would wake every morning, roll up my sleeping bag, place the pillow at the head of the cot, and get ready for the day.
William H. McRaven (Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life...And Maybe the World)
Normal psychic life depends upon the good functioning of brain synapses, and mental disorders appear as a result of synaptic derangements…. It is necessary to alter these synaptic adjustments and change the paths chosen by the impulses in their constant passage so as to modify the corresponding ideas and force thought into different channels.5 Alter synaptic adjustments. Sounds delicate. Yeah, right. These were the words of the Portuguese neurologist Egas Moniz, around the time he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1949 for his development of frontal leukotomies. Here was an individual pathologically stuck in a bucket having to do with a crude version of the nervous system. Just tweak those microscopic synapses with a big ol’ ice pick (as was done once leukotomies, later renamed frontal lobotomies, became an assembly line operation).
Robert M. Sapolsky (Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst)
Do you remember the time you told me you were afraid that you were a series of nasty surprises for me?' he asks him, and Jude nods, slightly. 'You aren't,' he tells him. 'You aren't. But being with you is like being in this fantastic landscape,' he continues, slowly. 'You think it's one thing, a forest, and then suddenly it changes, and it's a meadow, or a jungle, or cliffs of ice. And they're all beautiful, but they're strange as well, and you don't have a map, and you don't understand how you got from one terrain to the next so abruptly, and you don't know when the next transition will arrive, and you don't have any of the equipment you need. And so you keep walking through, and trying to adjust as you go, but you don't really know what you're doing, and often you make mistakes, bad mistakes. That's sometimes what it feels like.
Hanya Yanagihara (A Little Life)
If one looks at it with his bare eyes then one can only see a stream of running water coming down the mountain. But, if one can verily perceive it through the eyes of wisdom then this tiny stream of water has the might of taking on any obstacles; big boulders, trees, anything that comes within its course. And why does it have the might? Because it adjusts its course when faced with any obstacles. Water just flows, naturally. It doesn’t see a challenge in the obstacles. It doesn’t say to the obstacle “You are in my way. Please move aside so that I can proceed further.” No! When faced with an obstacle, it changes its course slightly, but, never stops flowing. Its primary aim is to flow to its destination and not to get embroiled with obstacles. And all this is possible because it has been endowed with this wonderful ability to change course.
Rashmi Rathi (Karma isn't such a bitch!)
In conjunction with his colleagues, Frantisek Baluska from the Institute of Cellular and Molecular Botany at the University of Bonn is of the opinion that brain-like structures can be found at root tips. In addition to signaling pathways, there are also numerous systems and molecules similar to those found in animals. When a root feels its way forward in the ground, it is aware of stimuli. The researchers measured electrical signals that led to changes in behavior after they were processed in a "transition zone." If the root encounters toxic substances, impenetrable stones, or saturated soil, it analyzes the situation and transmits the necessary adjustments to the growing tip. The root tip changes direction as a result of this communication and steers the growing root around the critical areas. Right now, the majority of plant researchers are skeptical about whether such behavior points to a repository for intelligence, the faculty of memory, and emotions. Among other things, they get worked up about carrying over findings in similar situations with animals and, at the end of the day, about how this threatens to blur the boundary between plants and animals. And so what? What would be so awful about that? The distinction between plant and animal is, after all, arbitrary and depends on the way an organism feeds itself: the former photosynthesizes and the latter eats other living beings. Finally, the only other big difference is in the amount of time it takes to process information and translate it into action. Does that mean that beings that live life in the slow lane are automatically worth less than ones on the fast track? Sometimes I suspect we would pay more attention to trees and other vegetation if we could establish beyond a doubt just how similar they are in many ways to animals.
Peter Wohlleben (The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate: Discoveries from a Secret World)
Consciousness is the fabric of human reality. Consciousness allows humankind to engage in reason, make sense out of things, apply logic, verify facts, and adjust our actions based upon deliberate decision-making and hierological beliefs. We possess the ability to change our perspective, modify how we think, and alter our emotional responses. People can assimilate their thoughts and align their goals premised upon guiding beliefs or ideals that characterize a community or personal ideology based upon practical skills, wisdom, virtue, goodness, and community goodwill. Humans exhibit a creative spark that enables them to employ both their hunches and rational thoughts to adjust to changing situations. We can make logical, aesthetic, moral, and ethical judgments. The ability to modify their thinking patterns empowers all humans to alter their functional reality. By integrating our consciousness around our purpose in life, we can each become congruent in our daily thoughts and deeds.
Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
Kim was twenty-three, single, on her own, and at a job making $27,000 per year. She had recently started her Total Money Makeover. She was behind on credit cards, not on a budget, and barely making her rent because her spending was out of control. She let her car insurance drop because she “couldn’t afford it.” She did her first budget and two days later was in a car wreck. Since it wasn’t bad, the damage to the other guy’s car was only about $550. As Kim looked at me through panicked tears, that $550 might as well have been $55,000. She hadn’t even started Baby Step One. She was trying to get current, and now she had one more hurdle to clear before she even started. This was a huge emergency. Seven years ago George and Sally were in the same place. They were broke with new babies, and George’s career was sputtering. George and Sally fought and scraped through a Total Money Makeover. Today they are debt-free, even their $85,000 home. They have a $12,000 emergency fund, retirement in Roth IRAs, and even the kids’ college is funded. George has grown personally, his career has blossomed, and he now makes $75,000 per year while Sally stays home with the kids. One day a piece of trash flew out of the back of George’s pickup and hit a car behind him on the interstate. The damage was about $550. I think you can see that George and Sally probably adjusted one month’s budget and paid the repairs, while Kim dealt with her wreck for months. The point is that as you get in better shape, it takes a lot more to rock your world. When the accidents occurred, George’s heart rate didn’t even change, but Kim needed a Valium sandwich to calm down. Those true stories illustrate the fact that as you progress through your Total Money Makeover, the definition of an emergency that is worthy to be covered by the emergency fund changes. As you have better health insurance, disability insurance, more room in your budget, and better cars, you will have fewer things that qualify as emergency-fund emergencies. What used to be a huge, life-altering event will become a mere inconvenience.
Dave Ramsey (The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness)
They are quiet for a long time. “Do you remember the time you told me you were afraid that you were a series of nasty surprises for me?” he asks him, and Jude nods, slightly. “You aren’t,” he tells him. “You aren’t. But being with you is like being in this fantastic landscape,” he continues, slowly. “You think it’s one thing, a forest, and then suddenly it changes, and it’s a meadow, or a jungle, or cliffs of ice. And they’re all beautiful, but they’re strange as well, and you don’t have a map, and you don’t understand how you got from one terrain to the next so abruptly, and you don’t know when the next transition will arrive, and you don’t have any of the equipment you need. And so you keep walking through, and trying to adjust as you go, but you don’t really know what you’re doing, and often you make mistakes, bad mistakes. That’s sometimes what it feels like.” They’re silent. “So basically,” Jude says at last, “basically, you’re saying I’m New Zealand.” It takes him a second to realize Jude is joking, and when he does he begins to laugh, unhingedly, with relief and sorrow, and he turns Jude toward him and kisses him. “Yes,” he says. “Yes, you’re New Zealand.
Hanya Yanagihara (A Little Life)
Blocks of flats could change everything, thought Mma Ramotswe. They were designed for people, but people were not necessarily designed for them. These flats at the edges of the Village, though, were made more human by the washing that was hung out to dry from their balconies; by the children who congregated in their doorways, or played with skipping ropes and dogs on their pathways; by the music that the residents listened to, melodies that drifted out of the open windows and throbbed with life. All of this made it harder for large new buildings to deaden the human spirit. It was like the bush: you could clear it and build something where once there had been nothing but trees and grass and termite mounds, but if you turned your back for a moment, Africa would begin to reclaim what had always been hers. The grass would encroach, its seeds carried by the wind; birds would drop the seeds of saplings that would then send tiny shoots up out of the ground; the termites would marshal their exploratory troops to begin rebuilding their own intricate cities of mud in the very places they had claimed once before. And sooner or later the bush would have covered all your efforts and it would be as it was before, the wound on nature completely healed.
Alexander McCall Smith (The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, #14))
Apply the following statements to a significant EIP in your life and in your journal write “agree” or “disagree” for each one. I agree that your needs should come before anyone else’s. I agree not to speak my own mind when I’m around you. Please say anything you want, and I won’t object. Yes, I must be ignorant if I think differently from you. Of course you should be upset if anyone says no to you about anything. Please educate me about what I should like or dislike. Yes, it makes sense for you to decide how much time I should want to spend with you. You’re right, I should show you “respect” by disowning my own thoughts in your presence. Of course you shouldn’t have to exercise self-control if you don’t feel like it. It’s fine if you don’t think before you speak. It’s true: you should never have to wait or deal with any unpleasantness. I agree: you shouldn’t have to adjust when circumstances change around you. It’s okay if you ignore me, snap at me, or don’t act glad to see me: I’ll still want to spend time with you. Of course you are entitled to be rude. I agree that you shouldn’t have to take direction from anyone. Please talk as long as you like about your favorite topics; I’m ready to just listen and never be asked any questions about myself.
