Adjusting To Situations Quotes

We can't control on how each day will fall, but we can control how we fall into each day. Learn to make adjustments to match the circumstances.

Some of us find our way with a single light to guide us; others lose themselves even when the star field is as sharp as a neon ceiling. Ethics may not be situational, but feelings are. We learn to adjust, and, over time, the stars we use to guide ourselves come to reside within rather than without.

What I have learned from the year past is something about miracles--miracles of healing and answered prayer and unexpected happy endings. Each came quietly and simply, on tiptoe, so that I hardly knew it had occurred. All this makes me realize that miracles are everyday things. Not only the sudden, great good fortune, wafting in on a new wind from the sky. They are almost routine, yet miracles just the same. Every time something hard becomes easier; every time you adjust to a situation which, last week, you didn't know existed; every time a kindness falls as softly as the dew; or someone you love who was ill grows better; every time a blessing comes, not with trumpet and fanfare, but silently as night, you have witnessed a miracle.

Day 5 Look for the gifts in everything, especially when you are facing what appears to be a negative situation. Everything that we attract causes us to grow, which means that ultimately everything is for our own good. Adjusting to a new path and a new direction will require new qualities and strengths, and these qualities are always exactly what we need to acquire in order to accomplish the great things ahead in our life.

Life is belt of adjustments, stay true to yourselves and not go down the wrong path of scandals.Look into the situation before jumping in it.

The needs for safety, belonging, love relations and for respect can be satisfied only by other people, i.e., only from outside the person. This means considerable dependence on the environment. A person in this dependent position cannot really be said to be governing himself, or in control of his own fate. He must be beholden to the sources of supply of needed gratifications. Their wishes, their whims, their rules and laws govern him and must be appeased lest he jeopardize his sources of supply. He must be, to an extent, “other-directed,” and must be sensitive to other people’s approval, affection and good will. This is the same as saying that he must adapt and adjust by being flexible and responsive and by changing himself to fit the external situation. He is the dependent variable; the environment is the fixed, independent variable.

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.

One of the signature mistakes with empathy is that we believe we can take our lenses off and look through the lenses of someone else. We can’t. Our lenses are soldered to who we are. What we can do, however, is honor people’s perspectives as truth even when they’re different from ours. That’s a challenge if you were raised in majority culture—white, straight, male, middle-class, Christian—and you were likely taught that your perspective is the correct perspective and everyone else needs to adjust their lens. Or, more accurately, you weren’t taught anything about perspective taking, and the default—My truth is the truth—is reinforced by every system and situation you encounter.

White liberals are always saying, "What can we do?” I mean, they’re always coming to help black people. I thought of an analogy. If you were walking down the street and a man had a gun on another man – let’s say both of them were white – and you had to help somebody, whom would you help? It’s obvious to me that if I were walking down the street, and a man had a gun on another man, and I was going to help, I’d help the man who didn’t have the gun, if the man who had the fun was just pulling the gun on the other man for no apparent reason – if he was just going to rob him or shoot him because he didn’t like him. The only way I could help is either to get a gun and shoot the man with the gun, or take the gun away from him – join the fellow who doesn’t have a gun and both of us gang up on the man with the gun. But white liberals never do that. When the man has the gun, they walk around him and they come to the victim, and they say “Let me help you,” and what they mean is “help you adjust to the situation with the man who has the gun on you." If indeed white liberals are going to help, their only job is to get the gun from the man and talk to him, because he is a sick man. The black man is not the sick man, it is the white man who is sick, he’s the one who picked up the gun.

Because the symptoms and emotions associated with trauma can be extreme, most of us (and those close to us) will recoil and attempt to repress these intense reactions. Unfortunately, this mutual denial can prevent us from healing. In our culture there is a lack of tolerance for the emotional vulnerability that traumatized people experience. Little time is allotted for the working through of emotional events. We are routinely pressured into adjusting too quickly in the aftermath of an overwhelming situation. Denial is so common in our culture that it has become a cliché.

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

As you and I march across the decades of time, we are going to meet a lot of unpleasant situations that are so. They cannot be otherwise. We have our choice. We can either accept them as inevitable and adjust ourselves to them, or we can ruin our lives with rebellion and maybe end up with a nervous breakdown.

Shoes are like people. They adjust to situations.

Every crisis demands self-discipline, patience, early adaptation and adjustment to the changing situation.

To be adjusted in changing situation is smartness

Life is a balanced system of learning, adjusting, and evolving. Whether pleasure or pain; every situation in your life serves a purpose. It is up to us to recognize what that purpose could be.

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.

The first sign of a thoroughly ill-adjusted or bankrupt form of society is that the ruling classes cannot agree how to save a situation. It is this division which forces the breach, and the ruling classes will continue to fight with each other, just so long as they do not fear the mass seizure of power.

But most days, if you're aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she's not usually like this. Maybe she's been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department, who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a horrific, infuriating, red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it's also not impossible. It just depends what you want to consider. If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won't consider possibilities that aren't annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down. Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're gonna try to see it. This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship.

Limits are a necessary partner in the creative act as well as in the crafting of a successful life. What matters is the ability to look around and accurately recognize what is working for you and what is working against you, adjusting to the realities of the situation and mining the potential of the limits with invention and energy.

Presently [Bridey] said: “If I was Rex”—his mind seemed full of such suppositions: “If I was Archbishop of Westminster,” “If I was head of the Great Western Railway,” “If I was an actress,” as though it were a mere trick of fate that he was none of these things, and he might awake any morning to find the matter adjusted—“if I was Rex I should want to live in my constituency.

Later, I admired her: I admired how rapidly, how fluidly, she was adjusting to the fact that the child she thought she would have was not the child she did have. I admired how she knew, well before I did, that the point of a child is not what you hope he will accomplish in our name but the pleasure that he will bring you, whatever form it comes in, even if it is a form that is barely recognizable as pleasure at all - and, more important, the pleasure you will be privileged to bring him. For the rest of Jacob's life, I lagged one step behind Liesl: I kept dreaming he would get better, that he would return to what he had been; she, however, thought only about the life he could have given the current realities of his situation. Maybe he could go to a special school. Okay, he couldn't go to a school at all, but maybe he could be in a playgroup. Okay, he wouldn't be able to be in a playgroup, but maybe he would be able to live a long life anyway. Okay, he wouldn't live a long life, but maybe he could live a short happy life. Okay, he couldn't live a short happy life, but maybe he could live a short life with dignity: we could give him that, and she would hope for nothing else for him.

However, revolt is the only way out of the colonial situation, and the colonized realizes it sooner or later. His condition is absolute and cries for an absolute solution; a break and not a compromise. He has been torn away from his past and cut off from his future, his traditions are dying and he loses the hope of acquiring a new culture. He has neither language, nor flag, nor technical knowledge, nor national or international existence, nor rights, nor duties. He possesses nothing, is no longer anything and no longer hopes for anything. Moreover, the solution becomes more urgent every day. The mechanism for destroying the colonized cannot but worsen daily. The more oppression increases, the more the colonizer needs justification. The more he must debase the colonized, the more guilty he feels, the more he must justify himself, etc. How can he emerge from this increasingly explosive circle except by rupture, explosion? The colonial situation, by its own internal inevitability, brings on revolt. For the colonial condition cannot be adjusted to; like an iron collar, it can only be broken.

In the Qur’an’s telling, Abraham after much reflection declares himself a Hanifam-Muslima (3:67). Typically translated as “a pure Muslim,” both words were archaic Arabic terms at the time of the Qur’an’s revelation and together constituted a dynamic new identity for young Abraham. The root Hanif (cited twelve times in the Qur’an) originally described a tree precariously balanced atop eroding soil in a volatile climate, forced to constantly adjust its roots and branches—and was also used to describe traversing a perilous lava formation. The term connoted the need to constantly rebalance in order to stay safe in unstable situations: remaining true to core roots while having the courage to confront reality. In essence, a Hanif is a healthy skeptic who honestly evaluates inherited traditions. In Abraham’s formula, the Hanif interrogates reality not as a cynic but as a healer, diagnosing injuries in order to repair them. Indeed, Muslim derived from the ancient Semitic root S-L-M, literally “to repair cracks in city walls.” As the integrity of monotheism erodes over time, repairers need to assess the damage and then get to work restoring the fractures.

And right now, some affiliates of the promiscuous persuasion were beckoning, urging the women to join their huge orgy. ‘Come have a go, ladyships!’ said one of the strumpets. Stella mustered a look so disapproving it made steel feel guilty for being hard. Unabated, the prostitute lit herself a cigarette and winked suggestively. ‘Will make it worth your while and no trouble.’ ‘Er.’ The strumpet sucked on her cigarette with gusto and hastily turned to Aurora. Under the heavy theatrical greasepaint, she saw a hint of black stubble. ‘What about you, hon? Ever swallowed a sword with its sheath?’ ‘Once,’ said Aurora through a wooden expression. ‘It didn’t end too well for the sword.’ ‘Oh leave ‘em be, Kevin,’ another strumpet butted in, as she adjusted the apples in her corset. She had a tall voice, coarse, rugged and edged; the sort of edge you cut protons on. ‘Doncha see they ‘av a lil’un with ‘em?’ ‘And I’ve a wife. What’s your point, Steve?’ the drag queen retorted. ‘Yer wife’s a corpse, mate.’ ‘Guess that makes me a necromancer.

