Benefits Of Trying New Things Quotes

Ladies and gentlemen of the class of '97: Wear sunscreen. If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now. Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine. Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 pm on some idle Tuesday. Do one thing everyday that scares you. Sing. Don't be reckless with other people's hearts. Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours. Floss. Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long and, in the end, it's only with yourself. Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how. Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements. Stretch. Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't. Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You'll miss them when they're gone. Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll have children, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else's. Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It's the greatest instrument you'll ever own. Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room. Read the directions, even if you don't follow them. Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly. Get to know your parents. You never know when they'll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings. They're your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future. Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young. Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. Travel. Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble, and children respected their elders. Respect your elders. Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out. Don't mess too much with your hair or by the time you're 40 it will look 85. Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth. But trust me on the sunscreen.

In life, the question is not if you will have problems, but how you are going to deal with your problems. If the possibility of failure were erased, what would you attempt to achieve? The essence of man is imperfection. Know that you're going to make mistakes. The fellow who never makes a mistake takes his orders from one who does. Wake up and realize this: Failure is simply a price we pay to achieve success. Achievers are given multiple reasons to believe they are failures. But in spite of that, they persevere. The average for entrepreneurs is 3.8 failures before they finally make it in business. When achievers fail, they see it as a momentary event, not a lifelong epidemic. Procrastination is too high a price to pay for fear of failure. To conquer fear, you have to feel the fear and take action anyway. Forget motivation. Just do it. Act your way into feeling, not wait for positive emotions to carry you forward. Recognize that you will spend much of your life making mistakes. If you can take action and keep making mistakes, you gain experience. Life is playing a poor hand well. The greatest battle you wage against failure occurs on the inside, not the outside. Why worry about things you can't control when you can keep yourself busy controlling the things that depend on you? Handicaps can only disable us if we let them. If you are continually experiencing trouble or facing obstacles, then you should check to make sure that you are not the problem. Be more concerned with what you can give rather than what you can get because giving truly is the highest level of living. Embrace adversity and make failure a regular part of your life. If you're not failing, you're probably not really moving forward. Everything in life brings risk. It's true that you risk failure if you try something bold because you might miss it. But you also risk failure if you stand still and don't try anything new. The less you venture out, the greater your risk of failure. Ironically the more you risk failure — and actually fail — the greater your chances of success. If you are succeeding in everything you do, then you're probably not pushing yourself hard enough. And that means you're not taking enough risks. You risk because you have something of value you want to achieve. The more you do, the more you fail. The more you fail, the more you learn. The more you learn, the better you get. Determining what went wrong in a situation has value. But taking that analysis another step and figuring out how to use it to your benefit is the real difference maker when it comes to failing forward. Don't let your learning lead to knowledge; let your learning lead to action. The last time you failed, did you stop trying because you failed, or did you fail because you stopped trying? Commitment makes you capable of failing forward until you reach your goals. Cutting corners is really a sign of impatience and poor self-discipline. Successful people have learned to do what does not come naturally. Nothing worth achieving comes easily. The only way to fail forward and achieve your dreams is to cultivate tenacity and persistence. Never say die. Never be satisfied. Be stubborn. Be persistent. Integrity is a must. Anything worth having is worth striving for with all your might. If we look long enough for what we want in life we are almost sure to find it. Success is in the journey, the continual process. And no matter how hard you work, you will not create the perfect plan or execute it without error. You will never get to the point that you no longer make mistakes, that you no longer fail. The next time you find yourself envying what successful people have achieved, recognize that they have probably gone through many negative experiences that you cannot see on the surface. Fail early, fail often, but always fail forward.

Being Southern means carrying a responsibility to shake off the comforting blanket of myth and see ourselves clearly. I was bringing a child into this world, and into our long history of trying to do the right think while benefiting mightily from the wrong thing, and I wanted her to see it clearly without the nostalgia that so often softens my anger and desire to tear it down and build a new world in its place.

I should therefore suspend my congratulations on the new liberty of France, until I was informed how it had been combined with government; with public force; with the discipline and obedience of armies; with the collection of an effective and well-distributed revenue; with morality and religion; with the solidity of property; with peace and order; with civil and social manners. All these (in their way) are good things too; and, without them, liberty is not a benefit whilst it lasts, and is not likely to continue long. The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations, which may be soon turned into complaints. Prudence would dictate this in the case of separate, insulated, private men; but liberty, when men act in bodies, is power. Considerate people, before they declare themselves, will observe the use which is made of power; and particularly of so trying a thing as new power in new persons, of whose principles, tempers, and dispositions they have little or no experience, and in situations, where those who appear the most stirring in the scene may possibly not be the real movers.

I suspect that self-deception is similar to its cousins, overconfidence and optimism, and as with these other biases, it has both benefits and disadvantages. On the positive side, an unjustifiably elevated belief in ourselves can increase our general well-being by helping us cope with stress; it can increase our persistence while doing difficult or tedious tasks; and it can get us to try new and different experiences. We persist in deceiving ourselves in part to maintain a positive self-image. We gloss over our failures, highlight our successes (even when they’re not entirely our own), and love to blame other people and outside circumstances when our failures are undeniable. Like our friend the crab, we can use self-deception to boost our confidence when we might not otherwise feel bold. Positioning ourselves on the basis of our finer points can help us snag a date, finish a big project, or land a job. (I am not suggesting that you puff up your résumé, of course, but a little extra confidence can often work in our favor.) On the negative side, to the extent that an overly optimistic view of ourselves can form the basis of our actions, we may wrongly assume that things will turn out for the best and as a consequence not actively make the best decisions. Self-deception can also cause us to “enhance” our life stories with, say, a degree from a prestigious university, which can lead us to suffer a great deal when the truth is ultimately revealed. And, of course, there is the general cost of deception. When we and those around us are dishonest, we start suspecting everyone, and without trust our lives become more difficult in almost every way.

Long before there were effective treatments, physicians dispensed prognoses, hope, and, above all, meaning. When something terrible happens-and serious disease is always terrible-people want to know why. In a pantheistic world, the explanation was simple-one god had caused the problem, another could cure it. In the time since people have been trying to get along with only one God, explaining disease and evil has become more difficult. Generations of theologians have wrestled with the problem of theodicy-how can a good God allow such bad things to happen to good people? Darwinian medicine can't offer a substitute for such explanations. It can't provide a universe in which events are part of a divine plan, much less one in which individual illness reflects individual sins. It can only show us why we are the way we are, why we are vulnerable to certain diseases. A Darwinian view of medicine simultaneously makes disease less and more meaningful. Diseases do not result from random or malevolent forces, they arise ultimately from past natural selection. Paradoxically, the same capacities that make us vulnerable to disease often confer benefits. The capacity for suffering is a useful defense. Autoimmune disease is a price of our remarkable ability to attack invaders. Cancer is the price of tissues that can repair themselves. Menopause may protect the interests of our genes in existing children. Even senescence and death are not random, but compromises struck by natural selection as it inexorably shaped out bodies to maximize the transmission of our genes. In such paradoxical benefits, some may find a gentle satisfaction, even a bit of meaning-at least the sort of meaning Dobzhansky recognized. After all, nothing in medicine makes sense except in the light of evolution.