Lindsay C. Gibson (Recovering from Emotionally Immature Parents: Practical Tools to Establish Boundaries & Reclaim Your Emotional Autonomy)
The Transition to Fewer Animal Products Many people claim to need animal products to feel good and perform well. In my experience, this assertion generally comes from individuals who felt worse during the first couple of weeks after a change to a lower-animal-source diet. Instead of being patient, they simply returned to their old way of eating—genuinely feeling better for it—and now insist that they need meat to thrive. A diet heavily burdened with animal products places a huge stress on the detoxification systems of the body. As with stopping caffeine and cigarettes, many people observe withdrawal symptoms for a short period, usually including fatigue, weakness, headaches, or loose stools. In 95 percent of such cases, these symptoms resolve within two weeks. It is more common that the temporary adjustment period, during which you might feel mild symptoms as your body withdraws from your prior toxic habits, lasts less than a week. Unfortunately, many people mistakenly assume these symptoms to be due to some lack in the new diet and go back to eating a poor diet again. Sometimes they have been convinced that they feel bad because they aren’t eating enough protein, especially since when they return to their old diet they feel better again. People often confuse feeling well with getting well, not realizing that sometimes you have to temporarily feel a little worse to really get well.
Joel Fuhrman (Super Immunity: The Essential Nutrition Guide for Boosting Your Body's Defenses to Live Longer, Stronger, and Disease Free – From a Bestselling Doctor (Eat for Life))
Here's a resume of crucial knowledge you should have in today's world but universities are not providing: Financial - Not just on management, but also on how to profit, how to manage and control flows of income; Linguistic - In today's world, speaking only a language is prove of lack of education. Knowing two languages is a basic necessity, and knowing three languages is essential, while knowing four is merely the ideal situation. Which four languages? Chinese, English, Spanish, and another of your choice, just for fun; Intellectual - It's not about what you know; it’s all about how you think about what you know. Therefore, it's ridiculous to think that there’s only one answer and one way to examine our life. Most students are extremely dumb because they lack the ability to educate themselves, despite their certificates or where they’ve studied. They never read with an intention in mind. And as they graduate, they become completely futile as individuals. This situation is the same all over the world. Millions are graduating every year, without any significant knowledge to live with. Their books are often outdated once they graduate and they're unable to learn by themselves and develop the necessary skills to adjust to the economic society in which we live. Maybe they can keep a job for 3 or 5 years of their life, but then are surprised to lose it and never finding a suitable job again. The world is changing very fast and most people can’t or are unwilling to recognize this fact.
Robin Sacredfire
Now we all should seek to live a well adjusted life in order to avoid neurotic and schizophrenic personalities. But there are some things within our social order to which I am proud to be maladjusted and to which I call upon you to be maladjusted. I never intend to adjust myself to segregation and discrimination. I never intend to adjust myself to mob rule. I never intend to adjust myself to the tragic effects of the methods of physical violence and to tragic militarism. I call upon you to be maladjusted to such things. I call upon you to be as maladjusted as Amos who in the midst of the injustices of his day cried out in words that echo across the generation, 'Let judgment run down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.' As maladjusted as Abraham Lincoln who had the vision to see that this nation could not exist half slave and half free. As maladjusted as Jefferson, who in the midst of an age amazingly adjusted to slavery could cry out, 'All men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights and that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.' As maladjusted as Jesus of Nazareth who dreamed a dream of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. God grant that we will be so maladjusted that we will be able to gout and change our world and our civilization. And then we will be able to move from the bleak and desolate midnight of man's inhumanity to man to the bright and glittering daybreak of freedom and justice.
Martin Luther King Jr.
When we use trial and error, we set in motion a series of growth loops where progress emerges in conversation with our environment. Each cycle adds a layer of learning to how we understand ourselves and the world around us. Instead of an external destination, our aspirations become fuel for transformation. We don’t go in circles; we grow in circles. Our ancestors instinctively knew of this circular model of growth. In many cultures, the wheel is a symbol of growth and success. It combines the idea of progress and wholeness: It is complete, and yet it keeps on moving. It represents the perpetual change and transitory nature of life. The cyclic ages of Hindu cosmology, the wheel of life in Buddhism…The dynamic dance of the Chinese yin and yang also recognizes cycles of life that encompass opposites, the dual craving we have for discovery and comfort, and the desire to find balance in accommodating both phases into our lives. In Greek mythology, the phoenix cyclically regenerates so that every ending is a new beginning. This cyclic, experimental model also aligns with the way our mind naturally works. The brain is thought to be built on a giant perception-action cycle, with a circular flow of information between the self and the environment, where the system constantly conveys whether a signal should be intensified or stopped. In essence, we don’t just set our mind on a target and blindly power through. Instead, our brain converts the information it perceives into action; it uses feedback loops to constantly adjust our trajectory as we make progress. This feedback loop is so well established, it is considered the theoretical cornerstone of most modern theories of learning.
Anne-Laure Le Cunff (Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World)
Men are not content with a simple life: they are acquisitive, ambitious, competitive, and jealous; they soon tire of what they have, and pine for what they have not; and they seldom desire anything unless it belongs to others. The result is the encroachment of one group upon the territory of another, the rivalry of groups for the resources of the soil, and then war. Trade and finance develop, and bring new class-divisions. "Any ordinary city is in fact two cities, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich, each at war with the other; and in either division there are smaller ones - you would make a great mistake if you treated them as single states". A mercantile bourgeoisie arises, whose members seek social position through wealth and conspicuous consumption: "they will spend large sums of money on their wives". These changes in the distribution of wealth produce political changes: as the wealth of the merchant over-reaches that of the land-owner, aristocracy gives way to a plutocratic oligarchy - wealthy traders and bankers rule the state. Then statesmanship, which is the coordination of social forces and the adjustment of policy to growth, is replaced by politics, which is the strategy of parts and the lust of the spoils of office. Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principle. Aristocracy ruins itself by limiting too narrowly the circle within which power is confined; oligarchy ruins itself by the incautious scramble for immediate wealth. In rather case the end is revolution. When revolution comes it may seem to arise from little causes and petty whims, but though it may spring from slight occasions it is the precipitate result of grave and accumulated wrongs; when a body is weakened by neglected ills, the merest exposure may bring serious disease. Then democracy comes: the poor overcome their opponents, slaughtering some and banishing the rest; and give to the people an equal share of freedom and power. But even democracy ruins itself by excess – of democracy. Its basic principle is the equal right of all to hold office and determine public policy. This is at first glance a delightful arrangement; it becomes disastrous because the people are not properly equipped by education to select the best rulers and the wisest courses. As to the people they have no understanding, and only repeat what their rulers are pleased to tell them; to get a doctrine accepted or rejected it is only necessary to have it praised or ridiculed in a popular play (a hit, no doubt, at Aristophanes, whose comedies attacked almost every new idea). Mob-rule is a rough sea for the ship of state to ride; every wind of oratory stirs up the waters and deflects the course. The upshot of such a democracy is tyranny or autocracy; the crowd so loves flattery, it is so “hungry for honey” that at last the wiliest and most unscrupulous flatterer, calling himself the “protected of the people” rises to supreme power. (Consider the history of Rome). The more Plato thinks of it, the more astounded he is at the folly of leaving to mob caprice and gullibility the selection of political officials – not to speak of leaving it to those shady and wealth-serving strategists who pull the oligarchic wires behind the democratic stage. Plato complains that whereas in simpler matters – like shoe-making – we think only a specially-trained person will server our purpose, in politics we presume that every one who knows how to get votes knows how to administer a city or a state.
Will Durant (The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers)
February 3 Detours and Other Opputunities And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, This is the way; walk in it, when you turn to the right hand and when you turn to the left.—Isaiah 30:21 (AMP) In our city we are experiencing what seems to be never ending work on our streets and highways. Roads are being widened, safety medians installed, and turning lanes created, to name a few. Although the activity, the many people, and the massive machinery are expected with progress, the interruptions in the regular traffic flow are a nuisance. While we may recognize that the end results will be beneficial and help our traffic to move smoother, faster, and more safely, the delays are unwelcome. As I drove one of our major, busiest roads recently, I encountered an unanticipated slow down. I wasn’t in a particular hurry, just slightly irritated that I had to adjust my plans. Yes I was thankful for the advance warnings that the lane would be closing and for the workers directing us to an alternate route. But glancing around, it was easy to see that my fellow travelers harbored the same feelings of impatience as I did. Life’s highways have similar encounters. While we know that God is the master planner, the detours and changes in our travel are not always welcomed. We may acknowledge that his ways are not our ways, but our stubbornness still emerges accompanied by its fair share of annoyance. As we travel, God provides signs for us. Some are cautions; others are a clear and direct STOP! or GO! Some we call detours, some opportunities. Truth is, detours and slowdowns provide us with opportunity. We just need to pay attention to God’s directions and look for the opportunity whichever road he takes us down. Father, I thank You that You see the whole road and direct me along the way. Help me to accept Your detours in trust and obedience.