I find, bikers are the most adjustable & furious creature amongst human. They can adjust to any simple to complex or adverse condition or situation at a given point of time.

From time to time, I may adjust a situation to achieve a desired outcome for the benefit of my children, but that’s not meddling.

Historically, the people who weather crises the best are those who adjust their expectations to fit the reality of the situation.

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.

Could it be that humans had an infinite capacity to make themselves at home in the direst of situations? Or did one just adjust expectations downward, so as to be able to get through each day?

Children, just like us adults, react badly to the unknown, to the strange and unfamiliar, especially when they themselves are trying to adjust to a new situation like the start of a school year.

she's used to clients and new colleagues looking past her to the person they are clearly expecting to meet she will stride up to the client, shake his hand firmly (yet femininely), while looking him warmly (yet confidently) in the eye and smiling innocently, and delivering her name unto him with perfectly clipped Received Pronunciation, showing off her pretty (thank-god-they're-not-too-thick) lips coated in a discreet shade of pink, baring her perfect teeth as he adjusts to the collision between reality and expectation, and tries not to show it while she assumes control of the situation and the conversation

Rachel had adjusted to being owned, to being property, and she didn’t like the new situation, where she wasn’t nothing but a house servant with wages, a servant that had to work just as hard as everyone else.

trauma increases the risk of misinterpreting whether a particular situation is dangerous or safe. You can get along with other people only if you can accurately gauge whether their intentions are benign or dangerous. Even a slight misreading can lead to painful misunderstandings in relationships at home and at work. Functioning effectively in a complex work environment or a household filled with rambunctious kids requires the ability to quickly assess how people are feeling and continuously adjusting your behavior accordingly. Faulty alarm systems lead to blowups or shutdowns in response to innocuous comments or facial expressions.

Atticus adjusted his glasses as he peered down at the blanket. “Hey, is that the book Nellie told us about?” Jake’s eyes flicked to Olivia’s book. “You’ve got it outside in the sun? Are you out of your minds?” Amy crossed her arms. “We’re being careful.” “It’s not about careful, this is a five-hundred-year-old manuscript! You should be wearing gloves—Atticus brought some—and keeping it out of the sunlight.” “It didn’t take you long to start barking orders!” Any exclaimed, her face flushing. “But then you always know best, don’t you?” “Somebody has to be mature in this situation,” Jake said, his gaze flashing at Ian, who was now intently trying to brush cookie crumbs off his pants. “True. In that case, we’d rather consult your little brother,” Ian said with a smirk. “Medieval manuscripts are his field, am I right?” “Technically, it’s early Renaissance,” Jake said. “Thanks for the correction, my good man. Amy is right—you do know best.” Ian slipped his arm around Amy. “She’s so perceptive. One of the many things I adore about her.” “It’s getting chilly. Why don’t we go inside?” Amy suggested brightly as she tried to step out of the circle of Ian’s arm. Ian took the opportunity to rub her shoulder. “You do feel rather cold,” he said. “Let’s sit by the fire. Jake, since you’re so interested in proper handling, why don’t you take the book?” Jake snatched up the book and furiously stomped off toward the house. “You forgot to wear gloves!” Ian called after him. Amy pushed him away. “Really, Ian.” “What a touchy guy,” Ian said. “Frankly, I don’t know what you see in him.” He winced as the kitchen door slammed, then glanced at Amy’s red face. “Hmmm. It might be a good time for me to take a walk.

White liberals are always saying, "What can we do?” I mean, they’re always coming to help black people. I thought of an analogy. If you were walking down the street and a man had a gun on another man – let’s say both of them were white – and you had to help somebody, whom would you help? It’s obvious to me that if I were walking down the street, and a man had a gun on another man, and I was going to help, I’d help the man who didn’t have the gun, if the man who had the gun was just pulling the gun on the other man for no apparent reason – if he was just going to rob him or shoot him because he didn’t like him. The only way I could help is either to get a gun and shoot the man with the gun, or take the gun away from him – join the fellow who doesn’t have a gun and both of us gang up on the man with the gun. But white liberals never do that. When the man has the gun, they walk around him and they come to the victim, and they say “Let me help you,” and what they mean is “help you adjust to the situation with the man who has the gun on you." If indeed white liberals are going to help, their only job is to get the gun from the man and talk to him, because he is a sick man. The black man is not the sick man, it is the white man who is sick, he’s the one who picked up the gun.

The existence of a different value system among these persons is evinced by the communality of behavior which occurs when illiterates interact among themselves. Not only do they change from unexpressive and confused individuals, as they frequently appear in larger society, to expressive and understanding persons within their own group, but moreover they express themselves in institutional terms. Among themselves they have a universe of response. They form and recognize symbols of prestige and disgrace; evaluate relevant situations in terms of their own norms and in their own idiom: and in their interrelations with one another, the mask of accommodative adjustment drops.

[Mood allocates] investments of time, effort, resources, and risk taking to maximize Darwinian fitness in situations of varying propitiousness. High and low moods adjust cognition and behavior to cope with propitious and unpropitious situations.

she will stride up to the client, shake his hand firmly (yet femininely), while looking him warmly (yet confidently) in the eye and smiling innocently, and delivering her name unto him with perfectly clipped Received Pronunciation, showing off her pretty (thank-god-they're-not-too-thick) lips coated in a discreet shade of pink, baring her perfect teeth as he adjusts to the collision between reality and expectation, and tries not to show it while she assumes control of the situation and conversation.

If a stress situation results in injury, be aware of the fact that the damage may be as much psychological as physical. You may have a very real revulsion to pain and bodily harm. Don’t take risks, but if there’s time, give yourself a chance to adjust. Don’t panic.…

Maybe you ask, what has this all got to do with popularity? The answer is that popularity depends on your ability to get along with people, all kinds of people, and the better you learn to adjust to each situation the more easily you will make friends. You will find that you can make those adjustments more successfully if you have yourself well in hand. And the only way to get yourself in hand is to know yourself, to analyze yourself, to turn yourself inside and out as you would an old pocketbook--shake out the dust and tidy up the contents.

In life we never know when a rainy day will come and you might fall short of money. In order to be prepared for such a situation, you should always save some money from your salary, and if you are not earning, then from your husband’s salary. If your salary is one thousand rupees take fifty or hundred rupees and keep it separately. This money should not be used for buying ornaments or silk saris. When you are young, you want to spend money and buy many things but remember, when you are in difficulty only few things will come to your help. Your courage, your ability to adjust to new situations and the money which you have saved. Nobody will come and help you.

Ask yourself these simple questions:          How did I get where I am?          How can I achieve my goal?          What do I need to do differently?          What am I willing to do in order to achieve my goal?          What do I need to change about my current situation?          What adjustments do I need to make in my current plan?

They were castaways in one of the most savage regions of the world, drifting they knew not where, without a hope of rescue, subsisting only so long as Providence sent them food to eat. And yet they had adjusted with surprisingly little trouble to their new life, and most of them were quite sincerely happy. The adaptability of the human creature is such that they actually had to remind themselves on occasion of their desperate circumstances. On November 4, Macklin wrote in his diary: "It has been a lovely day, and it is hard to think we are in a frightfully precarious situation." It was an observation typical of the entire party. There was not a hero among them, at least not in the fictional sense. Still not a single diary reflected anything beyond the matter-of-fact routine of each day's business.