cause of cavities, even more damaging than sugar consumption, bad diet, or poor hygiene. (This belief had been echoed by other dentists for a hundred years, and was endorsed by Catlin too.) Burhenne also found that mouthbreathing was both a cause of and a contributor to snoring and sleep apnea. He recommended his patients tape their mouths shut at night. “The health benefits of nose breathing are undeniable,” he told me. One of the many benefits is that the sinuses release a huge boost of nitric oxide, a molecule that plays an essential role in increasing circulation and delivering oxygen into cells. Immune function, weight, circulation, mood, and sexual function can all be heavily influenced by the amount of nitric oxide in the body. (The popular erectile dysfunction drug sildenafil, known by the commercial name Viagra, works by releasing nitric oxide into the bloodstream, which opens the capillaries in the genitals and elsewhere.) Nasal breathing alone can boost nitric oxide sixfold, which is one of the reasons we can absorb about 18 percent more oxygen than by just breathing through the mouth. Mouth taping, Burhenne said, helped a five-year-old patient of his overcome ADHD, a condition directly attributed to breathing difficulties during sleep. It helped Burhenne and his wife cure their own snoring and breathing problems. Hundreds of other patients reported similar benefits. The whole thing seemed a little sketchy until Ann Kearney, a doctor of speech-language pathology at the Stanford Voice and Swallowing Center, told me the same. Kearney helped rehabilitate patients who had swallowing and breathing disorders. She swore by mouth taping. Kearney herself had spent years as a mouthbreather due to chronic congestion. She visited an ear, nose, and throat specialist and discovered that her nasal cavities were blocked with tissue. The specialist advised that the only way to open her nose was through surgery or medications. She tried mouth taping instead. “The first night, I lasted five minutes before I ripped it off,” she told me. On the second night, she was able to tolerate the tape for ten minutes. A couple of days later, she slept through the night. Within six weeks, her nose opened up. “It’s a classic example of use it or lose it,” Kearney said. To prove her claim, she examined the noses of 50 patients who had undergone laryngectomies, a procedure in which a breathing hole is cut into the throat. Within two months to two years, every patient was suffering from complete nasal obstruction. Like other parts of the body, the nasal cavity responds to whatever inputs it receives. When the nose is denied regular use, it will atrophy. This is what happened to Kearney and many of her patients, and to so much of the general population. Snoring and sleep apnea often follow.

a European executive who works for a company that has failed is an executive who no longer has a career. In America, by contrast, having tried (and failed) to start your own company is often a résumé booster—particularly in the fertile fields of Silicon Valley. It marks you as a risk taker, a self-starter, someone who is not afraid to shoulder a whole lot of responsibility. And the (correct) assumption is that in your failure, you’ve learned a lot of valuable lessons that your new employer will benefit from. On the two continents, the exact same set of circumstances signal wildly different things: in Europe, that you are irresponsible, and perhaps too lazy and incompetent to run a business, in America, that you are a risk taker and a visionary.

{From Luther Burbank's funeral. He was loved until he revealed he was an atheist, then he began to receive death threats. He tried to amiably answer them all, leading to his death} It is impossible to estimate the wealth he has created. It has been generously given to the world. Unlike inventors, in other fields, no patent rights were given him, nor did he seek a monopoly in what he created. Had that been the case, Luther Burbank would have been perhaps the world's richest man. But the world is richer because of him. In this he found joy that no amount of money could give. And so we meet him here today, not in death, but in the only immortal life we positively know--his good deeds, his kindly, simple, life of constructive work and loving service to the whole wide world. These things cannot die. They are cumulative, and the work he has done shall be as nothing to its continuation in the only immortality this brave, unselfish man ever sought, or asked to know. As great as were his contributions to the material wealth of this planet, the ages yet to come, that shall better understand him, will give first place in judging the importance of his work to what he has done for the betterment of human plants and the strength they shall gain, through his courage, to conquer the tares, the thistles and the weeds. Then no more shall we have a mythical God that smells of brimstone and fire; that confuses hate with love; a God that binds up the minds of little children, as other heathen bind up their feet--little children equally helpless to defend their precious right to think and choose and not be chained from the dawn of childhood to the dogmas of the dead. Luther Burbank will rank with the great leaders who have driven heathenish gods back into darkness, forever from this earth. In the orthodox threat of eternal punishment for sin--which he knew was often synonymous with yielding up all liberty and freedom--and in its promise of an immortality, often held out for the sacrifice of all that was dear to life, the right to think, the right to one's mind, the right to choose, he saw nothing but cowardice. He shrank from such ways of thought as a flower from the icy blasts of death. As shown by his work in life, contributing billions of wealth to humanity, with no more return than the maintenance of his own breadline, he was too humble, too unselfish, to be cajoled with dogmatic promises of rewards as a sort of heavenly bribe for righteous conduct here. He knew that the man who fearlessly stands for the right, regardless of the threat of punishment or the promise of reward, was the real man. Rather was he willing to accept eternal sleep, in returning to the elements from whence he came, for in his lexicon change was life. Here he was content to mingle as a part of the whole, as the raindrop from the sea performs its sacred service in watering the land to which it is assigned, that two blades may grow instead of one, and then, its mission ended, goes back to the ocean from whence it came. With such service, with such a life as gardener to the lilies of the field, in his return to the bosoms of infinity, he has not lost himself. There he has found himself, is a part of the cosmic sea of eternal force, eternal energy. And thus he lived and always will live. Thomas Edison, who believes very much as Burbank, once discussed with me immortality. He pointed to the electric light, his invention, saying: 'There lives Tom Edison.' So Luther Burbank lives. He lives forever in the myriad fields of strengthened grain, in the new forms of fruits and flowers, plants, vines, and trees, and above all, the newly watered gardens of the human mind, from whence shall spring human freedom that shall drive out false and brutal gods. The gods are toppling from their thrones. They go before the laughter and the joy of the new childhood of the race, unshackled and unafraid.

The cannabinoid receptor system matures most rapidly, not during childhood, not during adulthood, but during adolescence. So it wouldn’t be surprising if cannabinoid activity is meant to be functional during adolescence, more functional than at any other period of the lifespan. As far as evolution is concerned, adolescents might well benefit from following their own grandiose thoughts, goals, and plans. By doing so, and by ignoring the weight of evidence—or sheer inertia—piled up against them, they would greatly amplify their tendency to explore, to try things, to imbue their plans with more confidence than they deserve. The evolutionary goals of adolescents are to become independent, to make new connections, and to find new territory, new social systems, and most of all new mates. The distortions of adolescent thinking might be precisely poised to facilitate those goals.