The writers of Encouraging.com (God Moments: A Year in the Word)
RAIN IN MEASURED AMOUNTS Another item of information provided in the Qur'an about rain is that it is sent down to Earth in "due measure." This is mentioned in Surat az-Zukhruf as follows: It is He Who sends down water in measured amounts from the sky by which We bring a dead land back to life. That is how you too will be raised [from the dead]. (Qur'an, 43:11) This measured quantity in rain has again been discovered by modern research. It is estimated that in one second, approximately 16 million tons of water evaporates from the Earth. This figure amounts to 513 trillion tons of water in one year. This number is equal to the amount of rain that falls on the Earth in a year. Therefore, water continuously circulates in a balanced cycle, according to a "measure." Life on Earth depends on this water cycle. Even if all the available technology in the world were to be employed for this purpose, this cycle could not be reproduced artificially. Even a minor deviation in this equilibrium would soon give rise to a major ecological imbalance that would bring about the end of life on Earth. Yet, it never happens, and rain continues to fall every year in exactly the same measure, just as revealed in the Qur'an. The proportion of rain does not merely apply to its quantity, but also to the speed of the falling raindrops. The speed of raindrops, regardless of their size, does not exceed a certain limit. Philipp Lenard, a German physicist who received the Nobel Prize in physics in 1905, found that the fall speed increased with drop diameter until a size of 4.5 mm (0.18 inch). For larger drops, however, the fall speed did not increase beyond 8 metres per second (26 ft/sec).57 He attributed this to the changes in drop shape caused by the air flow as the drop size increased. The change in shape thus increased the air Allah's Miracles in the Qur'an 113 resistance of the drop and slowed its fall rate. As can be seen, the Qur'an may also be drawing our attention to the subtle adjustment in rain which could not have been known 1,400 years ago. Harun Yahya Every year, the amount of water that evaporates and that falls back to the Earth in the form of rain is "constant": 513 trillion tons. This constant amount is declared in the Qur'an by the expression "sending down water in due measure from the sky." The constancy of this quantity is very important for the continuity of the ecological balance, and therefore, life.
Harun Yahya (Allah's Miracles in the Qur'an)
Those minutes were the beginning of his abandoning himself to a very strange kind of devotion, such a reeling, intoxicated sensation that the proud and portentous word ‘love’ is not quite right for it. It was that faithful, dog-like devotion without desire that those in mid-life seldom feel, and is known only to the very young and the very old. A love devoid of any deliberation, not thinking but only dreaming. He entirely forgot the unjust yet ineradicable disdain that even the clever and considerate show to those who wear a waiter’s tailcoat, he did not look for opportunities and chance meetings, but nurtured this strange affection in his blood until its secret fervour was beyond all mockery and criticism. His love was not a matter of secret winks and lurking glances, the sudden boldness of audacious gestures, the senseless ardour of salivating lips and trembling hands; it was quiet toil, the performance of those small services that are all the more sacred and sublime in their humility because they are intended to go unnoticed. After the evening meal he smoothed out the crumpled folds of the tablecloth where she had been sitting with tender, caressing fingers, as one would stroke a beloved woman’s soft hands at rest; he adjusted everything close to her with devout symmetry, as if he were preparing it for a special occasion. He carefully carried the glasses that her lips had touched up to his own small, musty attic bedroom, and watched them sparkle like precious jewellery by night when the moonlight streamed in. He was always to be found in some corner, secretly attentive to her as she strolled and walked about. He drank in what she said as you might relish a sweet, fragrantly intoxicating wine on the tongue, and responded to every one of her words and orders as eagerly as children run to catch a ball flying through the air. So his intoxicated soul brought an ever-changing , rich glow into his dull, ordinary life. The wise folly of clothing the whole experience in the cold, destructive words of reality was an idea that never entered his mind: the poor waiter François was in love with an exotic Baroness who would be for ever unattainable. For he did not think of her as reality, but as something very distant, very high above him, sufficient in its mere reflection of life. He loved the imperious pride of her orders, the commanding arch of her black eyebrows that almost touched one another, the wilful lines around her small mouth, the confident grace of her bearing. Subservience seemed to him quite natural, and he felt the humiliating intimacy of menial labour as good fortune, because it enabled him to step so often into the magic circle that surrounded her.
Stefan Zweig
In truth, no matter what we think we know, we are probably wrong, and no matter what anyone else thinks they know, they are probably wrong. No one knows what’s going on in any fundamental sense. Nothing about this life is simple or clear, and from the perspective of the stars, nothing down here on earth—including us—matters all that much to anything beyond itself. Paradoxically, in this, we find great opportunity for wisdom, humility, exploration, and profound experience in our lives. “Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn’t matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough,” said renowned theoretical physicist Richard Feynman. In even the most common and mundane things, there is complexity and strangeness. We don’t even know why we sleep or dream. We don’t know how most of our brain works or what consciousness is. We don’t know if time is real in any physical sense. We don’t know what gravity is or why it is. We don’t know if there are infinite other universes or dimensions around us. We don’t know why energy or matter even came to be in the first place—or why it was followed by a perfect sequence of colliding, combining, exploding, and emerging, all to put us here, right now, able to ask why. At the base of almost everything, the resulting truth is this: we don’t know. When we disregard this unknowingness, we can easily become disinterested, uninspired, and worn out of this life. We can put great stress on things that perhaps don’t matter all that much and neglect experiences and things that do. We can feel the pressure and anxiety of chasing perfection and certainty, which do not exist. We should look to the universe often, not solely for answers but for perspective; for a helpful adjustment and an aerial consideration of our daily life. With this practice, the little things in life become more striking, the mistakes and the annoyances become less significant, the calm comes more easily, and the everyday activities of our lives that we so often view as wasteful and tedious reveal themselves to be wonderfully strange and curious parts of our existence that we should make effort to ponder and appreciate as often as we can. As if to say, I’d love to marvel at and enjoy this work of art I’ve created, the universe gave itself humanity. “Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence,” said twentieth-century American-British philosopher Alan Watts. What a shame it would be to waste this experience by failing to appreciate the glory and magnificence found in the unknown. We must try to remember as often as we can that the unknown permeates everything. Its wonder is always above us, below us, around us, and inside us, whenever we need
Robert Pantano (The Art of Living a Meaningless Existence: Ideas from Philosophy That Change the Way You Think)
WHY ADDICTION IS NOT A DISEASE In its present-day form, the disease model of addiction asserts that addiction is a chronic, relapsing brain disease. This disease is evidenced by changes in the brain, especially alterations in the striatum, brought about by the repeated uptake of dopamine in response to drugs and other substances. But it’s also shown by changes in the prefrontal cortex, where regions responsible for cognitive control become partially disconnected from the striatum and sometimes lose a portion of their synapses as the addiction progresses. These are big changes. They can’t be brushed aside. And the disease model is the only coherent model of addiction that actually pays attention to the brain changes reported by hundreds of labs in thousands of scientific articles. It certainly explains the neurobiology of addiction better than the “choice” model and other contenders. It may also have some real clinical utility. It makes sense of the helplessness addicts feel and encourages them to expiate their guilt and shame, by validating their belief that they are unable to get better by themselves. And it seems to account for the incredible persistence of addiction, its proneness to relapse. It even demonstrates why “choice” cannot be the whole answer, because choice is governed by motivation, which is governed by dopamine, and the dopamine system is presumably diseased. Then why should we reject the disease model? The main reason is this: Every experience that is repeated enough times because of its motivational appeal will change the wiring of the striatum (and related regions) while adjusting the flow and uptake of dopamine. Yet we wouldn’t want to call the excitement we feel when visiting Paris, meeting a lover, or cheering for our favourite team a disease. Each rewarding experience builds its own network of synapses in and around the striatum (and OFC), and those networks continue to draw dopamine from its reservoir in the midbrain. That’s true of Paris, romance, football, and heroin. As we anticipate and live through these experiences, each network of synapses is strengthened and refined, so the uptake of dopamine gets more selective as rewards are identified and habits established. Prefrontal control is not usually studied when it comes to travel arrangements and football, but we know from the laboratory and from real life that attractive goals frequently override self-restraint. We know that ego fatigue and now appeal, both natural processes, reduce coordination between prefrontal control systems and the motivational core of the brain (as I’ve called it). So even though addictive habits can be more deeply entrenched than many other habits, there is no clear dividing line between addiction and the repeated pursuit of other attractive goals, either in experience or in brain function. London just doesn’t do it for you anymore. It’s got to be Paris. Good food, sex, music . . . they no longer turn your crank. But cocaine sure does.
