Break The Loop Quotes

Only after Mom went missing did you realize that her stories were piled inside you, in endless stacks. Mom's everyday life used to go on in a repeating loop, without a break. Her everyday words, which you didn't think deeply about and sometimes dismissed as useless when she was with you, awoke in your heart, creating tidal waves.

She was hot. You could take a poll, write a book, break down all the reasons, the intellectual and physical gifts that shaped her personality, and whatever that intangible part was. Write poems about it, document it all in photos and movies, try to stay woke, but the reality was, what it all came back to, she was hot.

But sometimes a person’s brain starts cycling. No matter what you do, the same thoughts just keep repeating, over and over. You get stuck in a loop, and when you’re inside that loop, you can’t see past it. You’ll keep coming up with the same possibilities, to no end, because the answers you need—they’re outside the loop. Distractions aren’t just distractions. Sometimes they can break you out of the loop.

The ultimate violence patriarchy does to women is to make us believe we deserve what has been done to us—a loop forever closing, breaking us so that we will raise broken women.

After three glasses, Cynthia flung the windows open and announced, “Zac Efron, I love you!” to the whole of Chelsea, while Lesley was crouched head down over the lavatory bowl throwing up, Maggie had made Sarah a declaration of love (“you’re sho, sho beautiful, marry me!”), and Sarah was shedding floods of tears without knowing why. It hit me worst of all. I had jumped on Cynthia’s bed and was bawling out “Breaking Free” in an endless loop. When Cynthia’s father came into the room, I’d held Cynthia’s hairbrush up to him like a microphone and called out, “Sing alone, baldie! Get those hips swinging!” Although the next day I couldn’t even being to explain why myself. After that embarrassing episode, Lesley and I had decided to give the demon drink a wide berth in future (we gave Cynthia’s father a wide berth as well for a couple of months), and we had stuck to that resolution.

Negative thoughts compound. The more you think of yourself as worthless, stupid, or ugly, the more you condition yourself to interpret life that way. You get trapped in a thought loop. The same is true for how you think about others. Once you fall into the habit of seeing people as angry, unjust, or selfish, you see those kind of people everywhere.

Wow. What were the chances of breaking every law of quantum dynamics and locating the universe's most annoying person in one fell swoop?

Distractions aren't just distractions. Sometimes, you need them to break the loop.

I don't care how happily married you are or how deeply enmeshed you are with your children and family and career -- every woman needs a couple of chicks who'll break out the sangria just because you need to vent.

Nothing happens if we don’t make it happen. We can’t get the job we don’t apply for. We can’t date the guy we don’t text back. We can’t have good mental health if we don’t take action to break out of limiting thought patterns and anxious drama loops.

my thoughts are spirographs; think intricate patterns of loops, think waves that never break.

Another day. How long are you gonna scroll down? Semicolon Smile

I hope your future includes me. I mean, someone has to continue to kick your butt in pool.” Noah laughed as he snagged his fingers around my belt loops and dragged me closer. “I was letting you win.” “Please.” His eyes had about fallen out of his head when I’d sunk a couple of balls off the break. “You were losing. Badly.” I wondered if he also reveled in the warmth of being this close again. “Then I guess I’ll have to keep you around. For good. You’ll be useful during a hustle.” He lowered his forehead to mine and his brown eyes, which had been laughing seconds ago, darkened as he got serious. “I have a lot I want to say to you. A lot I want to apologize for.” “Me, too.

Noah didn’t walk, he stalked and I loved the mischievous glint in his eye when he stalked me. He placed his hands on my hips and nuzzled my hair. “I love the way you smell.” I swallowed and tried to reign in the mutant pterodactyls having a roller derby in my stomach as I dared to think about a future for the two of us. The moment Aires’ car rumbled beneath me, I’d known that I needed Noah in my life. Aires’ death had left a gaping hole in my heart. I thought all I needed was that car to run. Wrong. A car would never fill the emptiness, but love could. “I hope your future includes me. I mean, someone has to continue to kick your butt in pool.” Noah laughed as he snagged his fingers around my belt loops and dragged me closer. “I was letting you win.” “Please.” His eyes had about fallen out of his head when I’d sunk a couple of balls off the break. “You were losing. Badly.” I wondered if he also reveled in the warmth of being this close again. “Then I guess I’ll have to keep you around. For good. You’ll be useful during a hustle.” He lowered his forehead to mine and his brown eyes, which had been laughing seconds ago, darkened as he got serious. “I have a lot I want to say to you. A lot I want to apologize for.” “Me, too.” And I touched his cheek again, this time letting my fingers take their time. Noah wanted me, for good. “But can we hash it all out some other time? I’m sort of talked out and I’ve still gotta go see my dad. Do you think we can just take it on faith right now that I want you, you want me, and we’ll figure out the happy ending part later?” His lips curved into a sexy smile and I became lost in him. “I love you, Echo Emerson.” I whispered the words as he brought his lips to mine. “Forever.