This kind of parenting was typical in much of Asia—and among Asian immigrant parents living in the United States. Contrary to the stereotype, it did not necessarily make children miserable. In fact, children raised in this way in the United States tended not only to do better in school but to actually enjoy reading and school more than their Caucasian peers enrolled in the same schools. While American parents gave their kids placemats with numbers on them and called it a day, Asian parents taught their children to add before they could read. They did it systematically and directly, say, from six-thirty to seven each night, with a workbook—not organically, the way many American parents preferred their children to learn math. The coach parent did not necessarily have to earn a lot of money or be highly educated. Nor did a coach parent have to be Asian, needless to say. The research showed that European-American parents who acted more like coaches tended to raise smarter kids, too. Parents who read to their children weekly or daily when they were young raised children who scored twenty-five points higher on PISA by the time they were fifteen years old. That was almost a full year of learning. More affluent parents were more likely to read to their children almost everywhere, but even among families within the same socioeconomic group, parents who read to their children tended to raise kids who scored fourteen points higher on PISA. By contrast, parents who regularly played with alphabet toys with their young children saw no such benefit. And at least one high-impact form of parental involvement did not actually involve kids or schools at all: If parents simply read for pleasure at home on their own, their children were more likely to enjoy reading, too. That pattern held fast across very different countries and different levels of family income. Kids could see what parents valued, and it mattered more than what parents said. Only four in ten parents in the PISA survey regularly read at home for enjoyment. What if they knew that this one change—which they might even vaguely enjoy—would help their children become better readers themselves? What if schools, instead of pleading with parents to donate time, muffins, or money, loaned books and magazines to parents and urged them to read on their own and talk about what they’d read in order to help their kids? The evidence suggested that every parent could do things that helped create strong readers and thinkers, once they knew what those things were. Parents could go too far with the drills and practice in academics, just as they could in sports, and many, many Korean parents did go too far. The opposite was also true. A coddled, moon bounce of a childhood could lead to young adults who had never experienced failure or developed self-control or endurance—experiences that mattered as much or more than academic skills. The evidence suggested that many American parents treated their children as if they were delicate flowers. In one Columbia University study, 85 percent of American parents surveyed said that they thought they needed to praise their children’s intelligence in order to assure them they were smart. However, the actual research on praise suggested the opposite was true. Praise that was vague, insincere, or excessive tended to discourage kids from working hard and trying new things. It had a toxic effect, the opposite of what parents intended. To work, praise had to be specific, authentic, and rare. Yet the same culture of self-esteem boosting extended to many U.S. classrooms.

You’re as beautiful as you were the night we made our son,” she whispered, bending to kiss him tenderly. His fingers traced her dark eyebrows, her cheeks, her mouth. “I wish we could have another baby,” he said heavily. “So do I. But I’m too old,” she said sadly. She lay her cheek against his broad, damp chest and stroked the silver-tipped hair that covered it. “We’ll have to hope for grandchildren, if he ever forgives us.” He held her tightly, as if by holding her he could keep her safe. What he felt for her was ferociously protective. She misunderstood the tightening of his arms. She smiled and sighed. “We can’t, again. Cecily will think we’ve deserted her.” His hand smoothed her long hair. “She probably knows exactly what we’re doing,” he said on a chuckle. “She loves you.” “She likes you. Maybe we could adopt her.” “Better if our son marries her.” She grinned. “We can hope.” She sat up and stretched, liking the way he watched her still-firm breasts. “The last time I felt like this was thirty-six years ago,” she confided. “The same is true for me,” he replied. She searched his eyes, already facing her departure. She would have to go back to the reservation, home. He could still read her better than she knew. He drew her hand to his mouth. “It’s too late, but I want to marry you. This week. As soon as possible.” She was surprised. She didn’t know what to say. “I love you,” he said. “I never stopped. Forgive me and say yes.” She considered the enormity of what she would be agreeing to do. Be his hostess. Meet his friends. Go to fund-raising events. Wear fancy clothes. Act sophisticated. “Your life is so different from mine,” she began. “Don’t you start,” he murmured. “I’ve seen what it did to Cecily when Tate used that same argument with her about all the differences. It won’t work with me. We love each other too much to worry about trivial things. Say yes. We’ll work out all the details later.” “There will be parties, benefits…” He pulled her down into his arms and kissed her tenderly. “I don’t know much about etiquette,” she tried again. He rolled her over, pinning her gently. One long leg inserted itself between both of hers as he kissed her. “Oh, what the hell,” she murmured, and wrapped her legs around his, groaning as the joints protested. “Arthritis?” he asked. “Osteoarthritis.” “Me, too.” He shifted, groaning a little himself as he eased down. “We’ll work on new positions one day. But it’s…too late…now. Leta…!” he gasped. She didn’t have enough breath to answer him. He didn’t seem to notice that she hadn’t. Bad joints notwithstanding, they managed to do quite a few things that weren’t recommended for people their ages. And some that weren’t in the book at all.

Before I leave the bathroom, I pinch my cheeks hard to bring blood to the surface of my skin. It’s stupid, but I don’t want to look weak and exhausted in front of everyone. When I walk back into Tobias’s room, Uriah is sprawled across the bed facedown; Christina is holding the blue sculpture above Tobias’s desk, examining it; and Lynn is poised above Uriah with a pillow, a wicked grin creeping across her face. Lynn smacks Uriah hard in the back of the head, Christina says, “Hey Tris!” and Uriah cries, “Ow! How on earth do you make a pillow hurt, Lynn?” “My exceptional strength,” she says. “Did you get smacked, Tris? One of your cheeks is bright red.” I must not have pinched the other one hard enough. “No, it’s just…my morning glow.” I try the joke out on my tongue like it’s a new language. Christina laughs, maybe a little harder than my comment warrants, but I appreciate the effort. Uriah bounces on the bed a few times when he moves to the edge. “So, the thing we’re all not talking about,” he says. He gestures to me. “You almost died, a sadistic pansycake saved you, and now we’re all waging some serious war with the factionless as allies.” “Pansycake?” says Christina. “Dauntless slang.” Lynn smirks. “Supposed to be a huge insult, only no one uses it anymore.” “Because it’s so offensive,” says Uriah, noddng. “No. Because it’s so stupid no Dauntless with any sense would speak it, let alone think it. Pansycake. What are you, twelve?” “And a half,” he says. I get the feeling their banter is for my benefit, so that I don’t have to say anything; I can just laugh. And I do, enough to warm the stone that has formed in my stomach. “There’s food downstairs,” says Christina. “Tobias made scrambled eggs, which, as it turns out, is a disgusting food.” “Hey,” I say. “I like scrambled eggs.” “Must be a Stiff breakfast, then.” She grabs my arm. “C’mon.

Lady Cameron,” he said, playing his role with elan as he nodded toward Ian. “You recall our friend Lord Thornton, Marquess of Kensington, I hope?” The radiant smile Elizabeth bestowed on Ian was not at all what the dowager had insisted ought to be “polite but impartial.” It wasn’t quite like any smile she’d ever given him. “Of course I remember you, my lord,” Elizabeth said to Ian, graciously offering him her hand. “I believe this waltz is mine,” he said for the benefit of Elizabeth’s avidly interested admirers. He waited until they were near the dancers, then he tried to sound more pleasant. “You seem to be enjoying yourself tonight.” “I am,” she said idly, but when she looked up at his face she saw the coolness in his eyes; with her new understanding of her own feelings, she understood his more easily. A soft, knowing smile touched her lips as the musicians struck up a waltz; it stayed in her heart as Ian’s arm slid around her waist, and his left hand closed around her fingers, engulfing them. Overhead a hundred thousand candles burned in crystal chandeliers, but Elizabeth was back in a moonlit arbor long ago. Then as now, Ian moved to the music with effortless ease. That lovely waltz had begun something that had ended wrong, terribly wrong. Now, as she danced in his arms, she could make this waltz end much differently, and she knew it; the knowledge filled her with pride and a twinge of nervousness. She waited, expecting him to say something tender, as he had the last time. “Belhaven’s been devouring you with his eyes all night,” Ian said instead. “So have half the men in this ballroom. For a country that prides itself on its delicate manners, they sure as hell don’t extend to admiring beautiful women.” That, Elizabeth thought with a startled inner smile, was not the opening she’d been waiting for. With his current mood, Elizabeth realized, she was going to have to make her own opening. Lifting her eyes to his enigmatic golden ones, she said quietly, “Ian, have you ever wanted something very badly-something that was within your grasp-and yet you were afraid to reach out for it?” Surprised by her grave question and her use of his name, Ian tried to ignore the jealousy that had been eating at him all night. “No,” he said, scrupulously keeping the curtness from his voice as he gazed down at her alluring face. “Why do you ask? Is there something you want?” Her gaze fell from his, and she nodded at his frilled white shirtfront. “What is it you want?” “You.” Ian’s breath froze in his chest, and he stared down at her lustrous hair. “What did you just say?” She raised her eyes to his. “I said I want you, only I’m afraid that I-“ Ian’s heart slammed into his chest, and his fingers dug reflexively into her back, starting to pull her to him. “Elizabeth,” he said in a strained voice, glancing a little wildly at their avidly curious audience and resisting the impossible impulse to take her out onto the balcony, “why in God’s name would you say a thing like that to me when we’re in the middle of a damned dance floor in a crowded ballroom?” Her radiant smile widened. “I thought it seemed like exactly the right place,” she told him, watching his eyes darken with desire. “Because it’s safer?” Ian asked in disbelief, meaning safer from his ardent reaction. “No, because this is how it all began two years ago. We were in the arbor, and a waltz was playing,” she reminded him needlessly. “And you came up behind me and said, ‘Dance with me, Elizabeth.’ And-and I did,” she said, her voice trailing off at the odd expression darkening his eyes. “Remember?” she added shakily when he said absolutely nothing. His gaze held hers, and his voice was tender and rough. “Love me, Elizabeth.” Elizabeth felt a tremor run through her entire body, but she looked at him without flinching. “I do.