Marc Lewis (The Biology of Desire: Why Addiction Is Not a Disease)
What is scarce? Surely time is scarce? This is true in the sense that we get only one life, but yet again there are ways in which competition and how we use our time can make us feel an artificial sense of time scarcity. Each time we are able to build on the work of others with confidence, each time we use the elements of life pulled from our commonwealth of agricultural knowledge, we bundle time, and so get the benefit of having multiple lifetimes. Each time nature uses genetic code that has been developed over millions of years, millions of years of development are collapsed into something that works in our lifetimes. Each time we add to that collection, we are putting our lifetimes' work into a useful form for the benefit of future generations. At the same time, yes, we each have only our own single lives in which to pursue happiness. The goal is to spend as much of that time in a framework of sharing abundance rather than having it squeezed into a life of scarcity and competition. In contrast, we need not look far to find lots of frustrating examples in which our time is treated as abundant when we would rather have it be valued as scarce. It happens each time we must stand in line at the DMV, fill out redundant forms at the hospital, reproduce others' efforts by spending time searching for knowledge or data that already exists somewhere, create a report that no one reads. In those cases, we are creating and living in artificial and unnecessary time scarcity. Time is indeed one of the most curious elements of life, especially since our lifetimes and those of plants and animals all move at different rates. We know, for example, that the urgency to address climate change is really on our human scale, not geologic scale. The Earth has been through greater upheavals and mass extinctions and will likely go through them again, but for the narrowest of narrow bands of human history on Earth, we require very specific conditions for us to continue to thrive as a species. To keep our planet within a habitable and abundant balance, we have, as Howard Buffet noted, only 'forty seasons' to learn and adjust. That is why building on one another's work is so important. One farmer can have the benefit of forty seasons and pass some of that experience down, but if 1,000 farmers do the same, there is the collective benefit of 1,000 years in a single year. If a million people participate, then a million years of collective experience are available. If we are then able to compound knowledge across generations and deepen our understanding of human and natural history, we add even greater richness. It is in this way of bundling our experiences for continual improvement, with compound interest, that time shifts from a scarce resource to being far less of a constraint, if not truly abundant. However, for time to be compounded, knowledge must be shared, and real resources, energy, and infrastructure must exist and function to support and grow our commonwealth of knowledge.
Dorn Cox (The Great Regeneration: Ecological Agriculture, Open-Source Technology, and a Radical Vision of Hope)
As the sun set, I ate a hospital meal and watched TV. Every few minutes, I glanced at the girl on the bed and tried to see Raven. I struggled to remember her smile and laugh. With her face so swollen, she didn’t seem like my love. I worried I’d lost her because I brought Caleb to Ellsberg. Eventually, the nurse showed me how to turn the chair into a pull out bed. I thanked her, but the thing was too damn small for me to fit on. Besides, I didn’t want to sleep until Raven woke up. Finally, I gave into my weird little urge to kiss the sleeping beauty. I needed to know she was okay. Know she wanted me to stay because she still loved me. I felt nervous until her swollen lips twitched into a smile after my kiss. “Tell me a story,” she mumbled while gripping my shirt with her good hand and tugging me into the bed with her. I adjusted our bodies just enough for me to rest next to her. While the position wasn’t comfortable, I finally relaxed at knowing my woman wanted me close. Caressing her battered face with my fingers, I loved how she smiled for me. Even in pain and after a hellish day, she soothed my fears. “Once upon a time,” I said and she smiled again, “there was a lonely fool who wasted one day after another of his life. One day, he met the most fascinating chick and she quickly wrapped the fool around her finger. She loved him in the best way and saved him from himself. He loved her too and only wanted for her to be happy and safe.” Hesitating, I frowned at the sight of her suffering. As if knowing what I was thinking, she reached up and ran a finger of my lips. “More.” “After the evil… let’s call them gnomes because I hate those ugly little fuckers. So, once the gnomes were destroyed, the fool and his lovely savior bought a big house for all the beautiful blond babies they would have together.” As Raven smiled at this idea, my uneasiness faded. “Their kids all had names with a V in them to honor their hot parents.” Raven laughed then moaned at the gesture. Still, she kept smiling for me. “The fool, his beautiful woman, and their army of glorious babies played videogames, bowled, and roller skated. They were always happy and never sad in a town with their friends and family. They all lived happily ever after.” Raven swollen lips smiled enough to show her missing tooth. Even though she was essentially blind with her battered eyes, she knew I’d seen her mouth and covered it with her hand. “You’re beautiful, darling. Nothing will ever change that.” Raven grunted, unconvinced. “There’s more to love about you than your beauty.” Another grunt followed by a hint of a pout. “Sugar, if I got all banged up and my stunning good looks were damaged, you’d still love me, right?” Raven laughed, but said nothing, so I answered for her. “Of course, you would. My amazing personality and giant brain would keep you horny even if my hot body wasn’t at its best.” Laughing harder now, Raven leaned against me. “I liked your story.” “Unlike most fairytales, this one is coming true.
Bijou Hunter (Damaged and the Outlaw (Damaged, #4))
Goldfish Memory For decades people believed that the goldfish memory lasts only for 3 seconds. But over the years, this belief has been debunked multiple times with experiments and research. Goldfish are one of the most popular pet fish, and if you are a proud owner of a goldfish, you would be happy to know that your fish remembers you. Disproving the 3 seconds memory myth Studies show that your goldfish memory spans more than three months. In one of the studies, the scientists added a lever to the goldfish tank that dispensed food when pressed. The goldfish in the tank quickly learned to press the lever to get food. The goldfish started to come to the lever whenever they were hungry. Later the scientist changed the process and adjusted the lever to dispense food only at a particular time within a one-hour window. Soon the goldfish learned to return to the lever each day around that time when the lever dispensed food. This experiment proves that goldfish do have memories that span more than 3 seconds. In another study, the scientists used music to train the goldfish. Whenever they brought food for the goldfish, a particular piece of music would be playing. The goldfish learned to associate this music with food. Later, the scientists released the goldfish into the wild. After about five months, they played the same piece of music, and the goldfish returned to the same feeding place. The results of the above experiments would have been different if the goldfish has a 3-second memory. Are goldfish smart? The answer is yes they are! Besides having better than a 3-second memory, goldfish are also quite intelligent in their own right. They have shown an incredible ability to learn and process information. In many cases, your pet goldfish have been found to remember their owners' sound and to distinguish the one who feeds them. They are usually scared when they meet new people, and it is only after repeatedly seeing the person that they no longer fear them. There have also been instances where goldfish do complex activities like swimming through a maze or push a ball into a net. This proves that the goldfish have better memory and can perform far more complex tasks than we give them credit. Goldfish evolving over millions of years Scientists believe that the entire fish category has evolved over hundreds of years and have learned to remember where and how they can find food, what predators look like, how to stay safe, and basic survival instincts. Conclusion From all the research and studies that have been conducted, it is easy to deduce that when you keep your goldfish in a bowl with the same accessories for years, it will not provide a scintillating environment for the fish to thrive. The goldfish may not be the smartest species in the animal kingdom, but they do have a memory that is more than just 3 seconds. Hence, it is only fair that if you bring home a goldfish as a pet, give it the environment it needs to enjoy a healthy and stimulating life.
Goldfish Memory
You can control what you focus on. And you’ll get better results if you focus on what you can control. The wind is always changing, and all sails need frequent adjustment. You can’t read a couple books on personal development and expect permanent change. There is no such thing as set-it-and-forget-it, so check yourself early and often. This will ensure that your sail is firmly in place for bonified success and favor. After all, that is the name of the game, isn’t it?
Chris J. Gregas
Within community life, one may also learn a language with which to express the insights that have occurred and may find it easier to adjust to changing patterns of attitudes and behavior
William A. Richards (Sacred Knowledge: Psychedelics and Religious Experiences)
Pay attention to your dreams and follow them closely to where they may lead you. No matter how crazy or seemingly impossible they appear — to you or the world. Yet, be open to the possibility that the road, even the destination will likely be different than what you had imagined. Then it matters not what actually happens. For the journey becomes the destination, constantly metamorphosing with each and every step along the way. You see, taking a bold leap into the unknown means trusting that you will either land on a feathered bed or you will come to realise that you can fly, perhaps toward undreamed of heights. This, as I conceive, is what flowing through a full and worthy life entails: Acknowledging the risks of seeking to materialise your dreams, courageously embracing the uncertainty rather than fearing it, and confidently going for the jump anyway. Abandon the comfort. Float away. Adjust the sails according to the Winds of Change.
Omar Cherif
Daily Life Adjustments MOTTO Living with intention & purpose + Making small daily life adjustments changes life's direction! Life Purpose > Love > Self
Allan Rufus
Best Tips for a Stress-Free Pregnancy – Motherhood Chaitanya Hospital Bringing a new life into the world is an extraordinary journey, one filled with anticipation and joy. Yet, the path to motherhood can also be fraught with stress and anxiety. The good news is that there are ways to navigate this period with greater ease. From seeking support through childbirth and parenting classes in Chandigarh to embracing the serenity of Pre-Natal Yoga Classes for Pregnant Mothers in Chandigarh, let’s explore some of the best tips for a stress-free pregnancy. Understand Your Body Pregnancy is a unique and transformative experience, but it also brings a host of physical changes. Understanding these changes can alleviate anxiety. Remember, your body is doing something miraculous. It’s nurturing and growing a new life. Embrace the journey with wonder and gratitude. Stay Active with Pre-Natal Yoga Pre-Natal Yoga Classes in Chandigarh provide an exceptional avenue to connect with your body and your baby. Yoga helps maintain flexibility, ease discomfort, and reduce stress. The gentle stretches and mindful breathing techniques impart a sense of calm and inner peace. Educate Yourself Knowledge is power, and when it comes to pregnancy, it’s empowering. Enroll in childbirth and parenting classes in Chandigarh to gain insight into what to expect during labor, delivery, and early parenthood. Knowing what lies ahead can significantly reduce apprehension. Nurture Emotional Well-being Pregnancy is not just about physical health; emotional well-being is equally vital. Seek emotional support from your partner, friends, or a counselor if needed. Express your feelings and allow yourself to experience a range of emotions without judgment. Eat Mindfully Nutrition is crucial for both you and your baby. Consume a balanced diet rich in essential nutrients. Remember, you’re not eating for two adults; you’re providing the building blocks for a new life. Consult with a healthcare professional for dietary guidance. Stay Hydrated Hydration is key to a healthy pregnancy. It helps prevent common issues like constipation and urinary tract infections. Aim for at least eight glasses of water a day, and adjust your intake as needed to accommodate your changing body.