What, in fact, do we know about the peak experience? Well, to begin with, we know one thing that puts us several steps ahead of the most penetrating thinkers of the 19th century: that P.E’.s are not a matter of pure good luck or grace. They don’t come and go as they please, leaving ‘this dim, vast vale of tears vacant and desolate’. Like rainbows, peak experiences are governed by definite laws. They are ‘intentional’. And that statement suddenly gains in significance when we remember Thorndike’s discovery that the effect of positive stimuli is far more powerful and far reaching than that of negative stimuli. His first statement of the law of effect was simply that situations that elicit positive reactions tend to produce continuance of positive reactions, while situations that elicit negative or avoidance reactions tend to produce continuance of these. It was later that he came to realise that positive reactions build-up stronger response patterns than negative ones. In other words, positive responses are more intentional than negative ones. Which is another way of saying that if you want a positive reaction (or a peak experience), your best chance of obtaining it is by putting yourself into an active, purposive frame of mind. The opposite of the peak experience—sudden depression, fatigue, even the ‘panic fear’ that swept William James to the edge of insanity—is the outcome of passivity. This cannot be overemphasised. Depression—or neurosis—need not have a positive cause (childhood traumas, etc.). It is the natural outcome of negative passivity. The peak experience is the outcome of an intentional attitude. ‘Feedback’ from my activities depends upon the degree of deliberately calculated purpose I put into them, not upon some occult law connected with the activity itself. . . . A healthy, perfectly adjusted human being would slide smoothly into gear, perform whatever has to be done with perfect economy of energy, then recover lost energy in a state of serene relaxation. Most human beings are not healthy or well adjusted. Their activity is full of strain and nervous tension, and their relaxation hovers on the edge of anxiety. They fail to put enough effort—enough seriousness—into their activity, and they fail to withdraw enough effort from their relaxation. Moods of serenity descend upon them—if at all—by chance; perhaps after some crisis, or in peaceful surroundings with pleasant associations. Their main trouble is that they have no idea of what can be achieved by a certain kind of mental effort. And this is perhaps the place to point out that although mystical contemplation is as old as religion, it is only in the past two centuries that it has played a major role in European culture. It was the group of writers we call the romantics who discovered that a man contemplating a waterfall or a mountain peak can suddenly feel ‘godlike’, as if the soul had expanded. The world is seen from a ‘bird’s eye view’ instead of a worm’s eye view: there is a sense of power, detachment, serenity. The romantics—Blake, Wordsworth, Byron, Goethe, Schiller—were the first to raise the question of whether there are ‘higher ceilings of human nature’. But, lacking the concepts for analysing the problem, they left it unsolved. And the romantics in general accepted that the ‘godlike moments’ cannot be sustained, and certainly cannot be re-created at will. This produced the climate of despair that has continued down to our own time. (The major writers of the 20th century—Proust, Eliot, Joyce, Musil—are direct descendants of the romantics, as Edmund Wilson pointed out in Axel’s Castle.) Thus it can be seen that Maslow’s importance extends far beyond the field of psychology. William James had asserted that ‘mystical’ experiences are not mystical at all, but are a perfectly normal potential of human consciousness; but there is no mention of such experiences in Principles of Psychology (or only in passing).

Can you drive it?" "No. I can't drive a stick at all. It's why I took Andy's car and not one of yours." "Oh people, for goodness' sake...move over." Choo Co La Tah pushed past Jess to take the driver's seat. Curious about that, she slid over to make room for the ancient. Jess hesitated. "Do you know what you're doing?" Choo Co La Tah gave him a withering glare. "Not at all. But I figured smoeone needed to learn and no on else was volunteering. Step in and get situated. Time is of the essence." Abigail's heart pounded. "I hope he's joking about that." If not, it would be a very short trip. Ren changed into his crow form before he took flight. Jess and Sasha climbed in, then moved to the compartment behind the seat. A pall hung over all of them while Choo Co La Tah adjusted the seat and mirrors. By all means, please take your time. Not like they were all about to die or anything... She couldn't speak as she watched their enemies rapidly closing the distance between them. This was by far the scariest thing she'd seen. Unlike the wasps and scorpions, this horde could think and adapt. They even had opposable thumbs. Whole different ball game. Choo Co La Tah shifted into gear. Or at least he tried. The truck made a fierce grinding sound that caused jess to screw his face up as it lurched violently and shook like a dog coming in from the rain. "You sure you odn't want me to try?" Jess offered. Choo Co La Tah waved him away. "I'm a little rusty. Just give me a second to get used to it again." Abigail swallowed hard. "How long has it been?" Choo Co La Tah eashed off the clutch and they shuddred forward at the most impressive speed of two whole miles an hour. About the same speed as a limping turtle. "Hmm, probably sometime around nineteen hundred and..." They all waited with bated breath while he ground his way through more gears. With every shift, the engine audibly protested his skills. Silently, so did she. The truck was really moving along now. They reached a staggering fifteen miles an hour. At this rate, they might be able to overtake a loaded school bus... by tomorrow. Or at the very least, the day after that. "...must have been the summer of...hmm...let me think a moment. Fifty-three. Yes, that was it. 1953. The year they came out with color teles. It was a good year as I recall. Same year Bill Gates was born." The look on Jess's and Sasha's faces would have made her laugh if she wasn't every bit as horrified. Oh my God, who put him behind the wheel? Sasha visibly cringed as he saw how close their pursuers were to their bumper. "Should I get out and push?" Jess cursed under his breath as he saw them, too. "I'd get out and run at this point. I think you'd go faster." Choo Co La Tah took their comments in stride. "Now, now, gentlemen. All is well. See, I'm getting better." He finally made a gear without the truck spazzing or the gears grinding.

Having a narcissistic parent is an early manifestation of a phenomenon termed by some as “co-narcissism.” Alan Rappoport describes this as unconsciously adapting to and supporting the narcissistic patterns of another person. He argues that this pattern starts in childhood, with the child having to adjust and calibrate to the narcissistic parent. Narcissistic parents are not tuned into their children, and the narcissistic parent largely views the child as an object with which to satisfy his or her needs. Narcissistic parents will be overly indulgent and intrusive about some things and detached and uninterested in others. Children in these situations often believe life is unpredictable and strive hard to please “unpleasable” and distracted parents. If you grow up like this, you learn that you are valued for what you did, but only if it was aligned with your parent’s wants and needs. It can be a confusing way to grow up and also the perfect set-up for accepting narcissistic behavior as “normal” and then tolerating it from a partner or in other close relationships.

More often than not, leaving a cult environment requires an adjustment period, not only to reintegrate into “normal” society but also to put the pieces of yourself back together in a way that makes sense to you. When you first leave a cultic situation, you may not recognize yourself. You may not know how to identify the problems you are about to face. You may not have the slightest idea who you want to be. The question we often ask children, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” suddenly takes on a new meaning for adult ex-cult members (p. 1).

These things may sound trivial, but they are signs of adjustment in our human aspect of life. We are just your average family. I’m happy to report we’re all saved by grace and living in His power. Because of the unique culture we live in, we face different struggles in this earthly journey. It is always fun to sit back and marvel at how God will work out each of the situations that distract us from fellowship with Him. These distractions can strengthen us in our walk if we allow God to take hold. Or, they can keep us away from our source of life and strength: God, our maker.

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.

It’s like hopping in the car to begin a big cross-country road trip. You know you will not reach the other side of the country on the first day, and the trip will require hours of driving. But you will see signs that you are moving in the right direction along the way. You pass through different states, observe new landscapes out the window, and see landmarks in person that previously you had only ever read about. In the worst-case scenario, you realize you want to take a different route and adjust your GPS to navigate a new course. Even in that situation, you are still closer to your destination than you would have been by staying at home, wondering what the rest of the country looks like.

Following nature means following the facts. It means getting the facts about the physical and social world we inhabit, and the facts about our situation in it—our own powers, relationships, limitations, possibilities, motives, intentions, and endeavors—before we deliberate about normative matters. It means facing those facts—accepting them for exactly what they are, no more and no less—before we draw normative conclusions from them. It means doing ethics from the facts—constructing normative propositions a posteriori. It means adjusting those normative propositions to fit changes in the facts, and accepting those adjustments for exactly what they are, no more and no less. And it means living within the facts—within the realm of actual rather than hypothetical norms.

Next, figure out who your allies and advocates are on the job, those people you connect with, respect, and value. When things are out of order at work, it helps to at least have someone you can catch eyes with, someone who cares about you and can acknowledge the chaos, even if everyone else has adjusted to it. These people can also be a reality check for you because they know the others involved. Sometimes it is challenging to convey the dynamics to someone who has never been in that specific situation. If you have a friend or someone willing to advocate for you at your workplace, it can make a world of difference. That person can also give you helpful suggestions based on their observations and experiences in the same place. You can work together to stabilize, support, and invigorate each other.

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.

I see a human form coming toward me, arms outstretched. Assuming that form to be naked, I duck and back up so as not to get groped by one of my zombie friends,only to back my bare heinie into someone else. "Ahh!" Mackenzie screams. "Ahh!" I scream right back. Ohmygosh, ohmygosh, ohmygosh. My eyes are adjusting, and I see that all five of us are jumping up and down and screaming. We would usually hug or fall into some kind of laughing pileup in this kind of situation,but in our current state, we insteadt sort of cover our chests with one forearm and slap at the air in front of us with the other. Then we all start shushing one another, terribly afraid of waking up anyone else in the house. Kimi opens the door to the family room and we peek out. No sign of human life in the kitchen. I spooked myself in there only a few minutes ago, and now I'm about to run headlong into this very same nightmare naked. What is wrong with me?

Today temperament continues to be a major focus of researchers in the fields of psychology, anthropology, physiology, and neurobiology. While they agree about the reality of temperament and the important role it plays in how children experience their world, they tend to use a variety of names to describe the temperament traits. I choose to use the terms coined by Dr. Stella Chess and the late Dr. Alexander Thomas because of their positive, parent-friendly approach. They include not only our typical energy level but also our speed in adjusting to new situations; the intensity of our emotions; our sensitivity to sights, sounds, smells, feelings, and tastes; and more. A child who is temperamentally active not only likes to move but needs to move. Telling this child to sit still for extended periods of time, and that he could do it if he really wanted to, is like telling you to ignore a full bladder. The pressure builds—a need that is inside and real.