Unfortunately, the Hospital Fund Raising Committee, to which Elizabeth was assigned, spent most of its time mired down in petty trivialities and rarely made a decision on anything. In a fit of bored frustration, Elizabeth finally asked Ian to step into their drawing room one day, while the committee was meeting there, and to give them the benefit of his expertise. “And,” she laughingly warned him in the privacy of his study when he agreed to join them, “no matter how they prose on about every tiny, meaningless expenditure-which they will-promise me you won’t point out to them that you could build six hospitals with less effort and time.” “Could I do that?” he asked, grinning. “Absolutely!” She sighed. “Between them, they must have half the money in Europe, yet they debate about every shilling to be spent as if it were coming out of their own reticules and likely to send them to debtors’ gaol.” “If they offend your thrifty sensibilities, they must be a rare group,” Ian teased. Elizabeth gave him a distracted smile, but when they neared the drawing room, where the committee was drinking tea in Ian’s priceless Sevres china cups, she turned to him and added hastily, “Oh, and don’t comment on Lady Wiltshire’s blue hat.” “Why not?” “Because it’s her hair.” “I wouldn’t do such a thing,” he protested, grinning at her. “Yes, you would!” she whispered, trying to frown and chuckling instead. “The dowager duchess told me that, last night, you complimented the furry dog Lady Shirley had draped over her arm.” “Madam, I was following your specific instructions to be nice to the eccentric old harridan. Why shouldn’t I have complimented her dog?” “Because it was a new fur muff of a rare sort, of which she was extravagantly proud.” “There is no fur on earth that mangy, Elizabeth,” he replied with an impenitent grin. “She’s hoaxing the lot of you,” he added seriously. Elizabeth swallowed a startled laugh and said with an imploring look, “Promise me you’ll be very nice, and very patient with the committee.” “I promise,” he said gravely, but when she reached for the door handle and opened the door-when it was too late to step back and yank it closed-he leaned close to her ear and whispered, “Did you know a camel is the only animal invented by a committee, which is why it turned out the way it has?” If the committee was surprised to see the formerly curt and irascible Marquess of Kensington stroll into their midst wearing a beatific smile worth of a choir boy, they were doubtlessly shocked to see his wife’s hands clamped over her face and her eyes tearing with mirth.

You are personally responsible for so much of the sunshine that brightens up your life. Optimists and gentle souls continually benefit from their very own versions of daylight saving time. They get extra hours of happiness and sunshine every day. – Douglas Pagels, from Simple Thoughts That Can Literally Change Your Life The secret joys of living are not found by rushing from point A to point B, but by slowing down and inventing some imaginary letters along the way. – Douglas Pagels, from Simple Thoughts That Can Literally Change Your Life “There is nothing more important than family.” Those words should be etched in stone on the sidewalks that lead to every home. – Douglas Pagels, from Simple Thoughts That Can Literally Change Your Life I may be uncertain about exactly where I’m headed, but I am very clear regarding this: I’m glad I’ve got a ticket to go on this magnificent journey. – Douglas Pagels, from Simple Thoughts That Can Literally Change Your Life When your heart is filled with gratitude for what you do have, your head isn’t nearly so worried about what you don’t. – Douglas Pagels, from Simple Thoughts That Can Literally Change Your Life Don’t let cynical people transfer their cynicism off on you. In spite of its problems, it is still a pretty amazing world, and there are lots of truly wonderful people spinning around on this planet. – Douglas Pagels, from Required Reading for All Teenagers All the good things you can do – having the right attitude, having a strong belief in your abilities, making good choices and responsible decisions – all those good things will pay huge dividends. You’ll see. Your prayers will be heard. Your karma will kick in. The sacrifices you made will be repaid. And the good work will have all been worth it. – Douglas Pagels, from Required Reading for All Teenagers The more you’re bothered by something that’s wrong, the more you’re empowered to make things right. – Douglas Pagels, from Everyone Should Have a Book Like This to Get Through the Gray Days May you be blessed with all these things: A little more joy, a little less stress, a lot more understanding of your wonderfulness. Abundance in your life, blessings in your days, dreams that come true, and hopes that stay. A rainbow on the horizon, an angel by your side, and everything that could ever bring a smile to your life. – Douglas Pagels, from May You Be Blessed with All These Things Each day brings with it the miracle of a new beginning. Many of the moments ahead will be marvelously disguised as ordinary days, but each one of us has the chance to make something extraordinary out of them. – Douglas Pagels, from May You Be Blessed with All These Things Keep planting the seeds of your dreams, because if you keep believing in them, they will keep trying their best to blossom for you. – Douglas Pagels, from May You Be Blessed with All These Things I hope your dreams take you... to the corners of your smiles, to the highest of your hopes, to the windows of your opportunities, and to the most special places your heart has ever known. – Douglas Pagels, from May You Be Blessed with All These Things Love is what holds everything together. It’s the ribbon around the gift of life. – Douglas Pagels, from May You Be Blessed with All These Things There are times in life when just being brave is all you need to be. – Douglas Pagels, from May You Be Blessed with All These Things When it comes to anything – whether it involves people or places or jobs or hoped-for plans – you never know what the answer will be if you don’t ask. And you never know what the result will be if you don’t try. – Douglas Pagels, from Make Every Day a Positive One Don’t just have minutes in the day; have moments in time. – Douglas Pagels, from Chasing Away the Clouds A life well lived is simply a compilation of days well spent. – Douglas Pagels, from Chasing Away the Clouds

Fine-Tune Your Mind to the Benefits of Feedback When you’re in anxiety mode, it’s easy to think of feedback as something wholly torturous and psychologically painful. Can you nudge this thinking by attuning to some of the benefits? --You may find out you’ve done something well. --You may discover that things you perceive as minor aspects of your work are seen by other people as major strengths. --You may achieve more success because what you produce after feedback is better. For example, someone gives you a tip or suggests a change that improves your work. You realize you like the new version, but it wasn’t something you would’ve attempted without a push in that direction. --Through feedback, you may get new insights that help you solve problems you’ve been stuck with. The feedback giver may offer useful information about how he or she previously solved the problem you’re currently having. --Lastly, the process of receiving feedback can strengthen your relationship with the person giving the feedback. It can be a bonding experience. Experiment: Try one (or both) of these options: Option 1: Think of one specific instance in the past when negative feedback has actually been useful to you. Option 2: Go through each of the listed benefits of feedback, and write one example of a specific situation in which you received that benefit.