Dr. Poonam Kumar
Seeing children's assemblage points constantly fluttering, as if moved by tremors, changing their place with ease, the old sorcerers came to the conclusion that the assemblage points habitual location is not innate but brought about by habituation. Seeing also that only in adults is it fixed on one spot, they surmised that the specific location of the assemblage point fosters a specific way of perceiving. Through usage, this specific way of perceiving becomes a system of interpreting sensory data. Since we are drafted into that system by being born into it, from the moment of our birth we imperatively strive to adjust our perceiving to conform to the demands of this system, a system that rules us for life. Consequently, the old sorcerers were thoroughly right in believing that the act of countermanding it and perceiving energy directly is what transforms a person into a sorcerer.
Carlos Castaneda (The Art of Dreaming)
Forcibly removing control did such damage, not only physical harm, it left a scar on the mind which changed how a person viewed themselves and the world from that point on. The core of these crimes was rooted in the quest for power and control over others. Greed and belief of entitlement stole free will and left behind immovable scars that some could only hide rather than adjust to. Takers, they were everywhere - and I'd brought them into her life.
Adam A. Fox (A Sinful Sacrifice)
I'm an anytime, anyday person, depending on what needs to be done.
Marion Bekoe
But pleas about cost savings don’t get people to change their behavior. Neither do voluntary assessments that are supposed to scare people straight. The people who’d be most scared don’t show up for the assessments, because they know the assessments will tell them things they don’t want to hear. And the people who show up, unless they’re told they’re going to keel over within a year, figure they can make marginal changes and be fine. It makes you wonder whether the conventional corporate drive toward “wellness” isn’t just ineffective, but also a huge missed opportunity. The reigning assumption in the world of HR managers, large insurers, and policy wonks is that changing behavior is hard, so people need to be nudged toward healthy behaviors by making that change seem easy and palatable. “Gamify” it. Give people points for reading informative online articles about nutrition. Count pedometer steps. Make the healthy choices seem just a little bit different than the choices that result in chronic disease. Make the change seem smaller, so that people can follow a bread crumb trail of small adjustments to a better life without really changing their perspective. There are a lot of snazzy mobile apps and candy-colored motivational posters that push this approach. There are a lot of single-serving snacks with low calorie counts, sold as healthier-but-you-wouldn’t-know-it. They’re packed with sugar, so they end up making people hungrier and fatter.
J.C. Herz (Learning to Breathe Fire: The Rise of CrossFit and the Primal Future of Fitness)
Learning now that the season or seasons I am in will not always be the season of my life can at least help to prepare me for the chapters of my life God has yet to write... It is possible that actively embracing the fact of change in advance of change can help us to adjust our step that little bit more readily when autumn or winter is upon us.
David Gibson (Living Life Backward: How Ecclesiastes Teaches Us to Live in Light of the End)
People change,” I told her. “For the better and the worse. We evolve and adjust. Learn and grow. It’s a never-ending process through the entirety of life. But the core of who we are is always the same. And you, my beautiful, funny, brilliant, clumsy, sexy woman, will always be Remi Grey.” I pressed the Remi Grey name tag on her chest again and then carefully secured it with the safety pin. “Don’t get so caught up in the search that you lose sight of the most amazing woman I’ve ever met.
Aly Martinez (The Difference Between Someday and Forever (Difference Trilogy, #3))
When you know, understand and apply the 7 foundations you will have the solution to the problems that plague many people in their 40s and beyond… Lost muscle and strength Decreased mobility and flexibility Lost confidence in their ability to train intensely Your body does change when you age, and in this book, you will discover exactly how it does so. More importantly, though, you will find out precisely how you need to adjust your training to compensate for those changes.
Nick Swettenham (Total Fitness After 40: The 7 Life Changing Foundations You Need for Strength, Health and Motivation in your 40s, 50s, 60s and Beyond)
Your fitness program will make you physically stronger. If you are new to resistance exercise, you should be able to improve your strength level by as much as 40 percent over a 12-month period. That will not only offset natural age-related strength decline, it will provide you with the power to accomplish the tasks that many people who age struggle with. At the same time, increased levels of physical strength add to the confidence that is the hallmark of a well-adjusted healthy individual.
Nick Swettenham (Total Fitness After 40: The 7 Life Changing Foundations You Need for Strength, Health and Motivation in your 40s, 50s, 60s and Beyond)
As we are going through life, and people who know one version of us see us grow, we might hear them say, “You’ve changed.” Sometimes, it will hurt our feelings to hear, because that’s the intention behind the statement. They’re saying that we are no longer the old us and that they don’t recognize who we are. But what they’re really saying is THEY haven’t changed. They might be thinking we aren’t on the same level as them anymore and are projecting that onto us. And yeah, it’s really easy to be offended by it. We might be tempted to make somebody else feel better and say, “No, I haven’t changed. I’m still the same person.” We are wrong. We did change. We tried something new. We got new results. We changed our worlds. Maybe we’re not on the same level anymore, and that’s okay. It doesn’t mean I’m better than you. It only means I’m different. Not changing is a detriment. What if we are supposed to spur positive change in everyone else? What if we are supposed to push everyone else out of their box? Instead of taking affront to the notion that we’ve changed, we should simply say, “Thank you for noticing. I’ve been working hard at being better.” Because to change is to adapt to challenges we’ve faced. It means we are adjusting to what life has thrown us and doing things differently. If the change they see is us being more cruel, hateful, and thoughtless, then maybe we can say, “Hmmm . . . I should adjust.” Otherwise, NAH.
Luvvie Ajayi Jones (Professional Troublemaker: The Fear-Fighter Manual)
I would not be able to work without reasonable adjustments. They aren’t some tick box requirement for the government, they are life changing support to someone who wants to work but needs support to do so because of a disability.
Rosie Weldon (Dear Managers: How to support autistic employees (Dear series))
many of the problems we encounter in life come from the mind within, rather than the external world. To solve such problems, we need to stop blaming outside forces that we have no control over, and instead take a long hard look at ourselves. When we realize that we are the cause of our own misfortunes, we can begin to adjust our thinking at a fundamental level, and start to create real changes.
Derek Lin (The Tao of Daily Life: The Mysteries of the Orient Revealed The Joys of Inner Harmony Found The Path to Enlightenment Illuminated)
Destruction, especially in spiritual circles, is often perceived as a negative thing. In the mystery traditions, it is an often-necessary means in order to transmute into finer states of being. This is the crux of the experience of the Sephirah of Geburah, which means “severity.” It is at this stage in pathworking, also, when sacrifice is necessary. In the curanderismo traditions, swords are often used to battle and cut away aspects of a person’s lower self that no longer serve their highest good. The cut must be clean, precise, and exact. The recipient must be ready to be rid of that aspect forever. Generally known in esoteric circles as the Path of Karmic Adjustment, this is where the lords of karma operate upon us like surgeons in order to restore cosmic balance within our soul. This path is connected to Geburah, and while that Sephirah specifically calls us to banish our dross, this path is also connected to Tiphareth and so beseeches redemption. This means we must face ourselves—our entire life circumstance—as it really is and be ready and willing to change what is necessary in order keep our devotion intact. This requires brutal honesty, discernment, and a lot of courage. We also see the obvious connection to the astrological sign Libra (the scales) as well as the symbology of the tarot trump Justice.
Daniel Moler (Shamanic Qabalah: A Mystical Path to Uniting the Tree of Life & the Great Work)
This broader, wiser view is built right into the brain of a grandmother, acting as a backup for her child while prioritizing the preciousness of unrestricted love. Personally, what I like most about these findings is the view of women’s responsibilities changing through our lifespan, whether one has biological children and grandchildren or doesn’t. I am moved by how many of us fulfill multiple roles, often beyond blood ties—and how our brains appear to adjust and adapt to the current circumstances, at all ages and in all walks of life. In this spirit, in the next chapter we will spotlight how women’s brains continue to kaleidoscope into fresh talents and strengths for a lifetime of use, as we delve into the evolutionary significance of menopause. 8 The Why of Menopause
Lisa Mosconi (The Menopause Brain)
Our lives are constantly changing. Every day we deal with disruptions; it is just the extent of the disruption that varies. There are infinite little self-adjustments that we can make, such as shifting our mood or energy, that help us deal with these disruptions. Just like the suspension of a car helps the car weather bumps in the road.