Our overview of lagging skills is now complete. Of course, that was just a sampling. Here’s a more complete, though hardly exhaustive, list, including those we just reviewed: > Difficulty handling transitions, shifting from one mind-set or task to another > Difficulty doing things in a logical sequence or prescribed order > Difficulty persisting on challenging or tedious tasks > Poor sense of time > Difficulty maintaining focus > Difficulty considering the likely outcomes or consequences of actions (impulsive) > Difficulty considering a range of solutions to a problem > Difficulty expressing concerns, needs, or thoughts in words > Difficulty understanding what is being said > Difficulty managing emotional response to frustration so as to think rationally > Chronic irritability and/or anxiety significantly impede capacity for problem-solving or heighten frustration > Difficulty seeing the “grays”/concrete, literal, black-and-white thinking > Difficulty deviating from rules, routine > Difficulty handling unpredictability, ambiguity, uncertainty, novelty > Difficulty shifting from original idea, plan, or solution > Difficulty taking into account situational factors that would suggest the need to adjust a plan of action > Inflexible, inaccurate interpretations/cognitive distortions or biases (e.g., “Everyone’s out to get me,” “Nobody likes me,” “You always blame me,” “It’s not fair,” “I’m stupid”) > Difficulty attending to or accurately interpreting social cues/poor perception of social nuances > Difficulty starting conversations, entering groups, connecting with people/lacking basic social skills > Difficulty seeking attention in appropriate ways > Difficulty appreciating how his/her behavior is affecting other people > Difficulty empathizing with others, appreciating another person’s perspective or point of view > Difficulty appreciating how s/he is coming across or being perceived by others > Sensory/motor difficulties

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.

I think that today young people come toward marriage as growing, searching men and women; and suddenly marriage and parenthood is represented as a stoppage of all that. I mean, young married people become members of a social community, and come under the authority of a political community. Once children come, even some of our more radical youth feel themselves no longer so free to protest various wrongs - because they need work and on their children's account feel more dependent on, more vulnerable to, the power of a town or city or county. They are expected to join with other consumers. They are expected to prepare the next generation for the next wars and for an expansion of the same, the very same community... I think the Church as I have experienced it during, let's say, thirty years of membership in my order, the Church is speaking less and less to the realities before us. Just one instance is the Church's failure to face and deal with the social and political difficulties of believers. And then when one moves out to another scene, as I have been doing, and meets the people of very mixed religious and ethnic backgrounds, one sees how tragically unresponsive the Church has been - because it has not heard and been moved by the ethical struggles of people on the 'outside,' yet maybe nearer to Christ's own struggle. More and more I see the need for flexibility in the Church. And I feel that one's responsibility to the Church can no longer be expressed by the priest's or parishioner's traditional compliance before powerful and sometimes corrupt 'authority.' I would like to see the resources of the Church brought to bear upon the realities that the Church alone cannot deal with - though it can shed certain light upon many troublesome issues. It is such matters I am discussing now with the families I stay with. I hope we can come upon something new, which will help us in the very real and new situations we are facing, I hope there is a spiritual breakthrough of sorts awaiting us, so that we can learn to live together in a new and stronger and less 'adjusted' way - 'adjusted' to the forces in America which plunder other countries and our own country as well.

Political economist and sociologist Max Weber famously spoke of the “disenchantment of the world,” as rationalization and science led Europe and America into modern industrial society, pushing back religion and all “magical” theories about reality. Now we are witnessing the disenchantment of the self. One of the many dangers in this process is that if we remove the magic from our image of ourselves, we may also remove it from our image of others. We could become disenchanted with one another. Our image of Homo sapiens underlies our everyday practice and culture; it shapes the way we treat one another as well as how we subjectively experience ourselves. In Western societies, the Judeo-Christian image of humankind—whether you are a believer or not—has secured a minimal moral consensus in everyday life. It has been a major factor in social cohesion. Now that the neurosciences have irrevocably dissolved the Judeo-Christian image of a human being as containing an immortal spark of the divine, we are beginning to realize that they have not substituted anything that could hold society together and provide a common ground for shared moral intuitions and values. An anthropological and ethical vacuum may well follow on the heels of neuroscientific findings. This is a dangerous situation. One potential scenario is that long before neuroscientists and philosophers have settled any of the perennial issues—for example, the nature of the self, the freedom of the will, the relationship between mind and brain, or what makes a person a person—a vulgar materialism might take hold. More and more people will start telling themselves: “I don’t understand what all these neuroexperts and consciousness philosophers are talking about, but the upshot seems pretty clear to me. The cat is out of the bag: We are gene-copying bio- robots, living out here on a lonely planet in a cold and empty physical universe. We have brains but no immortal souls, and after seventy years or so the curtain drops. There will never be an afterlife, or any kind of reward or punishment for anyone, and ultimately everyone is alone. I get the message, and you had better believe I will adjust my behavior to it. It would probably be smart not to let anybody know I’ve seen through the game.

The moderate person contains opposing capacities to the nth degree. A moderate person can start out hot on both ends, both fervent in a capacity for rage and fervent in a desire for order, both Apollonian at work and Dionysian at play, both strong in faith and deeply doubtful, both Adam I and Adam II. A moderate person can start out with these divisions and rival tendencies, but to live a coherent life, the moderate must find a series of balances and proportions. The moderate is forever seeking a series of temporary arrangements, embedded in the specific situation of the moment, that will help him or her balance the desire for security with the desire for risk, the call of liberty with the need for restraint. The moderate knows there is no ultimate resolution to these tensions. Great matters cannot be settled by taking into account just one principle or one viewpoint. Governing is more like sailing in a storm: shift your weight one way when the boat tilts to starboard, shift your weight the other way when it tilts to port—adjust and adjust and adjust to circumstances to keep the semblance and equanimity of an even keel.

Robert and Lucy were both finding it hard to adjust to new circumstances. Lucy now found herself in an uncertain situation in the middle of the family as neither the eldest nor the youngest child, and not until Robert went away to another scout camp later in the summer did she show any interest in the baby. Then she was suddenly called upon to fetch and carry bottles, nappies, pins and powder – chores that Robert had previously undertaken. At first she resisted defiantly, and then she burst into tears. At that moment I realized how badly she too had been affected by the trauma we had undergone since little Tim’s arrival. Lucy had been left to fend for herself when in fact she needed as much reassurance as anyone else. I hugged her and told her that I had not stopped loving her just because there was another person in the family to care for. She warmed to her little brother straight away, as if in all those miserable weeks she had been longing to show her true feelings but had not known how. She fetched and carried just as willingly as Robert had done, and thereafter no one could have been more devoted to Tim or more susceptible to his winning ways.

Darwin singled out the eye as posing a particularly challenging problem: 'To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.' Creationists gleefully quote this sentence again and again. Needless to say, they never quote what follows. Darwin's fulsomely free confession turned out to be a rhetorical device. He was drawing his opponents towards him so that his punch, when it came, struck the harder. The punch, of course, was Darwin's effortless explanation of exactly how the eye evolved by gradual degrees. Darwin may not have used the phrase 'irreducible complexity', or 'the smooth gradient up Mount Improbable', but he clearly understood the principle of both. 'What is the use of half an eye?' and 'What is the use of half a wing?' are both instances of the argument from 'irreducible complexity'. A functioning unit is said to be irreducibly complex if the removal of one of its parts causes the whole to cease functioning. This has been assumed to be self-evident for both eyes and wings. But as soon as we give these assumptions a moment's thought, we immediately see the fallacy. A cataract patient with the lens of her eye surgically removed can't see clear images without glasses, but can see enough not to bump into a tree or fall over a cliff. Half a wing is indeed not as good as a whole wing, but it is certainly better than no wing at all. Half a wing could save your life by easing your fall from a tree of a certain height. And 51 per cent of a wing could save you if you fall from a slightly taller tree. Whatever fraction of a wing you have, there is a fall from which it will save your life where a slightly smaller winglet would not. The thought experiment of trees of different height, from which one might fall, is just one way to see, in theory, that there must be a smooth gradient of advantage all the way from 1 per cent of a wing to 100 per cent. The forests are replete with gliding or parachuting animals illustrating, in practice, every step of the way up that particular slope of Mount Improbable. By analogy with the trees of different height, it is easy to imagine situations in which half an eye would save the life of an animal where 49 per cent of an eye would not. Smooth gradients are provided by variations in lighting conditions, variations in the distance at which you catch sight of your prey—or your predators. And, as with wings and flight surfaces, plausible intermediates are not only easy to imagine: they are abundant all around the animal kingdom. A flatworm has an eye that, by any sensible measure, is less than half a human eye. Nautilus (and perhaps its extinct ammonite cousins who dominated Paleozoic and Mesozoic seas) has an eye that is intermediate in quality between flatworm and human. Unlike the flatworm eye, which can detect light and shade but see no image, the Nautilus 'pinhole camera' eye makes a real image; but it is a blurred and dim image compared to ours. It would be spurious precision to put numbers on the improvement, but nobody could sanely deny that these invertebrate eyes, and many others, are all better than no eye at all, and all lie on a continuous and shallow slope up Mount Improbable, with our eyes near a peak—not the highest peak but a high one.