2/ KICK YOUR OWN ASS, GENTLY. I’ve been trying to set a few modest goals, both daily and weekly. In the course of a day, it’s good to get some stupid things accomplished, and off your “list.” I guess because it leaves you feeling that you and the “rest of the world” still have something to do with each other! Like today, for example, I can think back on sending a fax to my brother on his birthday, leaving a phone message for Brutus at his “hotel” on his birthday, phoning my Dad on his birthday (yep, all on the same day), then driving to Morin Heights to the ATM machine, to St. Sauveur for grocery shopping, and planning all that so I’d still have enough daylight left to go snowshoeing in the woods. And then I could drink. Not a high-pressure day, and hardly earth-shaking activities, but I laid them out for myself and did them (even though tempted to “not bother” with each of them at one point or another). I gave myself a gentle kick in the ass when necessary, or cursed myself out for a lazy fool, and because of all that, I consider today a satisfactory day. Everything that needed to be done got done. And by “needs” I certainly include taking my little baby soul out for a ride. And drinking. And there are little side benefits from such activities, like when the cashier in the grocery store wished me a genuinely-pleasant “Bonjour,” and I forced myself to look at her and return the greeting. The world still seems unreal to me, but I try not to purposely avoid contact with pleasant strangers. It wouldn’t be polite! Another “little goal” for me right now is spending an hour or two at the desk every morning, writing a letter or a fax to someone like you, or Brutus, or Danny, who I want to reach out to, or conversely, to someone I’ve been out of touch with for a long while, maybe for a year-and-a-half or two years. These are friends that I’ve decided I still value, and that I want as part of my “new life,” whatever it may be. It doesn’t really matter what, but just so you can say that you changed something in the course of your day: a neglected friend is no longer neglected; an errand that ought to be dealt with has been dealt with.

I WANT TO end this list by talking a little more about the founding of Pixar University and Elyse Klaidman’s mind-expanding drawing classes in particular. Those first classes were such a success—of the 120 people who worked at Pixar then, 100 enrolled—that we gradually began expanding P.U.’s curriculum. Sculpting, painting, acting, meditation, belly dancing, live-action filmmaking, computer programming, design and color theory, ballet—over the years, we have offered free classes in all of them. This meant spending not only the time to find the best outside teachers but also the real cost of freeing people up during their workday to take the classes. So what exactly was Pixar getting out of all of this? It wasn’t that the class material directly enhanced our employees’ job performance. Instead, there was something about an apprentice lighting technician sitting alongside an experienced animator, who in turn was sitting next to someone who worked in legal or accounting or security—that proved immensely valuable. In the classroom setting, people interacted in a way they didn’t in the workplace. They felt free to be goofy, relaxed, open, vulnerable. Hierarchy did not apply, and as a result, communication thrived. Simply by providing an excuse for us all to toil side by side, humbled by the challenge of sketching a self-portrait or writing computer code or taming a lump of clay, P.U. changed the culture for the better. It taught everyone at Pixar, no matter their title, to respect the work that their colleagues did. And it made us all beginners again. Creativity involves missteps and imperfections. I wanted our people to get comfortable with that idea—that both the organization and its members should be willing, at times, to operate on the edge. I can understand that the leaders of many companies might wonder whether or not such classes would truly be useful, worth the expense. And I’ll admit that these social interactions I describe were an unexpected benefit. But the purpose of P.U. was never to turn programmers into artists or artists into belly dancers. Instead, it was to send a signal about how important it is for every one of us to keep learning new things. That, too, is a key part of remaining flexible: keeping our brains nimble by pushing ourselves to try things we haven’t tried before. That’s what P.U. lets our people do, and I believe it makes us stronger.

Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)” Ladies and Gentlemen of the class of '99: Wear sunscreen. If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now. Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth; oh never mind; you will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine. Don’t worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4:00 pm on some idle Tuesday. Do one thing everyday that scares you. Sing. Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts; don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours. Floss. Don’t waste your time on jealousy; sometimes you’re ahead; sometimes you’re behind; the race is long, and in the end it’s only with yourself. Remember compliments you receive; forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how. Keep your old love letters; throw away your old bank statements. Stretch. Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you wanna do with your life; the most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives; some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don’t. Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees; you’ll miss them when they’re gone. Maybe you’ll marry -- maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll have children -- maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll divorce at 40 -- maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either -- your choices are half chance; so are everybody else’s. Enjoy your body; use it every way you can. Don’t be afraid of it, or what other people think of it. It’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own. Dance. even if you have nowhere to do it but in your own living room. Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them. Do not read beauty magazines; they will only make you feel ugly. Get to know your parents; you never know when they’ll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings; they're your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future. Understand that friends come and go, but for the precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography, in lifestyle, because the older you get the more you need the people you knew when you were young. Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. Travel. Accept certain inalienable truths: prices will rise; politicians will philander; you too will get old, and when you do you’ll fantasize that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were noble, and children respected their elders. Respect your elders. Don’t expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund; maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse; but you never know when either one might run out. Don’t mess too much with your hair, or by the time you're 40, it will look 85. Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia: dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts, and recycling it for more than it’s worth. But trust me on the sunscreen. Baz Luhrmannk, William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet (1996)

So, look at the world around you, and if you notice things that don't seem right - injustices, inefficiencies, or just oddities - investigate them further. Think about why and how those things might happen and what you could do to change them for the better. Test your ideas by trying new things, making more observations, refining your models, and repeating the process. And when you find something that works to explain or improve your situation, tell everyone about it, so we can all benefit.

Ask Questions "Ask questions, show interest in the response you receive, and then attempt to link those responses to your own knowledge and experience" - Conversationally Speaking, page 58 Ask questions. Lots of them! Actually, don’t ask too many questions. Questions are simply a means to enter conversation. You should ask questions that promote conversation. Don’t ask just any type of question if your goal is to encourage conversation. Yes/No questions are typically starter questions that should quickly dissolve. Open-ended questions are normally the way to go! Instead of starting sentences with “Who” or “When”, try “How” or “Why”. If conversation stops, either leave or ask an open-ended question. Try to stay away from cliché questions because they generally elicit cliché answers. There is such a thing as an open-ended question that is too open and cliché. For example, Americans like to respond “Pretty good” or “Not bad” to the question “How’d it go today?” Also, stay away from initially asking difficult questions. In an effort to make your conversation partner comfortable, ask a simple question that they should obviously know. Questions are a crucial instrument to equip a person for a good conversation. The right question will help you maneuver through any conversational cross-point and is a genuine way to connect with others. Once you ask a question, listen actively! When it’s your turn to respond, try to express their reality using your own words. Asking questions ought to benefit your conversation partner as you intend to give them an opportunity to speak. Use questions liberally and wisely. Take the dual perspective, be specific and direct, and ask good questions. Seek every opportunity to benefit your conversation partner as you express genuine interest in them. Conversational speaking is a skill. You must practice every day. Try focusing on one element of communication at a time. Perhaps this week, do all possible to handle criticism constructively by asking for details and agreeing with the truth. Next week, intentionally practice another aspect of communication. Opportunity awaits us every day. We just need to engage and enjoy every occasion.