Mark Berridge (A Fraction Stronger: Finding Belief and Possibility in Life’s Impossible Moments)
Our lives are constantly changing. Every day we deal with disruptions; it is just the extent of the disruption that varies. There are infinite little self-adjustments that we can make, such as shifting our mood or energy, that help us deal with these disruptions. Just like the suspension of a car helps the car weather bumps in the road.
Mark Berridge (A Fraction Stronger: Finding Belief and Possibility in Life’s Impossible Moments)
Human beings are built to persevere. We have the fascinating ability to come to terms with the drastic changes of life. We modify, alter, and adjust… We live, because that’s what we’re made to do. To keep going on until the wayward forces of the universe stop us in one way or another. Ultimately, that’s what life is. Living until you die.
Nyla K.
Work smart and adapt to changes that come your way. Like the captain of a ship, learn how to navigate and adjust the sails according to the wind and the waves.
Gift Gugu Mona (365 Motivational Life Lessons)
If you choose to try to make a life with another person, you will live by that choice. You’ll find yourself having to choose again and again to remain rather than run. It helps if you enter a committed relationship prepared to work, ready to be humbled, and willing to accept and even enjoy living in that in-between span of a single conversation, sometimes over the course of years. And inside of that choice and those years, you’ll almost certainly come to see that there’s no such thing as a fifty-fifty balance. Instead, it’ll be like beads on an abacus, sliding back and forth—the math rarely tidy, the equation never quite solved. A relationship is dynamic this way, full of change, always evolving. At no point will both of you feel like things are perfectly fair and equal. Someone will always be adjusting. Someone will always be sacrificing. One person may be up while the other person is down, one might bear more financial pressures, while the other person handles household and caregiving responsibilites. Those choices and the stress that goes along with them are real. I’ve come to realize though, that life happens in seasons. Your fulfillment—in love, family and career—rarely happens all at once. In a strong relationship both people will take their turns at compromise, building that shared sense of home together, there in the in-between Regardless of how wildly and deeply in love you are, you will be asked to on board a whole lot of your partners' foibles, you will be required to ignore all sorts of minor irritations and at least a few major ones too trying to assert love and constancy over all of it over all the rough spots and an invisible disruptions you will need to do this as often and as compassionately as you can. And you will need to be doing it with someone who is equally able and willing to create the same latitude and show this same forbearance toward you --to love you despite all the baggage you show up with, despite what you look like and how you behave when you are at your absolute worst.
Michelle Obama (The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times)
Traveling is an escape from the norm. It’s a suitcase full of surprises and new adventures. It’s an adjustment to new time zones and new cultures. It’s a refreshing treat that makes you see things clearer. Smell better. Taste better. Traveling opens new doors and sometimes closes old ones. It makes you begin to either value what you have back home or realize that maybe life is better lived somewhere else, sometimes even with someone else, or alone. Traveling is a little detour that may lead you to another path and pull you out of old habits, forcing you to experience life, and not simply live by routines and schedules that only limit you and trap you into a cycle. Traveling makes you remember the food you ate, the sight you saw, the man you met a long time ago. Traveling is about meeting people that may change your life, or whose lives you may change. Traveling is a hop, a skip, or a leap toward something or somewhere new. Traveling can change you.
Corey M.P. (High)
Building the Framework If you’ve thought it through and are ready to make a big change in your life, here’s how to get started: 1.Identify specifically what you want to accomplish and when. 2.Brainstorm the steps/tasks that need to be done. 3.Choose where to start. 4.Monitor and adjust as necessary. Most people find step two to be the most difficult, so give yourself plenty of time. The most important thing is to get started. And remember, a plan can be changed, so don’t worry about it being perfect. Make a first draft of your action plan and start by choosing just one thing, a baby step, and do it. Make a phone call. Look something up on the Internet. Visit a gym. Gather up your bills. Any small action will let you start checking things off and feel that sense of accomplishment that you’re moving forward. Let’s look at an example. Cindy wanted to work as a hairstylist by the time her children were in sixth grade. That meant she had two years to accomplish her goal. Her first draft looked something like this: 1.Research and choose a school. 2.Apply for aid and save money. 3.Secure childcare and rides for kids. 4.Get licensed and apply for jobs. As she researched schools and learned more, she was able to add more specific tasks to each category and assign target dates to each. Whether you’re reentering the job market, exercising to get in the best shape of your life, or working to create financial security; breaking that big, faraway dream into small steps will help you keep moving forward and improve your chances of success. WHAT
Debra Doak (High-Conflict Divorce for Women: Your Guide to Coping Skills and Legal Strategies for All Stages of Divorce)
Building the Framework If you’ve thought it through and are ready to make a big change in your life, here’s how to get started: 1.Identify specifically what you want to accomplish and when. 2.Brainstorm the steps/tasks that need to be done. 3.Choose where to start. 4.Monitor and adjust as necessary. Most people find step two to be the most difficult, so give yourself plenty of time. The most important thing is to get started. And remember, a plan can be changed, so don’t worry about it being perfect. Make a first draft of your action plan and start by choosing just one thing, a baby step, and do it. Make a phone call. Look something up on the Internet. Visit a gym. Gather up your bills. Any small action will let you start checking things off and feel that sense of accomplishment that you’re moving forward. Let’s look at an example. Cindy wanted to work as a hairstylist by the time her children were in sixth grade. That meant she had two years to accomplish her goal. Her first draft looked something like this: 1.Research and choose a school. 2.Apply for aid and save money. 3.Secure childcare and rides for kids. 4.Get licensed and apply for jobs. As she researched schools and learned more, she was able to add more specific tasks to each category and assign target dates to each. Whether you’re reentering the job market, exercising to get in the best shape of your life, or working to create financial security; breaking that big, faraway dream into small steps will help you keep moving forward and improve your chances of success.
Debra Doak (High-Conflict Divorce for Women: Your Guide to Coping Skills and Legal Strategies for All Stages of Divorce)
The moon always has its face to us because that is part of its geometrically-perfect tracking-path around Earth. That, in turn, effects our geometrically-perfect tracking-path around the sun. If, for some reason, in some distant day, the moon’s orbit of Earth was even slightly altered (by the endless possibility of things that can and probably do happen in the universe), then our planet would also slowly change its orbit around the sun. Over generations, the Earth’s population would adjust to the changes, gradually stop reproducing. and eventually humans would cease to exist. Probably, some other life forms would remain for much longer as many are more malleable than us. It seems a rather gentle and kind way for humanity to eventually decline. Besides, if we can appear on a brilliant, blue gem of a planet, at some point in time and space, we can just as easily reappear somewhere else. Creation doesn’t stop. It changes. It’s the changes that help it to continue on its constant creative path.
Donna Goddard (Purnima (Waldmeer, #7))
How do I overcome adjustment shock? When something positive happens in your life, you are going to have to adjust your mindset about other things to create alignment and a new, more accurate and sustainable perspective. If you have anxiety about having more money, you will need to learn how to manage it better. If you have anxiety about relationships, you will need to learn to relate to others like you never have before. Your big life change is going to force you to level up in every way imaginable, and the way to overcome the initial fear of stepping into the unknown is to familiarize yourself with it, to make it a part of you, one that you are certain you are prepared for—and that you deserve.
Brianna Wiest (The Mountain Is You: Transforming Self-Sabotage Into Self-Mastery)
Because we live in a highly uncertain world, life frequently demands that we adjust to a new normal and a new reality, different from our old normal and the old reality of yesterday. This often involves regaining our balance in the face of a diagnosis, a disability, a death in the family, a divorce or some other drastic change in our circumstances.
Anaik Alcasas (Sending Signals: Amplify the Reach, Resonance and Results of Your Ideas)
Next, you’ll be upon the last and most trying challenge, which is the shift from “survival mode” to “thriving mode.” If you have spent the majority of your life in a state in which you are “just getting by,” you are not going to know how to adapt to a life in which you are relaxed and enjoying it. You are going to resist it, feel guilty, perhaps overspend or disregard responsibilities. You are, in your head, “balancing out” the years of difficulty with years of complete relaxation. However, this is not how it works. When we are so deeply enmeshed in the feeling of “wanting,” it becomes extremely hard to adjust to the experience of “having.” This is because any change, no matter how positive, is uncomfortable until it is also familiar.
Brianna Wiest (The Mountain Is You: Transforming Self-Sabotage Into Self-Mastery)
This survey of transforming [general-purpose technologies] illustrates why we argue that one cannot explain the long-run growth record of the West, or the world, without understanding technology. Further, one cannot properly understand technology when it is formulated merely as a scalar in a production function. Instead, one must comprehend each technology’s characteristics and channels of structural impacts. Along with the masses of incremental changes in technology that are important sources of economic growth from year to year, every once in a while comes a new GPT that causes major structural adjustments and changes in our way of life, as well as rejuvenating the growth process by presenting a whole new research programme for finding improvements in, and applications for, the new GPT.