The most obvious way that defensive motivational states make themselves known to us is, in fact, through our own behavior. The ability to observe one’s behavior and thus create representations of behavior in working memory is called monitoring.77 By directing our attention to our behavioral output, we can acquire information about what we are doing and intentionally adjust our behavior in light of thoughts, memories, and feelings. As an executive function of working memory, monitoring, not surprisingly, involves circuits in the prefrontal cortex.78 We use observations of our own behavior to regulate how we act in social situations.79 If you become aware that your behavior is negatively affecting others, you can make adjustments as a social situation evolves. Or if you notice you are acting in a biased way toward some group, you can make corrections. In addition, through monitoring one can observe undesirable habits and seek to change these through therapy or other means. Not everyone is equally adept at using monitoring to improve self-awareness. The field of emotional intelligence is all about how people differ in such abilities and how one can be trained to do better.80

Piketty and some colleagues would later publish a paper containing a startling fact about 2014, the year of Cohen’s graduation and debut as a self-supporting earner. The study showed that a college graduate like Cohen, on the safe assumption that she ended up in the top 10 percent of earners, would be making more than twice as much before taxes as a similarly situated person in 1980. If Cohen entered the top 1 percent of earners, her income would be more than triple what a 1 percenter earned in her parents’ day—an average of $1.3 million a year for that elite group versus $428,000 in 1980, adjusted for inflation. On the narrow chance that she entered the top 0.001 percent, her income would be more than seven times higher than in 1980, with a cohort average of $122 million. The study included the striking fact that the bottom half of Americans had over this same span seen their average pretax income rise from $16,000 to $16,200. One hundred seventeen million people had, in other words, been “completely shut off from economic growth since the 1970s,” Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman wrote. A generation’s worth of mind-bending innovation had delivered scant progress for half of Americans.

But the manner of giving voice to thoughts and feelings becomes particularly significant in the case of negative feelings or doubts about a relationship. The difference was highlighted for me when a fifty-year-old divorced man told me about his experiences in forming new relationships with women. On this matter, he was clear: "I do not value my fleeting thoughts, and I do not value the fleeting thoughts of others." He felt that the relationship he was currently in had been endangered, even permanently weakened, by the woman's practice of tossing out her passing thoughts, because, early in their courtship, many of her thoughts were fears about the relationship. Not surprisingly, since they did not yet know each other well, she worried about whether she could trust him, whether their relationship would destroy her independence, whether this relationship was really right for her. He felt she should have kept these fears and doubts to herself and waited to see how things turned out. As it happens, things turned out well. The woman decided that the relationship was right for her, she could trust him, and she did not have to give up her independence. But he felt, at the time that he told me of this, that he had still not recovered from the wear and tear of coping with her earlier doubts. As he put it, he was still dizzy from having been bounced around like a yo-yo tied to the string of her stream of consciousness. In contrast, the man admitted, he himself goes to the other extreme: he never expresses his fears or misgivings about their relationship at all. If he's unhappy but doesn't say anything about it, his unhappiness expresses itself in a kind of distancing coldness. This response is just what women fear most, and just the reason they prefer to express dissatisfactions and doubts - as an antidote to the isolation and distance that would result from keeping them to themselves. The different perspectives on expressing or concealing dissatisfactions and doubts may reflect a difference in men's and women's awareness of the power of their words to affect others. In repeatedly telling him what she feared about their relationship, she spoke as though she assumed he was invulnerable and could not be hurt by what she said; perhaps she was underestimating the power of her words to affect him. For his part, when he refrains from expressing negative thoughts or feelings, he seems to be overestimating the power of his words to hurt her, when, ironically, she is more likely to be hurt by his silence than his words. Such impasses will perhaps never be settled to the complete satisfaction of both parties, but understanding the differing views can help detoxify the situation, and both can make adjustments.

The main ones are the symbolists, connectionists, evolutionaries, Bayesians, and analogizers. Each tribe has a set of core beliefs, and a particular problem that it cares most about. It has found a solution to that problem, based on ideas from its allied fields of science, and it has a master algorithm that embodies it. For symbolists, all intelligence can be reduced to manipulating symbols, in the same way that a mathematician solves equations by replacing expressions by other expressions. Symbolists understand that you can’t learn from scratch: you need some initial knowledge to go with the data. They’ve figured out how to incorporate preexisting knowledge into learning, and how to combine different pieces of knowledge on the fly in order to solve new problems. Their master algorithm is inverse deduction, which figures out what knowledge is missing in order to make a deduction go through, and then makes it as general as possible. For connectionists, learning is what the brain does, and so what we need to do is reverse engineer it. The brain learns by adjusting the strengths of connections between neurons, and the crucial problem is figuring out which connections are to blame for which errors and changing them accordingly. The connectionists’ master algorithm is backpropagation, which compares a system’s output with the desired one and then successively changes the connections in layer after layer of neurons so as to bring the output closer to what it should be. Evolutionaries believe that the mother of all learning is natural selection. If it made us, it can make anything, and all we need to do is simulate it on the computer. The key problem that evolutionaries solve is learning structure: not just adjusting parameters, like backpropagation does, but creating the brain that those adjustments can then fine-tune. The evolutionaries’ master algorithm is genetic programming, which mates and evolves computer programs in the same way that nature mates and evolves organisms. Bayesians are concerned above all with uncertainty. All learned knowledge is uncertain, and learning itself is a form of uncertain inference. The problem then becomes how to deal with noisy, incomplete, and even contradictory information without falling apart. The solution is probabilistic inference, and the master algorithm is Bayes’ theorem and its derivates. Bayes’ theorem tells us how to incorporate new evidence into our beliefs, and probabilistic inference algorithms do that as efficiently as possible. For analogizers, the key to learning is recognizing similarities between situations and thereby inferring other similarities. If two patients have similar symptoms, perhaps they have the same disease. The key problem is judging how similar two things are. The analogizers’ master algorithm is the support vector machine, which figures out which experiences to remember and how to combine them to make new predictions.

Statisticians say that stocks with healthy dividends slightly outperform the market averages, especially on a risk-adjusted basis. On average, high-yielding stocks have lower price/earnings ratios and skew toward relatively stable industries. Stripping out these factors, generous dividends alone don’t seem to help performance. So, if you need or like income, I’d say go for it. Invest in a company that pays high dividends. Just be sure that you are favoring stocks with low P/Es in stable industries. For good measure, look for earnings in excess of dividends, ample free cash flow, and stable proportions of debt and equity. Also look for companies in which the number of shares outstanding isn’t rising rapidly. To put a finer point on income stocks to skip, reverse those criteria. I wouldn’t buy a stock for its dividend if the payout wasn’t well covered by earnings and free cash flow. Real estate investment trusts, master limited partnerships, and royalty trusts often trade on their yield rather than their asset value. In some of those cases, analysts disagree about the economic meaning of depreciation and depletion—in particular, whether those items are akin to earnings or not. Without looking at the specific situation, I couldn’t judge whether the per share asset base was shrinking over time or whether generally accepted accounting principles accounting was too conservative. If I see a high-yielder with swiftly rising share counts and debt levels, I assume the worst.

Sophie tried to get off the bed and nearly fell over when she felt the stabbing pain in her ankle. “Ouch!” “Are you all right?” Sylvan looked at her anxiously. “Fine, it’s just my ankle.” It was true that her twisted ankle was still throbbing, but she could stand to put some weight on it now. And she was going to have to if she didn’t want him carrying her everywhere. Her eyes had adjusted to the dim light coming through the windows and she could see a small room to one side. “That must be the bathroom. Think I’ll go check out the hot water situation.” He reached for her. “I’ll carry you.” “No, no! It’s better already—see?” Sophie put her foot flat down on the floor and tried to smile despite the pain. Sylvan frowned. “If you’re certain you’re all right. I must have misjudged the severity of your injury.” “I’m perfectly fine,” Sophie said, trying to make her voice cheerful and light. “I mean, aside from being chased by evil cyborg dogs from hell who want to drag me back to the Scourge overlord, I couldn’t be better.” Sylvan’s eyes were suddenly dark. “Don’t even joke about that.” “Sorry.” She shrugged. “I was just trying to lighten the mood. I’ll just…” She motioned at the bathroom and he nodded. Because he was still watching her, Sophie forced herself to walk without limping, even though her ankle was still so tender and it felt like someone was sticking a knife into it with every step. Finally she got to the bathroom and breathed a sigh of relief as she closed the door. *

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.