As a sharp illustration of this, there was a very good article20 on the revcom.us site about this capitalist who had investments in Bangladesh but who wanted to be a socially-conscious capitalist. This article ran down all the ways in which he tried to do things differently, do them in a way that would not so viciously exploit the women working in the plants that he owned—not have them in such horrific conditions, give them more social benefits—and how he was forced to give that up by this very driving force of anarchy, by the competition from other capitalists doing things in more efficient, more ruthless ways. So even though he was a good-hearted capitalist—and that may sound like an oxymoron (a contradiction in terms), but he was actually a good-hearted capitalist—still, he couldn’t keep up his “kind capitalism” because of the basic dynamics of what drives capitalism.

Why should I side with you? Why should I care if you win?” The phouka raked fingers through his hair. “You have seen one of them, one of their forms. That is what seeks domination over every natural thing in this place. We of the Seelie Court are capricious, and not always well-disposed toward humankind. But would you hand this city over to the likes of what you saw tonight? That is the Unseelie Court. If we fall, every park, every boulevard tree, every grassy lawn would be their dwelling place.” Eddi sighed. “It’s not just for you, it’s for the entire seven-country metro area. Couldn’t we just let them have St. Paul?” The phouka made a disgusted noise. “All right. What if they did take over? Would we all be eaten in our beds?” He shook his head. “There are places,” he began slowly, “that belong to them. Have you ever passed through some small town, surrounded by fertile country and fed by commerce, that seemed to be rotting away even as you watched? Where the houses and the people were faded, and all the storefronts stood empty?” Eddi remembered a few. “Or a city whose new buildings looked tawdry, whose old ones were ramshackle, where the streets were grimy and the wind was never fresh, where money passed from hand to hand yet benefited no one?” His words were quicker now. “This city is alive with the best magic of mortal folk. The very light off the skyscrapers and the lakes vibrate with it. If the Unseelie Court takes up residence here, this will be a place where people fear their neighbors, where life drains the living until art and wit are luxuries, where any pleasant thing must be imported and soon loses its savor.” He fell silent, as if embarrassed by his own eloquence. Eddi rubbed her hands over her face, trying to rub away her confusion, her anger, her fear. Finally she asked the only question she had left. “Can’t you get somebody else?” The phouka began to laugh weakly. “Oh, go to bed, Eddi McCandry. You could befuddle a stone. Go to bed, and sleep soundly, and tempt me not into some foolish flap of the tongue.

First things first. Let’s bone up on history. If men had wanted to stay bad forever, they could have, agreed? Agreed. Did we stay out in the fields with the beasts? No. In the water with the barracuda? No. Somewhere we let go of the hot gorilla’s paw. Somewhere we turned in our carnivore’s teeth and started chewing blades of grass. We been working mulch as much as blood, into our philosophy, for quite a few lifetimes. Since then we measure ourselves up the scale from apes, but not half so high as angels. It was a nice new idea and we were afraid we’d lose it, so we put it on paper and built buildings like this one around it. And we been going in and out of these buildings chewing it over, that one new sweet blade of grass, trying to figure how it all started, when we made the move, when we decided to be different. I suppose one night hundreds of thousands of years ago in a cave by a night fire when one of those shaggy men wakened to gaze over the banked coals at his woman, his children, and thought of their being cold, dead, gone forever. Then he must have wept. And he put out his hand in the night to the woman who must die some day and to the children who must follow her. And for a little bit next morning, he treated them somewhat better, for he saw that they, like himself, had the seed of night in them. He felt that seed like slime in his pulse, splitting, making more against the day they would multiply his body into darkness. So that man, the first one, knew what we know now: our hour is short, eternity is long. With this knowledge came pity and mercy, so we spared others for the later, more intricate, more mysterious benefits of love. “So, in sum, what are we? We are the creatures that know and know too much. That leaves us with such a burden again we have a choice, to laugh or cry. No other animal does either. We do both, depending on the season and the need. Somehow, I feel the carnival watches, to see which we’re doing and how and why, and moves in on us when it feels we’re ripe.

Voyagers, I’ve always wanted to write about you. And now, at 4:41 a.m. on an autumn morning, Words have found their way into my mind. I picture myself like you— Distant from life, Alone, Yet moving towards an unknown destination! Like you, in the early stages of my journey, I could see, I could gather knowledge and transmit it, I was useful and efficient. But sometimes, to keep connected to the world, To be able to stay on course and conserve my energy, I had to shut parts of myself down, To survive, To go blind, to be deaf, to be isolated, and just occasionally signal my existence to the world. The same thing I do, that you do, that so many others do. The boundless reaches of space Have become somewhat more comprehensible through you, Yet the depths of the human soul remain unfathomable, And its pain incurable. We live in an age surrounded by a torrent of information, Yet somehow, we remain lonely and lost. Language has advanced, There are words for nearly everything, Everyone can describe their own state of mind, yet we’re still at war with one another. Earth has turned into a vast ship, Perhaps like Noah’s Ark, With maximum diversity and multiplicity, Yet everyone on this ship plays their own tune, rallies their own cause! Someone steps forward, claiming each individual’s thoughts and personal benefit are like rare pearls to be cherished, While another insists that collective welfare takes precedence, That the needs of the masses outweigh individual desires. Some launch movements to claim their rights, While others start movements to flaunt the rights they’ve acquired. No one knows what they truly want; We’re all still lost. I don’t know how Earth looks from afar— Perhaps like a blueberry-flavored lollipop, A lollipop with a stick, But Earth’s stick is an invisible one made of sorrow. I find something common among all the passengers on this ship, All the inhabitants of this blueberry lollipop: sorrow. A fetus in its mother’s womb is also like a lollipop, But connected by an umbilical cord. As a fetus, Growing in the mother’s womb, Suffering, malnutrition, and physical ailments can be painful for us. If the mother’s state is stable, We may enjoy brief periods of security and calm, but after that, We must endure the pain of separation, Learn how to breathe, And besides the sorrow of leaving security behind, We face new emotions like fear and anger. Later in life, We each take our own path. No matter how much they try to show humans as social creatures, It’s always the individual who walks their own way, who has the freedom to choose, Even if one finds the meaning of their path in joining a group or a collective, it’s their individual choice that put them on that path. Today, people have countless options to join others who are like them, And these options themselves bring confusion, And when you join a group out of confusion, You treat the other groups with hostility. Science, philosophy, religion, politics…each of them has thousands of branches, and each branch Wants to disprove the other, cleanse itself of its shameful past. Freedom of speech has become an excuse for verbal assaults and psychological wounds, Non-violence has become a breeding ground for new and emerging dictators, For heartless sects and brutal factions. Knowledge and science alone cannot save us, Just as religion couldn’t. I don’t want to write about chaos, Life isn’t that disorganized, In some corner of the world, A lover is staring up at his beloved’s window, A child is laughing joyfully. But writing about sorrow, Speaking of chaos and Asking questions can reveal where we stand. Now, we know so much about space, And about the Sun, too. The James Webb telescope has mapped out the cosmos for us, and countless projects are underway for the future, crafted with flawless precision and extraordinary coherence, but the rift between humans remains deep.

Take what fame or fortune comes your way. My first bestseller was a cookbook, so remember to be open to trying new things. From that experience I learned things about marketing a book that benefitted me greatly and, combined with my sales management experience with Fortune 500 companies, I was able to launch a string of bestsellers.

Writers need to be open to trying new things. My first bestseller was a cookbook, and from that experience I learned things about marketing a book that benefitted me greatly.