Richard G. Lipsey (Economic Transformations: General Purpose Technologies and Long Term Economic Growth)
What are you looking for when you read students’ essays? • What are some of the things you hate to see in an application? • Is demonstrated interest a factor in your admission decision? • Are admission decisions need-blind? • What kind of student does well here? What kind of student doesn’t do well here? • Did you attend this college? What has changed since you’ve been here? • What changes do you see taking place on campus in the next five years? • What are recent alumni doing? • What do you think your school is best known for? • How would you describe the typical student here? • How does the school help freshmen adjust to college? • How is academic advising handled? • Are there on-campus jobs available for students? • How are roommates assigned? • What is the Internet situation? Is the entire campus wireless? Do you support Macs or PCs? • How do meal plans work? • How much of a role does the surrounding community play in students’ daily life?
Robin Mamlet (College Admission: From Application to Acceptance, Step by Step)
Pope Benedict XVI General Audience To repent [or convert] is to change direction in the journey of life: not, however, by means of a small adjustment, but with a true and proper about turn. Conversion means swimming against the tide, where the “tide” is the superficial lifestyle, inconsistent and deceptive, that often sweeps us along, overwhelms us, and makes us slaves to evil or at any rate prisoners of moral mediocrity. With conversion, on the other hand, we are aiming for the high standard of Christian living; we entrust ourselves to the living and personal Gospel which is Jesus Christ. He is our final goal and the profound meaning of conversion, he is the path on which all are called to walk through life, letting themselves be illumined by his light and sustained by his power which moves our steps. In this way conversion expresses his most splendid and fascinating Face: it is not a mere moral decision that rectifies our conduct in life, but rather a choice of faith that wholly involves us in close communion with Jesus as a real and living Person. To repent and believe in the Gospel are not two different things or in some way only juxtaposed, but express the same reality. Repentance is the total “yes” of those who consign their whole life to the Gospel, responding freely to Christ who first offers himself to humankind as the Way, the Truth, and the Life, as the only One who sets us free and saves us. This is the precise meaning of the first words with which, according to the Evangelist Mark, Jesus begins preaching the “Gospel of God”: “The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the Gospel” (Mark 1:15).
Matthew Becklo (The Paschal Mystery: Reflections for Lent and Easter)
I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination. ~ Jimmy Dean
Mark K. Fry Sr. (Determined: Encouragement for Living Your Best Life with a Chronic Illness)
there’s a time of grieving, followed by adjustment, after which life goes on – seemingly the same. But only on the surface. Underneath, our lives are forever changed.
Debbie Howells (The Last Days of You and Me)
takes the eyes of the heart, however, a long time to adjust to the Light. By having a loving faith, watching at all times and praying, doing good to all, and practicing the Beatitudes, we actually follow the Lord Jesus to new Life. We follow him from this world to the Father’s House in the heavenly places, we follow him in the Church, and we follow him under the influence of the Spirit living and working in our hearts. The Spirit is the one who changes us, carves us into another Christ, every step of the way. The center of our lives on earth is the Eucharist, and our hope is to grow in contemplative prayer—for the eyes of our hearts to be opened to the revelation of the
OP James Dominic Brent (The Father’s House: Discovering Our Home in the Trinity)
The importance of experiencing true belonging and having safe spaces to be one's authentic self cannot be overstated, especially for those who routinely feel the need to engage in masking, like Autistics. The act of concealing – minimizing, or changing yourself to conform to societal norms and expectations that do not come naturally to you – demands immense effort and energy. It involves constant monitoring and adjusting your actions, speech, body language, facial expressions, and more which can be both mentally and emotionally draining. This continuous effort can lead to increased stress, anxiety, and an overarching sense of isolation. In contrast, having a safe space where one can be unapologetically authentic allows for a significant reduction in this mental burden.
Becca Lory Hector (Always Bring Your Sunglasses: And Other Stories from a Life of Sensory and Social Invalidation)
Grief is similar, in that anyone’s life is forever changed because of loss, even when they have adjusted well.
Mary-Frances O'Connor (The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss)
I think a lot of people make the mistake of assuming that if you believe in hustle, you can’t ever take a step back. That’s too narrow a definition. Hustle means adjusting to business opportunities as they come and adjusting to life as it changes. If your north star is family, then there’s no shame in revolving your hustle around that. It’s about quality vs. quantity, being fully engaged while you’re working, not necessarily working every day of the week.
Gary Vaynerchuk (#AskGaryVee: One Entrepreneur's Take on Leadership, Social Media, and Self-Awareness)
In this fast-paced society of ours it is tremendously tempting to think, It’s been three weeks (or months). Why am I still having such a difficult time adjusting? The truth is, the very slowness of our healing is part of God’s plan. We should shun all suggestions that we hurry and “get back to normal.” The very thought is ridiculous. “Normal” has been changed forever. We can never “get back” to it. We must take the time to build, slowly and painstakingly, a new life, a new “normal.
Raymond Mitsch (Grieving the Loss of Someone You Love: Daily Meditations to Help You Through the Grieving Process)
Things change,” he replied. “That’s how life is, right? You adjust and you adapt and you do what you have to.
Stephen Penner (Necessity (David Brunelle Legal Thriller #16))
Dreams are meant to change. We are not stagnant or paper dolls. If the dreams we have as children don't adjust to the changes in our life, they're just that. Dreams.
Avery Maxwell (Without a Hitch)
Remember, most of your stress comes from the way you respond, not the way life is. Adjust your attitude. Change how you see things. Look for the good in all situations. Take the lesson and find new opportunities to grow. Let all the extra stress, worry and overthinking go.
Unknown .
This life? It is yours. Anyone who suggests that it is not or that it should not be is not here for you. You get to decide how you want to live it, what you want to call it, how and when and why you want to change it. No matter how many times you shift, no matter how often you adjust, no matter the experimentation or the wild exploration, no matter how many times you've been lost or how many times you've been found or any of the missteps you took along the way. Be willing to reinvent yourself fiercely, relentlessly, endlessly in the face of their anger, in response to their fear, in righteous rebellion. A holy(r)evolution. Take to the streets if you wish. Paint the protest sign with your own name. You are not required to stay who you were, or who you are, or even who you will be. You were made for metamorphosis. Designed for course correction. Built for shifting trajectories and smashing paradigms. You are here to become. And nobody can write the terms of your contract but you.
Jeanette LeBlanc
Suraj solar and allied industries, Wework galaxy, 43, Residency Road, Bangalore-560025. Mobile number : +91 808 850 7979 **Enlighten Your Roads with Eco-Accommodating Splendor: Solar Street Light Manufacturers in Bangalore** Lately, the worldwide shift toward feasible and environmentally friendly power sources has prepared for creative arrangements in metropolitan framework. Among these, sunlight based road lighting has arisen as a reasonable and effective option in contrast to customary streetlamps. For occupants and organizations in Bangalore looking for solid sunlight based streetlamp producers, Sunease Sun powered stands apart as a main supplier in this eco-accommodating transformation. Sun based streetlamps work utilizing sun oriented energy, bridling the force of the sun during the day and switching it into power over completely to enlighten roads after dusk. This lessens power utilization as well as eliminates carbon impressions, making them a harmless to the ecosystem choice for metropolitan spaces. Sunease Sun oriented's scope of sun based streetlamps consolidates cutting edge innovation with supportable practices to offer an answer that serves both usefulness and eco-cognizance. Bangalore, known for its clamoring roads and quick urbanization, has seen a developing requirement for further developed road lighting arrangements. Customary streetlamps consume huge power, stressing power assets and adding to ecological debasement. Nonetheless, with Sunease Sun oriented's sun based streetlamp frameworks, this story is evolving. Their items incorporate high-proficiency sunlight based chargers, high level Drove installations, and savvy light administration frameworks, guaranteeing that the lights work proficiently over the course of the night while adjusting to changing atmospheric conditions. One of the basic benefits of settling on Sunease Sun oriented's items is their obligation to quality and solidness. Their sun based streetlamps are intended to endure unforgiving weather patterns, including weighty downpour, solid breezes, and outrageous temperatures, making them an ideal fit for the powerful environment of Bangalore. Additionally, their items require insignificant support, offering long haul investment funds on both substitution and upkeep costs. The establishment interaction is one more huge advantage of sun oriented streetlamps from Sunease Sun based. Not at all like conventional lighting arrangements that frequently require broad wiring and framework, sun oriented lights can be introduced rapidly and productively. They are independent units that accompany worked in sun powered chargers and batteries, empowering simple arrangement in different areas without the requirement for broad foundation. This adaptability permits metropolitan organizers to upgrade public security and local area spaces without disturbing the current climate. Sunease Sun based likewise accentuates mechanical coordination in their sun powered streetlamp frameworks. With highlights, for example, movement sensors and shrewd lighting controls, these lights change their brilliance in view of continuous necessities, considering energy reserve funds and expanded effectiveness. This innovation expands the life expectancy of the lights as well as saves roads protected and sufficiently bright for people on foot and vehicles, exhibiting a guarantee to local area security and commitment. As well as being an innovator in assembling sun oriented streetlamps, Sunease Sun based advocates for greener metropolitan practices. They work intimately with civil bodies, property engineers, and private networks to advance the reception of environmentally friendly power sources, in this manner adding to the bigger discussion about maintainability in Bangalore.
Solar Street Light Manufacturers in Bangalore
When things don't change challenge yourself to change it or challenge yourself to adjust to it...!!!