You can’t get caught up in perfect. It’s not about what the paddle says. If you immerse yourself every single day for three months in this journey, you’re going to grow. You’re going to learn stuff about yourself; you’re going to overcome your obstacle--be it physical or emotional. That’s what’s important. But I want to be 100 percent honest here: there are days when I’m freaking out and I don’t have the answers. I get frustrated, but I try and see it as a temporary situation and a separate entity from who I am. I step away from it. I’ve learned a ton about myself and how to manage myself and my expectations. There have been days when I’ve said to my partner, “I need you to help me today.” I put them in the teacher role, and they wind up giving me the pep talk: “We can do this, Derek. We can do it.” They’re saying it, they’re doing it, they’re believing it. Before DWTS, my work was instinctual and internal. It was something I could never put into words. But being a teacher forced me to dissect what I was doing and explain it. Some partners I could be really tough with and they’d respond to me. Others would shut down. If I got a little intense with Jennifer Grey, it was counterproductive, because she would block me out. But if I did this to Maria Menounos, she would get a fire in her belly and try harder. I have to learn to adjust myself to cater to each partner’s needs and style of learning. If the look I get from her is deer in the headlights, I know I am on the wrong path. I have to find a way to make them understand. Great teachers strive to get through. My fulfillment comes when the lightbulb goes on and they experience that aha moment. They see not just what I want them to do, but what they’re capable of.

Belgium,” said the girl, “I hardly like to say it.” “Belgium?” exclaimed Arthur. A drunken seven-toed sloth staggered past, gawked at the word and threw itself backward at a blurry-eyed pterodactyl, roaring with displeasure. “Are we talking,” said Arthur, “about the very flat country, with all the EEC and the fog?” “What?” said the girl. “Belgium,” said Arthur. “Raaaaaarrrchchchchch!” screeched the pterodactyl. “Grrruuuuuurrrghhhh,” agreed the seven-toed sloth. “They must be thinking of Ostend Hoverport,” muttered Arthur. He turned back to the girl. “Have you ever been to Belgium in fact?” he asked brightly and she nearly hit him. “I think,” she said, restraining herself, “that you should restrict that sort of remark to something artistic.” “You sound as if I just said something unspeakably rude.” “You did.” In today’s modern Galaxy there is of course very little still held to be unspeakable. Many words and expressions which only a matter of decades ago were considered so distastefully explicit that, were they merely to be breathed in public, the perpetrator would be shunned, barred from polite society, and in extreme cases shot through the lungs, are now thought to be very healthy and proper, and their use in everyday speech and writing is seen as evidence of a well-adjusted, relaxed and totally un****ed-up personality. So, for instance, when in a recent national speech the Financial Minister of the Royal World Estate of Quarlvista actually dared to say that due to one thing and another and the fact that no one had made any food for a while and the king seemed to have died and most of the population had been on holiday now for over three years, the economy was now in what he called “one whole joojooflop situation,” everyone was so pleased that he felt able to come out and say it that they quite failed to note that their entire five-thousand-year-old civilization had just collapsed overnight. But even though words like “joojooflop,” “swut,” and “turlingdrome” are now perfectly acceptable in common usage there is one word that is still beyond the pale. The concept it embodies is so revolting that the publication or broadcast of the word is utterly forbidden in all parts of the Galaxy except for use in Serious Screenplays. There is also, or was, one planet where they didn’t know what it meant, the stupid turlingdromes. —

First problem: To produce wealth. Second problem: To share it. The first problem contains the question of labor. The second contains the question of salary. In the first problem the employment of forces is in question. In the second, the distribution of enjoyment. From the proper employment of forces results public power. From a good distribution of enjoyments results individual happiness. By a good distribution, not an equal but an equitable distribution must be understood. From these two things combined, the public power without, individual happiness within, results social prosperity. Social prosperity means the man happy, the citizen free, the nation great. England solves the first of these two problems. She creates wealth admirably, she divides it badly. This solution which is complete on one side only leads her fatally to two extremes: monstrous opulence, monstrous wretchedness. All enjoyments for some, all privations for the rest, that is to say, for the people; privilege, exception, monopoly, feudalism, born from toil itself. A false and dangerous situation, which sates public power or private misery, which sets the roots of the State in the sufferings of the individual. A badly constituted grandeur in which are combined all the material elements and into which no moral element enters. Communism and agrarian law think that they solve the second problem. They are mistaken. Their division kills production. Equal partition abolishes emulation; and consequently labor. It is a partition made by the butcher, which kills that which it divides. It is therefore impossible to pause over these pretended solutions. Slaying wealth is not the same thing as dividing it. The two problems require to be solved together, to be well solved. The two problems must be combined and made but one. …Solve the two problems, encourage the wealthy, and protect the poor, suppress misery, put an end to the unjust farming out of the feeble by the strong, put a bridle on the iniquitous jealousy of the man who is making his way against the man who has reached the goal, adjust, mathematically and fraternally, salary to labor, mingle gratuitous and compulsory education with the growth of childhood, and make of science the base of manliness, develop minds while keeping arms busy, be at one and the same time a powerful people and a family of happy men, render property democratic, not by abolishing it, but by making it universal, so that every citizen, without exception, may be a proprietor, an easier matter than is generally supposed; in two words, learn how to produce wealth and how to distribute it, and you will have at once moral and material greatness; and you will be worthy to call yourself France.

All your decisions discount the Persians themselves, and that is the mistake of your ignorance and your plotting. To you the Persian is a stupid peasant who can't decide his own affairs; an uncultured wretch who will take all manner of deceit and oppression and diplomatic twisting. If you do see any signs, any glimmer of revolt, you blame the Russians and take it to the Security Council. But it isn't the Russians. It's the peasant himself who is revolting. If any of you understood Iran you would know that. Dirty and wretched they may be, opium-ridden and backward and dull, but they are really the people you should fear, not the Russians. It may take time and there may be set-backs, but sooner or later the Persians are going to throw us out and throw out all our corrupt and friendly governments. They don't need any complicated political excuse to revolt, however much you cry Communism. There isn't a simple man, woman or child in Iran who isn't landlord-ridden,m who isn't a slave by the way in which he works, who isn't preyed upon by corrupt officials, who isn't beaten and insulted and robbed by the police and the army. The peasants are impoverished by the tithes they must pay the Khans, and the mechanics are underpaid and underfed and overworked. There isn't an adult in Iran who isn't ridden with some chronic disease, there isn't a child who survives all the ravages of poverty and dirt and sickness. The whole government structure is rotten with bribery and extortion and petty cruelties, and there isn't a modicum of justice in the land. There are no real courts, no political rights, no representative government, no wage laws, no right to organize, no means of adjusting the bad conditions of life except by revolting as the Azerbaijanians and the Kurds are revolting. Thank heavens the Russians have given them a chance to revolt; and damn us for preventing it wherever we can. We will fail anyway, whatever the Security Council decides in New York. You can get the Russians out of Azerbaijan and you can give it back to your merchants and wazirs of Teheran, but after a little while it will all begin again because you cannot stop the Persian from deciding his own affairs. He is not ignorant and stupid to his political situation. He is not so wretched and afraid of revolt. He is not even uncultured: in the language he speaks and the use he makes of it there is more natural culture among the peasants of Iran than you can find among the world's diplomats a the Savoy Hotel. He is backward and poor and dirty, but that is largely due to the influence we have had on Iran for a hundred years or more. Now it is too late for us. These people have reached the breaking point and they don't care about the wise men of the House of Commons and the clever men of the Security Council. These people are desperate, and for our reckless methods of holding our power and our oil it ought to be a warning. It will all go. The oil, the power, and the last drop of influence. Rather than let us have any of it the Persian will wreck Abadan and the wells and every other sign of our presence and our strength there. They are beginning to hate us and that is beginning a battle which we can't stop, which you can't stop in the Security Council. Unless we are determined to kill every man in the country we will lose. We cannot help but lose.

The good-to-great companies insisted on confronting the reality of their situations, no matter how unpleasant, and adjusting their strategies to address them. Only by facing reality with a clear vision can one come up with any form of workable solution in the first place. Good leadership is not just about creating a vision but also about creating a culture where people speak the truth and face the honest facts. There are four ways to achieve this:

To get the most out of this chapter, first find where you are on this map of the cancer journey: Critical stress points. When you have just been diagnosed with cancer or learned that your cancer has recurred or is not responding to treatment. Treatment preparation. When you are anticipating surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, or molecular target therapies. Side effect management. When you are undergoing treatment and need ways (instead of or in addition to drugs) to manage its side effects. Post-treatment. When you are adjusting to the end of active treatment, usually after the final chemotherapy cycle. This situation can, perhaps surprisingly, prove quite stressful. Remission maintenance. Although definitely good news, remission introduces its own issues, most notably fear of recurrence. Remission is also when you will be most determined to take back your life from cancer.