The experts counter by saying that travel is so rewarding that it should take precedence over other things younger people spend money on. They believe travel has special benefits for the young because it broadens their horizons, helps them to find a focus for their lives, and challenges them in new ways.

Table of Contents Things About House For Rent Barrie Excitement About House For Rent Barrie The 15 Second Trick For House For Rent Barrie If you're looking to move into a home that's not going to be taken over by an estate agent, then you should seriously consider taking a house for rent to stay. There are many reasons why you might want to rent a home rather than staying in your own. Perhaps you've just bought a house and you're trying to find somewhere to stay before you move in. Maybe you're simply on holiday and need somewhere to stay until you're back at home. Things About House For Rent Barrie There are many things to think about when you are considering renting a house instead of buying one. Before you decide whether or not you want to rent a house, you will need to consider what you'll be doing in the house for the majority of your stay. Will you be living alone, with a friend or partner or as a couple? How long do you want to stay in the house to avoid being tempted to move away once your new home is complete? The main reason why you might want to rent a house instead of buying it is because you can save money in the process. You won't have to spend months paying rent, or put down a deposit, or arrange for an insurance policy or rental repayments to take care of everything in the event that you move out. With the economy currently, people don't like to have to spend money, but they also like to save money. If you live in Barrie, then this will be an ideal place to rent a house to live for most of the year. Although you may have to pay some sort of rent during the summer months, and during the colder months you may have to find some other way to pay the costs involved in staying there. Most people who rent a house often decide to move back into their own homes once the lease on the property is up. However, they often find that moving back in isn't as easy or comfortable as when they first moved into the home. So, they choose to take a house to rent to stay for a few months, until they're back in their own home. Renting a house is also a great way to get a place to work in London. Because London is so popular, there are many people working in various different places all across the city, and they are not all living in one place. A house to rent to stay in is a convenient option for many people, and it allows them to work from home. This way they will be able to continue to work, pay their bills and other expenses at home, but still have access to other activities throughout London. Excitement About House For Rent Barrie When you are thinking about taking a house to rent to live in, there are also a number of benefits for you. First, you won't have to put up with the expense of all the costs that go along with having a property to rent and buying a property. Even if you do want to buy a property you may be able to buy it cheaper. The other benefit to owning a home is that you'll be able to easily get a tax return back on the money you have saved by taking on a house to let in Barrie. Although not all landlords give out tax returns on the money you owe them, it is worth asking. The truth is that more people are choosing to rent out their homes to tenants, and this gives them an opportunity to help themselves to some of that money.

You cannot hit a target that you refuse to see. You cannot hit a target if you do not take aim. And, equally dangerously, in both cases: you will not accrue the advantage of aiming, but missing. You will not benefit from the learning that inevitably takes place when things do not go your way. Success at a given endeavor often means trying, falling short, recalibrating (with the new knowledge generated painfully by the failure), and then trying again and falling short—often repeated, ad nauseam.

BOOK CLUB QUESTIONS Throughout the story, there is significant friction between Rory and Camilla, much of which stems from Camilla’s need to manage her daughter’s life. In what ways, if any, do you feel Rory contributes to the chronic tension between them? Soline’s mother, Esmée, believes that each of us creates a unique echo in the world and that those echoes are constantly seeking their match—in order to become complete. Do you believe such a thing is possible? One of the threads running through the book touches on the tendency of daughters to repeat their mothers’ mistakes, especially in relationship matters. Have you or someone you know experienced this in real life? If so, was the pattern eventually recognized and broken? The theme of chasing one’s dreams figures prominently in the journeys of both Rory and Soline. From an early age, Soline was taught that the work they did was a sacred vocation for which the Roussels had been especially chosen, and Hux once told Rory that the dream of opening an art gallery had her name all over it. Do you believe we are each given a calling in life, a talent or gift that feeds our soul and benefits others? “Everything happens for a reason” is a commonly used axiom, particularly when events suddenly turn our lives upside down. Throughout the book, Rory’s and Soline’s lives are upended by a series of seeming coincidences, causing them to wonder if some unseen hand might be at work. Do you believe that certain things are meant to be? That some benevolent force is trying to guide us to our highest good? Or is everything random? Rory tells Soline that she and Camilla push each other’s buttons. Soline understands, but at times she seems to side with Camilla, perhaps because she had a similar relationship with her own mother. What parallels did you note in the relationships between Soline and Esmée and Rory and Camilla? By the end of the book, it seems obvious that Soline has come into Rory’s life for a reason and that the reverse is also true. In the end, each has irrevocably altered the other’s life. Have you ever had someone come into your life, even briefly, who you feel came to teach you a lesson or help you find your path? On her deathbed, Esmée tells Soline about the father she never knew, a man Esmée loved dearly but sent away out of obedience to her mother. She speaks to her daughter about a grief worse than death—the grief of a life half-lived. How do you think these revelations affect Soline’s choices when Anson suddenly reappears in her life? One of Esmée’s quotes is about forgiveness. She says forgiveness is the greatest magick of all and that it makes all things new. Do you believe in the power of forgiveness? If so, is it true in all things, or are there certain things that can never be made new?

She was surprised and asked why not. I explained that although her negative thoughts and feelings were certainly creating a lot of pain for her, I suspected there might be some real advantages, or benefits, of thinking and feeling the way she did. I added that her negative thoughts and feelings might also be an expression of her most beautiful and awesome qualities, and that maybe we should take a look at that before we went about trying to change things. I suggested we could ask the following questions about each negative thought or feeling before she made any decision about pressing the magic button:

Kill Yourself In Buddhism, the idea of being an individual being is a mental construction that holds us all back. Likewise, there are psychological benefits to not approaching life as a separate being because it frees you up to take risks and try new things. The truth is that there is little that is unique or special about your problems, and realizing this makes it easier to work towards change.

Things like the Sundogs shaking the foundations of our original beliefs, turning us to the ways of the Indians we search out to do battle with. Although we saw a number of places along the trail where the Comanche raiding parties have crossed from the north here in Texas to Mexico, carrying out their raids south of the border we saw no actual Indians.  For the Comanche, there is no border.  Just the land that they have freely ridden for hundreds of years.  The divide we white men and Mexicans have made between two countries having little importance to the Comanche as they consider the white men and the Mexicans as all hostile men encroaching on their lands. We rode nearly to Fort Leaton near the Juntas before we turned back now having taken the patrol much farther than we had planned.  The Comanche activity, encouraging us to ride on hoping to encounter at least one of the raiding parties, although we saw no more signs of Comanche not meaning that they have not seen us.  Maybe we are too large an enemy for the small raiding parties to approach.  Most Comanche shy away from skirmishes that result in more than a death or two of their Warrior Braves. Since the death of the two men by the hands of Lopez all of my men staying sharp, if in fact Lopez try's to capture another Ranger.  The torture and death of Dan Skaggs shaking my men up considerably.  "If a man like Lopez catches you make sure that you save one bullet in your revolver to shoot yourself before you get captured and have to face such heinous torture as Dan did," Bill Vents said.  Mostly for the benefit of our new Texas Ranger Bear Wallace, who was new to the ways of the Comanche and outlaws like Lopez.  "Make sure you shoot yourself in the eyeball to assure the bullet kills you dead and don't bounce around in your mouth or off your skull.  Eventually leaving you just alive enough to be left to the hands of Lopez to be tormented till death comes." "That is about enough of the horror tales, Bill," I said noting that the men are more nervous than usual with Bills story no matter how unbelievable the tale seemed.  Out here in the wild country, many things seem to be twisted from reality, some often making the impossible seem possible.  Not only because of Bill's stories but also due to a large amount of Indian gossip not far from being as wild as Vents lies.  Especially the Tonkawa as they believe the way to assure that spirits of the men they kill will be captured and rendered harmless, is to eat the men they slaughter