Godspeed
Just as I was on the verge of release, loud banging was heard at the front door, rudely jolting us back to reality. Desperately adjusting my spinning vision to normality, I saw Toby fuming in front of our nakedness. The boy was shouting obscenities at Jack and me. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back; I had enough of Toby’s erratic behavior. I commanded him to leave my flat, and our relationship terminated from that moment forward. I had no wish to see this irrational guy again. I was no longer responsible for his childishness, even if he threatened suicide. By now I had enough of his stupidity and told him that was none of my business if he decided to take his own life. Toby stomped out of my lodgings, cursing and hurling profanity at us. This offensive episode had ruptured our evening of blissful sexuality. Jack and I decided to take a hiatus. I also needed a respite from Toby’s drama. My four-year on-again-off-again relationship with the Portuguese Filipino ended that very evening. I had been holding on to that relationship, hoping I would uncover a glimmer of your positive traits in the boy. I learned that people don’t change; what changes is our perception of them. Toby slowly relinquished his suicidal absurdity over time. Our friendship remained cordial despite all that had transpired. He continued to try to reignite our passions, which to me had passed the point of no return. I never looked back after I left for Canada to pursue my postgraduate studies. That was the final chapter to my relationship with Toby. Well, Young, here we are, reminiscing about the past when we have the present and the future to enjoy each other’s company. Be well, be good, and don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. Love you always, Andy.
Young (Unbridled (A Harem Boy's Saga, #2))
Regaining God’s perspective — refocusing our spiritual eyesight — is one of the greatest blessings of the believer. It changes everything. If we don’t consciously take a step back and adjust our vision, we’ll live under a perpetual cloud of illusion. This is a conscious, meditative turning, a determined effort to set our sights on what really matters. Will you pause for just a moment and consider where your eyesight may be growing dim? Are you blinded to God’s daily blessings because you’re too focused on financial concerns, health issues, or frustrated relationships? Have you stopped seeing people as important and instead stare persistently at possessions, power, and pleasure? Are your eyes so preoccupied by your comfort that they have grown too tired to look at your life and your circumstances from God’s perspective?
Gary L. Thomas (The Beautiful Fight: Surrendering to the Transforming Presence of God Every Day of Your Life)
Clients with whom I have worked have occasionally experienced this kind of intense, life-redefining frame change as a result of major loss—both expected or unexpected—such as a corporate takeover, the death of a partner, spouse, or child, or the diagnosis of a critical disease, to name just a few. An intense transformational learning experience can also result from a gain, such as the realization that over the years their income has ballooned to substantially more than that of their parents, a successful corporate takeover, the birth of a child, recovery from a critical illness, or adjusting to living in a different country. Executives who have experienced learning in these circumstances sometimes claim to feel “enlightened” or to have become a “new person.
Julia Sloan (Learning to Think Strategically)
I’m new to money. I spent most of my existence without it. I know how to live frugally. If we were to lose it all tomorrow, we’d change our hours, move out of the city, and make other adjustments, just like my parents did. Money removes many stressors, but it has not changed my level of happiness, nor who I am. It changes how I spend my time.
Megyn Kelly (Settle for More)
Hustling requires more than just a shift in mindset. That mindset needs to actually inform your actions. The leap from mindset to taking action is a big one. But the actions themselves don’t have to be big. You can start by making small adjustments, and slowly build up your skills. Eventually, you’ll notice yourself making decisions differently, prioritizing tasks differently, and spending your time differently. This chapter goes through the different habits and behaviors, large and small, that you should be cultivating as you wade deeper into hustling.
Jesse Tevelow (Hustle: The Life Changing Effects of Constant Motion)
Stress is the body’s reaction to any change that requires an adjustment or response. The body reacts to these changes with physical, mental, and emotional responses. Stress is a normal part of life; even a normal part of your business life, but too much stress will hinder your overall chance for success. I’m
Liesha Petrovich (Creating Business Zen: Your Path from Chaos to Harmony)
We cannot change the wind, we can only adjust our sails.
Del Suggs
Stewart Emery reports a startling experiment done with amoebas in California. In his book Actualizations, he reveals how two tanks of amoebas were set up in order to study the conditions most conducive to growing living organisms. In one tank, the amoebas were given ultimate comfort. The temperature, humidity, water levels, and other conditions were constantly adjusted for ultimate ease in living and proliferation. In the other tank, the amoebas were subjected to rude shocks. They were given rapidly whipsawing changes in fluid level, temperature levels, protein, and every other condition they could think of. To the total amazement of the researchers, the amoebas in the more difficult conditions grew faster and stronger than those in the comfort zone. They concluded that having things too set and too perfect can cause living things to decay and die, whereas adversity and challenge lead to strength and the building of the life force. This might also explain why suicide rates in America have always gone down during times of war. And why in Denmark, where a very comfortable government-run lifestyle is guaranteed to everyone, the suicide rate is the highest in the world. There is not much difference between death and the comfort zone. Crossing the line is easy. The only difference between a rut and a grave is a few feet.
Steve Chandler (The Ultimate Key Steps to Self-Discipline)
FACTORS THAT WILL DEFINE THE EXTREME FUTURE 1. Speed. The rate of change will be blinding, comprehensive in scope, and will touch every aspect of your life. 2. Complexity. A quantum leap in the number of seemingly unrelated forces that will have a direct bearing on everything from lifestyles to work to personal and national security. 3. Risk. New risks, higher risks, and more threats from terror to crime to global economic upheaval will alter every aspect of your life. 4. Change. Drastic adjustments in your work, community, and relationships will force you to adapt quickly to radical changes. 5. Surprise. Sometimes good, sometimes difficult to imagine, surprise will become a daily feature of your life, often challenging sensibility and logic. Although the changes wrought by 9/11 and the subsequent focus on global security and terrorism are central to understanding what comes next, they are not the only trends driving the Extreme Future.
James Canton (The Extreme Future: The Top Trends That Will Reshape the World in the Next 20 Years)
Jesus put it this way: “Stop allowing yourselves to be agitated and disturbed” (John 14:27 AMP). Notice it’s a choice we have to make. He didn’t say, “I will make sure your circumstances are perfect. That way you can be happy.” He said, in effect, “The things upsetting you right now don’t have to upset you. The people aggravating you, even if they don’t change, they don’t have to aggravate you.” If you’ll make adjustments and change your approach to life, you can be happy in spite of those circumstances. I’m asking you today to stop allowing negative people and disappointments and inconveniences to steal your joy. You have to put your foot down and say, “This child gets on my nerves—I love him—but I will rise above it. I won’t let this control me.” Or, “This grumpy boss jumps down my throat for no reason, but I’m not letting him ruin any more of my days.” That’s what it means to not give away your power. You have to be determined to enjoy your life.
Joel Osteen (Every Day a Friday: How to Be Happier 7 Days a Week)
I have lived long enough to realize that nothing remains the same for long. Life is a series of changes, and you must adjust to survive.
Rhiannon Frater (In Darkness We Must Abide: The Complete First Season)
Circumstances will continue to change. They will not adjust to you; you will have to adjust to them. Circumstances do not have bhaav (inner-intent) and you have bhaav. To make the circumstances favorable is our job. Unfavorable circumstances are indeed favorable. One begins to breathe hard while going up the stairs, and yet why does he climb them? There is the bhaav that he will be able to go up; he will be able to take advantage of what is up there!
Dada Bhagwan (Simple & Effective Science for Self Realization)
In developed countries, unemployment due to trade adjustment may not be a matter of life and death, but in developing countries it often is. This is why we need to be more cautious with trade liberalization in poorer economies.
Ha-Joon Chang (Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism)
One can’t help but notice,” the earl murmured, “that while you’re considering a change in your entire way of life, you also seem to have taken a conspicuous interest in Miss Hathaway.” Cam’s expression didn’t change, the barrier of his smile firmly fixed. “She’s a beautiful woman. I’d have to be blind not to notice her. But that’s hardly going to change my future plans.” “Yet.” “Ever,” Cam returned, pausing as he heard the unnecessary intensity of his own voice. He adjusted his tone at once. “I’ve decided to leave in two days, after St. Vincent and I confer on a few matters regarding the club. It’s not likely I’ll see Miss Hathaway again.
Lisa Kleypas (Mine Till Midnight (The Hathaways, #1))
I promise you that when you adjust rule-based thinking to a heart-based attitude, your life will change!
Wayne W. Dyer (Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life: Living the Wisdom of the Tao)
The best preparation of tomorrow is a doing your best today. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life. The only way to do great work is to love what you do. I can't change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to reach my destination. Today I choose life.
Aesha K. Shah
The power to change your life exists within yourself, not from some external source,” said Jake, a sudden assurance filling him. “You can look to others for advice or support, but the true transformation has to come from deep inside, and when you feel it, you can act upon your desires and create a better existence for yourself. Until that point, it doesn’t matter how much you want something, if you can’t adjust the way you think about yourself, no amount of outside assistance will ever alter your life.” “You
Russell Blake (9 Killer Thrillers)
I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination. ‘’Jimmy
Benjamin Smith (MINDSET: How Positive Thinking Will Set You Free & Help You Achieve Massive Success In Life)