Our situation is much like that of a little girl who was taken by her mother to visit a chiropractor friend of mine. Her mother said, “I think something is wrong with my daughter. She is a very quiet little girl and always well behaved, but never once have I heard her laugh. In fact, she rarely even smiles.” My friend examined her and discovered a spinal misalignment that, she judged, would give the girl a terrific headache all the time. Fortunately, it was one of those misalignments that a chiropractor can correct easily and permanently. She made the adjustment—and the girl broke into a big laugh, the first her mother had ever heard. The omnipresent pain in her head, which she had come to accept as normal, was miraculously gone. Many of you might doubt that we live in a “sea of pain.” I feel pretty good right now myself. But I also carry a memory of a far more profound state of well-being, connectedness, and intensity of awareness that felt, at the time, like my birthright. Which state is normal? Could it be that we are bravely making the best of things? How much of our dysfunctional, consumptive behavior is simply a futile attempt to run away from a pain that is in fact everywhere? Running from one purchase to another, one addictive fix to the next, a new car, a new cause, a new spiritual idea, a new self-help book, a bigger number in the bank account, the next news story, we gain each time a brief respite from feeling pain. The wound at its source never vanishes though. In the absence of distraction—those moments of what we call “boredom”—we can feel its discomfort. Of course, any behavior that alleviates pain without healing its source can become addictive. We should therefore hesitate to cast judgment on anyone exhibiting addictive behavior (a category that probably includes nearly all of us). What we see as greed or weakness might merely be fumbling attempts to meet a need, when the true object of that need is unavailable. In that case the usual prescriptions for more discipline, self-control, or responsibility are counterproductive.

jacket that gives you a little hug when someone likes your Facebook post; a paintbrush that samples any color or pattern you tap the brush on and turns it into digital paint; tables that listen, furniture that melts into the floor or into the wall when it’s not needed; lights that understand your activity and adjust their intensity and focus appropriately; watches that help students meet other people like them and prompt face-to-face conversation; E Ink Post-it notes that dynamically update to show place-based messages; a key fob that displays the traffic situation on your commute ahead.

1 = Very important. Do this at once. 2 = Worth doing but takes more time. Start planning it. 3 = Yes and no. Depends on how it’s done. 4 = Not very important. May even be a waste of effort. 5 = No! Don’t do this. Fill in those numbers before you read further, and take your time. This is not a simple situation, and solving it is a complicated undertaking. Possible Actions to Take ____ Explain the changes again in a carefully written memo. ____ Figure out exactly how individuals’ behavior and attitudes will have to change to make teams work. ____ Analyze who stands to lose something under the new system. ____ Redo the compensation system to reward compliance with the changes. ____ “Sell” the problem that is the reason for the change. ____ Bring in a motivational speaker to give employees a powerful talk about teamwork. ____ Design temporary systems to contain the confusion during the cutover from the old way to the new. ____ Use the interim between the old system and the new to improve the way in which services are delivered by the unit—and, where appropriate, create new services. ____ Change the spatial arrangements so that the cubicles are separated only by glass or low partitions. ____ Put team members in contact with disgruntled clients, either by phone or in person. Let them see the problem firsthand. ____ Appoint a “change manager” to be responsible for seeing that the changes go smoothly. ____ Give everyone a badge with a new “teamwork” logo on it. ____ Break the change into smaller stages. Combine the firsts and seconds, then add the thirds later. Change the managers into coordinators last. ____ Talk to individuals. Ask what kinds of problems they have with “teaming.” ____ Change the spatial arrangements from individual cubicles to group spaces. ____ Pull the best people in the unit together as a model team to show everyone else how to do it. ____ Give everyone a training seminar on how to work as a team. ____ Reorganize the general manager’s staff as a team and reconceive the GM’s job as that of a coordinator. ____ Send team representatives to visit other organizations where service teams operate successfully. ____ Turn the whole thing over to the individual contributors as a group and ask them to come up with a plan to change over to teams. ____ Scrap the plan and find one that is less disruptive. If that one doesn’t work, try another. Even if it takes a dozen plans, don’t give up. ____ Tell them to stop dragging their feet or they’ll face disciplinary action. ____ Give bonuses to the first team to process 100 client calls in the new way. ____ Give everyone a copy of the new organization chart. ____ Start holding regular team meetings. ____ Change the annual individual targets to team targets, and adjust bonuses to reward team performance. ____ Talk about transition and what it does to people. Give coordinators a seminar on how to manage people in transition. There are no correct answers in this list, but over time I’ve

The amygdala is the driving force (accelerator) of defensive responses and supporting physiological responses in the brain and body. The ventromedial prefrontal cortex (PFCVM) regulates (applies the brake to) the amygdala, thus adjusting the occurrence and intensity of defensive reactions as situations change. This mechanism is often impaired in people who suffer from problems with fear and anxiety (not because the amygdala is the source of feelings of fear or anxiety but because amygdala-dependent brain and body responses contribute ingredients that are assembled into a feeling of fear or anxiety).

Someone starts out sedentary, overweight, and somewhat insulin resistant. They set out to improve their health and lose some weight by following a low-carb diet. It works great. They lose weight, their insulin sensitivity improves, and their energy is through the roof. They start exercising, which helps them lose some more weight, as well as build some lean muscle mass. Now they are really into it, and the frequency and intensity of their training increases. This individual is now at a healthy weight (or relatively lean), is exercising regularly, and has better insulin sensitivity. They are a completely different person, metabolically speaking, then when they started. But the problem is they are no longer properly fueling their body and recovering from their intense training sessions (which were once non-existent). They are starting to feel tired and fatigued in the gym, are always in a bad mood, are holding on to stubborn body fat, can’t sleep at night, get sick all of the time, and are maybe having some sexual performance and hormonal issues. Their diet no longer matches their new activity levels and current metabolic condition, because those have completely changed over time. If this person objectively looked at their situation and progress and listened to their own body and biofeedback, they would consider some dietary adjustments. A moderate-to-higher carb intake might be a better fit. But some people will cling to a diet that initially gave them good results, and got them from Point A to Point B, thinking it will get them from Point B to Point C. I’ve been there myself. Part of it is initial experience, part of it is marketing material, and part of it is pure emotion. It doesn’t always work that way for continued progress.

To avoid early-morning wakings, do not allow your child to get out of his crib or room until at least 11 hours after his bedtime (you can settle for 10½ hours if your child consistently—after three or more days in a row—seems rested after this much sleep). One of the most difficult times for your child to put himself back to sleep is in the early morning, particularly if he’s been used to getting up or coming into bed with you at that hour. But if you get your child up too early, he’s robbed of enough sleep and will start his day overtired and cranky—and will have a tougher time napping well. For additional information on how to troubleshoot early-morning wakings, please see the section entitled “Bumps in the Road” in Chapter 10, “Special Situations.” For Crib Sleepers If your child wakes in the early-morning hours, continue to do your check-ins just as you did at bedtime and throughout the night. If he hasn’t gone back to sleep, once the clock reaches your designated wake time, go into your child’s room, open the blinds or turn on the light, and say, “You did it! You stayed in your crib the whole night until the sun was nice and bright! We’re so proud of you!” Cuddle and hug him and give him a nice full feed, if he’s ready. Whatever you do, don’t allow your child to fall back asleep—in your arms, in your bed, or in his crib; he’s spent the night practicing how to sleep on his own, and you don’t want to undo your hard work. If your child has woken early but managed to put himself back to sleep—and is still sleeping at the designated wake time—lucky you! Allow him to sleep as long as he likes, up to 12 hours; you’ll want to wake him at this point to preserve his ability to nap well. If your child sleeps later than your scheduled wake time, remember to adjust his nap time later as well (but don’t adjust it any earlier, to avoid a too-early schedule for the day).