The Benefits of Suffering Not only is sickness an inherent part of life, it is often beneficial one. Nietzsche found that the most brilliant parts of his writings co-occurred with bodily weakness and suffering. He felt that failures, anxieties, deprivations and mistakes, were necessary for him, just as their opposites 'the path of one's own heaven always leads through the voluptuousness of one's own hell'. Those who cannot endure their suffering and try desperately to eliminate it, encourage neglectfulness remissness, and by their efforts rule out happiness 'For happiness and misfortune are brother and sister, we all grow tall together, or, as with you, remain small together'. The two, health and illness, cannot be separated; the ability to tolerate sickness defines health; and illness is a trigger for a new learning 'as important survival supporting signal, and hurt, conditions people to avoid dangers and protect themselves 'some storm is approaching, and we do well to 'catch' as little wind as possible'. Moreover, 'illness may even act as a powerful stimulus to life, to an abundance of life,' exemplified by Nietzsche, who after a prolonged sickness, rediscovered life, enjoyed it even more, and transformed his suffering into his new philosophy. Nietzsche rejected the conception of suffering as an argument against existence, and pointed out that there were ages in which people tolerated suffering 'and saw in it an enchantment of the first order, a genuine seduction to life. Perhaps in those days [. . .] pain did not hurt as much as it does now'. Furthermore, for healthy people, 'being sick can even become an energetic stimulus for life, for living more'. His long period of sickness seemed to him 'as it were, I discovered life anew, including myself; I tasted all good and even little things, as others cannot easily taste them. I turned my will to health, to life, into a philosophy'. Nietzsche felt that he owed his philosophy to Amor Fati, to a higher kind of health, to his prolonged illness 'It is great pain only which is the ultimate emancipator of the spirit'. Pain teaches strong suspicion which enable seeing things from different perspectives, seeming them different from what they seem to be. A great torturing long pain 'compels us, philosophers, to descend into our ultimate depths, and divest ourselves of all trust, all good-nature, veiling, gentleness, and mediocrity'. Having to live with pain and suffering, Nietzsche tried not only to persevere, but to turn it into great suffering, thus turning a constraint into an opportunity, and the list of advantages is telling: 'Prophetic human beings are afflicted with a great deal of suffering [. . .] it is their path that makes them prophets'. Pain and sickness do not necessarily make people any better, but they do make them deeper, and without them the great suspicion which liberates the spirit and a philosophical examination of life will probably be lost 'Only great pain is the ultimate liberator of the spirit'. Persons who experienced severe suffering become ones who know much about a terrifying world, about which others have no clue 'Deep suffering makes noble; it separates'. The ability to discover happiness in the midst of 'weariness, in the old illness, in the convalescent's relapses', is a sign of the free spirit, who can remain grateful, see the bright side of things and furthermore, after periods of sickness get cured of pessimism

The wound that was made when white people came and took all that they took has never healed. An unattended wound gets infected. Becomes a new kind of wound like the history of what actually happened became a new kind of history. All these stories that we haven't been telling all this time, that we haven't been listening to, are just part of what we need to heal. Not that we're broken. And don't make the mistake of calling us resilient. To not have been destroyed, to not have given up, to have survived is not a badge of honor. Would you call an attempted murder victim resilient? When we go to tell our stories, people think we want it to have gone differently. People want to say things like "sore losers" and "move on already, quit playing the blame game." But is it a game? Only those who have lost as much as we have see the particularly nasty slice of smile on someone who thinks they're winning when they say "Get over it." This is the thing: If you have the option to not think about or even consider history, whether you learned it right or not, or whether it even deserves consideration, that’s how you know you’re on board the ship that serves hors d’oeuvres and fluffs your pillows, while others are out at sea, swimming or drowning, or clinging to little inflatable rafts that they have to take turns keeping inflated, people short of breath, who’ve never even heard of the words hors d’oeuvres or fluff. Then someone from up on the yacht says, “It’s too bad those people down there are lazy, and not as smart and able as we are up here, we who have built these strong, large, stylish boats ourselves, we who float the seven seas like kings.” And then someone else on board says something like, “But your father gave you this yacht, and these are his servants who brought the hors d’oeuvres.” At which point that person gets tossed overboard by a group of hired thugs who’d been hired by the father who owned the yacht, hired for the express purpose of removing any and all agitators on the yacht to keep them from making unnecessary waves, or even referencing the father or the yacht itself. Meanwhile, the man thrown overboard begs for his life, and the people on the small inflatable rafts can’t get to him soon enough, or they don’t even try, and the yacht’s speed and weight cause an undertow. Then in whispers, while the agitator gets sucked under the yacht, private agreements are made, precautions are measured out, and everyone quietly agrees to keep on quietly agreeing to the implied rule of law and to not think about what just happened. Soon, the father, who put these things in place, is only spoken of in the form of lore, stories told to children at night, under the stars, at which point there are suddenly several fathers, noble, wise forefathers. And the boat sails on unfettered. If you were fortunate enough to be born into a family whose ancestors directly benefited from genocide and/or slavery, maybe you think the more you don’t know, the more innocent you can stay, which is a good incentive to not find out, to not look too deep, to walk carefully around the sleeping tiger. Look no further than your last name. Follow it back and you might find your line paved with gold, or beset with traps.

The success of Upper Confidence Bound algorithms offers a formal justification for the benefit of the doubt. Following the advice of these algorithms, you should be excited to meet new people and try new things—to assume the best about them, in the absence of evidence to the contrary. In the long run, optimism is the best prevention for regret.

#23 - Take Immediate Action Many people have difficulty taking action. Reasons vary. Some folks fear failure. Others are disinclined to try new things. Still others are saddled with indecision to the point that they become paralyzed when confronted with multiple options. But making decisions and acting on them quickly can benefit you in several ways. First, you become more committed to the path you choose for yourself. Second, you radiate confidence, an essential trait if you serve in a leadership role. Third, it improves communication; others will realize you’re disinclined to vacillate and respond in a similar manner. Fourth, you accomplish more. These advantages are tough to ignore. If you tend to dither when making decisions and forging ahead, consider developing this habit. It can literally change your life. If you’re unaccustomed to taking immediate action, here’s how I would build this habit… How to start small: Compile a list of tasks you’ve put on the back burner. During Week 1, pick one task from the list each day. Regardless of the reason you put it off (procrastination, a fear of failure, etc.), commit to finishing it before the end of the day. Beginning in Week 2, continue to work through your list of postponed tasks, addressing one per day. In addition, spend 10 minutes per day cleaning up your email inbox. This is a common area of indecision for people. Train yourself to deal with each email decisively. Respond to it, delete it, or archive it. During Week 3, focus on making at least one decision quickly per day. When confronted with multiple options, choose one within 10 seconds. For example, let’s say your spouse asks you which restaurant you’d like to visit for dinner. Instead of spending five minutes considering every local venue, just choose one. Be decisive. Starting in Week 4, look for opportunities to make quick decisions and take immediate action. For example, if you’re presented with more than one set of driving directions, pick one and move on. If you’re at the grocery store and trying to decide between chocolate chip ice cream or Rocky road, choose one and put it in your shopping cart. If you’re trying to decide between two wines for a dinner party, make a fast decision. Give yourself 10 seconds.

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