Questioning cultures, by generating self-confidence, also tend to encourage adaptability in meeting new challenges. People who are comfortable with questions are nimble in adjusting to fluid change and limber in their thinking in the face of new data or realities. They can juggle demands without losing focus or energy. They are comfortable with ambiguity. Questioning leaders are likely to remain calm and clear-headed under high stress or during a crisis, and to remain unflappable when confronted by trying situations. Robert Hoffman, executive director of human resources and organizational development at Novartis, highlights this aspect of a questioning culture:

The Renzettis live in a small house at 84 Chestnut Avenue. Frank Renzetti is forty-four and works as a bookkeeper for a moving company. Mary Renzetti is thirty-five and works part-time at a day care. They have one child, Tommy, who is five. Frank’s widowed mother, Camila, also lives with the family. My question: How likely is it that the Renzettis have a pet? To answer that, most people would zero in on the family’s details. “Renzetti is an Italian name,” someone might think. “So are ‘Frank’ and ‘Camila.’ That may mean Frank grew up with lots of brothers and sisters, but he’s only got one child. He probably wants to have a big family but he can’t afford it. So it would make sense that he compensated a little by getting a pet.” Someone else might think, “People get pets for kids and the Renzettis only have one child, and Tommy isn’t old enough to take care of a pet. So it seems unlikely.” This sort of storytelling can be very compelling, particularly when the available details are much richer than what I’ve provided here. But superforecasters wouldn’t bother with any of that, at least not at first. The first thing they would do is find out what percentage of American households own a pet. Statisticians call that the base rate—how common something is within a broader class. Daniel Kahneman has a much more evocative visual term for it. He calls it the “outside view”—in contrast to the “inside view,” which is the specifics of the particular case. A few minutes with Google tells me about 62% of American households own pets. That’s the outside view here. Starting with the outside view means I will start by estimating that there is a 62% chance the Renzettis have a pet. Then I will turn to the inside view—all those details about the Renzettis—and use them to adjust that initial 62% up or down. It’s natural to be drawn to the inside view. It’s usually concrete and filled with engaging detail we can use to craft a story about what’s going on. The outside view is typically abstract, bare, and doesn’t lend itself so readily to storytelling. So even smart, accomplished people routinely fail to consider the outside view. The Wall Street Journal columnist and former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan once predicted trouble for the Democrats because polls had found that George W. Bush’s approval rating, which had been rock-bottom at the end of his term, had rebounded to 47% four years after leaving office, equal to President Obama’s. Noonan found that astonishing—and deeply meaningful.9 But if she had considered the outside view she would have discovered that presidential approval always rises after a president leaves office. Even Richard Nixon’s number went up. So Bush’s improved standing wasn’t surprising in the least—which strongly suggests the meaning she drew from it was illusory. Superforecasters don’t make that mistake. If Bill Flack were asked whether, in the next twelve months, there would be an armed clash between China and Vietnam over some border dispute, he wouldn’t immediately delve into the particulars of that border dispute and the current state of China-Vietnam relations. He would instead look at how often there have been armed clashes in the past. “Say we get hostile conduct between China and Vietnam every five years,” Bill says. “I’ll use a five-year recurrence model to predict the future.” In any given year, then, the outside view would suggest to Bill there is a 20% chance of a clash. Having established that, Bill would look at the situation today and adjust that number up or down.

You don’t need to fight situation. You must only adjust, adapt and advance.

1. Just as a parent does not send a toddler into a new situation alone, do not do that to yourself. Take someone else along. 2. Just as a parent begins by talking about the situation with the child, talk to the fearful part of yourself. Focus on what is familiar and safe. 3. Just as a parent keeps the promise that the child can leave if he or she becomes too upset, allow yourself to go home if you need to. 4. Just as a parent is confident the child will be okay after a while, expect the part of yourself that is afraid to be okay after some time to adjust to all the unfamiliar stimulation. 5. Just as a parent is careful not to respond to a child’s fear with more concern than is justified by the situation, if the part that is fearful needs help, respond with no more anxiety than the braver part of you thinks is justified.

Eventually she would manage to forget that they were even present, so quickly and foolishly do human beings adjust to unfamiliar situations.

Many a warlord engages a spiritualist to influence the outcome of a war he is involved in. A priest may consecrate a campaign, and may even join the soldiers on the battlefield in a total effort to shore up their fighting spirit; a spell-caster is hired to curse the wretched enemy. But as the war drags on and divine intervention proves hopelessly distant, an Abettor is sought. A self-appointed admiral, the Abettor is versed in the art of modern warfare, developments in armaments, the strengths and weaknesses of warring parties in his domain, and, above all, is the deciding factor in the most prickly situations. Driven by his passion for a fair fight more than any personal reward or gratification, a good Abettor thinks nothing of abetting both belligerents in a given engagement. A celebrated Abettor came to the rescue of Count Ashenafi. A slight man with wooden dentures, the war broker had spent many of his ninety-three years crisscrossing territories, often with little regard for political borders, in search of a war to sponsor. He was a living archive: at his fingertips were all the battles that had been fought in his vast domain for the past six centuries and the strategies and tactics that had endured through generations. He was well acquainted with the armaments and able-bodied men within reach of not just princes and kings but also the lesser war-makers—feudal lords. A quick study of human nature, the Abettor realized that men may endure without bread and water but not without war, and so he made it his calling to afford them a fair and refreshing combat. He spent his days and nights sniffing for gunpowder, carrying on his back his worldly possessions of an old rifle, the Holy Scriptures, an extra copy of the Book of Hymns, and a small sacrifice for the road. He slept while walking. Having adjusted his needs to the ever-shifting clime, he could go without food or water for up to six months. Only in times of abundant harvest did he answer the call of nature. Though many brave men had sought him out in times of pressing need, the war patriarch had failed to earn their affection. A few of the people he had so diligently served had conspired to put him out of service in the most hideous ways. In an ordinary year, he could expect to be stabbed to death twice. Once, an army of retreating archers shot him with ninety-five arrows. On three different occasions, he was carved into palm-sized pieces and his remains served to hawks and storks; he was also known to have been buried alive. But, each time, the old man resurfaced in some remote corner of the kingdom in one piece, invigorated by his ordeal, ready to influence the outcome of another raging war.

The point of an organic family is to release the children from the disadvantages of being the extensions of their parents so that they can belong primarily to themselves. They may accept the services that adults perform for them naturally without establishing dependencies. There could be scope for them to initiate their own activities and define the mode and extent of their own learning. They might come to resent their own strangeness but in other circumstances they might resent normality; faced with difficulties of adjustment children seize upon their parents and their upbringing to serve as scapegoats. Parents have no option but to enjoy their children if they want to avoid the cycle of exploitation and recrimination. If they want to enjoy them they must construct a situation in which such enjoyment is possible

I was interested in dislocation and alienation, and I had noticed that people who have spent their lives in the military have trouble adjusting to civilian life afterward. It’s like moving to a different planet. So I wrote a character who had been first a military brat, then a military officer, and was now plunged unwillingly into the civilian world. And because the books would be broadly crime novels, I made him an ex–military cop in order to give him plausible familiarity with investigative procedures and forensics and so on. Those twin decisions gave him a double layer of alienation. First, his transition from the rough, tough world of the army made him a fish out of water in civilian life, which situation was then further reinforced by any law enforcement officer’s separation from the rest of the population.

From time to time, I may adjust a situation to achieve a desired outcome for the benefit of my children, but that’s not meddling.” “What do you call it, then?” “Parenting,” he said smugly, and kissed her before she could reply.

The next sector where big changes are happening is the Internet of Things. If you’re not familiar with it, the Internet of Things is an envisioned future where machines communicate directly with other machines rather than people. The idea is that Internet-enabled devices, such as cars, buildings, or electronics (really, any device you can imbed with a sensor), will exchange data directly with other devices. Any object could be connected and communicate with other devices in an intelligent manner. The hope is that devices will become context-aware and be able to respond or adjust dynamically to different users or situations.

We cannot understand modern forms of racism if we cannot or will not explore patterns of group behavior and their effects on individuals. I ask readers to make the specific adjustments they think are necessary to their situation, rather than reject the evidence entirely. For example, perhaps you grew up in poverty, or are an Ashkenazi Jew of European heritage, or were raised in a military family. Perhaps you grew up in Canada, Hawaii, or Germany, or had people of color in your family. None of these situations exempts you from the forces of racism, because no aspect of society is outside of these forces.

Tadpoles choose not to panic. They adjust, knowing the situation always dictates. They quickly adapt to eyeballing fear without blinking. They know the past is important but not nearly as important as today and tomorrow.

When we’re restructuring relationships, it often takes the other person time to adjust. Even if your boundary is clear and to the point, some people may push the envelope and keep asking. In this situation, simply restate your boundary until they hear you. Everyone eventually gets it.

At every moment and in every situation, with every thought and action, ask yourself two questions: Is this the greatest version of the grandest vision I have ever had of myself? What would love do? Then adjust your thoughts and actions based on the answers to these two questions.

Learn to compromise and adjust to the trend of the time and situation; sure, vision solves problems and enlightens new ways of success.

Grace thought, Perhaps I ought to comment on some news. Unfortunately Grace was one of those people who can become a bore and an irritation to others and an anguish to themselves because their lives are dominated by "ought". "What ought I to do? Do you think I ought to -"... They refuse to let a situation rest; they must tamper with it, adjust it, change it, impose upon it their immediate concern of "ought".

If the facts of Scripture are what Augustinians believe them to be, then the Augustinian system is the only possible system of theology. If those facts be what Romanists or Remonstrants take them to be, then their system is the only true one. It is important that the theologian should know his place. He is not master of the situation. He can no more construct a system of theology to suit his fancy, than the astronomer can adjust the mechanism of the heavens according to his own good pleasure.

My ability to defend myself in rough situations—along with a brief but memorable stint as a taxi driver in Cleveland—turned into quite the selling point for my boss, Iris, during the hiring process. I could parallel-park and adjust my radio while flipping a rude gesture at another driver, all the while calculating a 20-percent tip in my head. I demonstrated my skills to Iris when she hired me. She asked me never to do it again.