Someone asked me recently, what it is like to live with OCD. I paused for a while and said, imagine watching your sibling getting run over by a truck in front of your eyes, not once, not twice, but repeatedly like in a looped video, or your child getting beaten up at school, or your partner getting abused by strangers on the street - and the only way you can stop that event from happening is to keep on repeating the task that you were carrying out when the vision first appeared in your mind, until some other less emotionally agonizing thought breaks the loop of that particular vision and replaces it - and though you know, it's just a thought and not the destiny of the people you love, you feel it excruciatingly necessary to keep repeating the task until the thought passes, so that nothing bad happens to your loved ones - and that's what it is like inside the head of a person with OCD, every moment of their life.

Our minds are all that defend us from the horror of the void. The majority of the time we simply think about something—anything—else, and that itself is an act of defiance against the vast nothing of the universe. But minds break down and stop thinking sometimes. They feel instead: A looping, gnawing monster eats away confidence and goals and even a sense of duty until we are in a dry bleak place of ennui, unable to focus on the minutiae that used to keep us moving. Tongues taste chalk and ashes, and eyes see only gray washes occasionally penetrated by bright stabs of panic. Depression is a prison to which you have the key except you never think to look for it.

Life has just thrown you for a loop, encouraging you to break free from old patterns and ways of being. So why be predictable in your responses and in your actions?

No,” Xander said, his voice suddenly serious. “But sometimes a person’s brain starts cycling. No matter what you do, the same thoughts just keep repeating, over and over. You get stuck in a loop, and when you’re inside that loop, you can’t see past it. You’ll keep coming up with the same possibilities, to no end, because the answers you need—they’re outside the loop. Distractions aren’t just distractions. Sometimes they can break you out of the loop, and once you’re out, once your brain stops cycling—” “You see the things you missed before.

you break a negative feedback loop by giving it a positive input instead, it will spin into a positive feedback loop. That creates a kind of snowball effect, which takes on a life of its own. Make a small, incremental change today, and it will gather momentum the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that… until you’re surprised at what you’ve accomplished.

but it’s important to let your values, principles, and identity drive the loop rather than your results. The focus should always be on becoming that type of person, not getting a particular outcome.

Debugging tip: For server applications, be sure to always specify the -server JVM command line switch when invoking the JVM, even for development and testing. The server JVM performs more optimization than the client JVM, such as hoisting variables out of a loop that are not modified in the loop; code that might appear to work in the development environment (client JVM) can break in the deployment environment (server JVM).

Contrast is not ‘bad’ since the contrast we experience still causes us to learn and grow. Expansion never ceases, and that is a beautiful thing. Contrast allows us to see what is not in alignment with our Authentic Selves, and then presents us with opportunity after opportunity to respond from a place of compassion, forgiveness, acceptance, love, joy, gratitude, etc. Thus, when we break the karmic loop we swing back into alignment with Spirit.

Our house was a collection of silences, each room a mute, empty frame, each of us three oscillating bodies (Mom, Dad, me) moving around in our own curved functions, from space to space, not making any noise, just waiting, waiting to wait, trying, for some reason, not to disrupt the field of silence, not to perturb the delicate equilibrium of the system. We wandered from room to room, just missing one another, on paths neither chosen by us nor random, but determined by our own particular characteristics, our own properties, unable to deviate, to break from our orbital loops, unable to do something as simple as walking into the next room where our beloved, our father, our mother, our child, our wife, our husband, was sitting, silent, waiting but not realizing it, waiting for someone to say something, anything, wanting to do it, yearning to do it, physically unable to bring ourselves to change our velocities.

Back in Brooklyn, the wind was sharp and the streets were slick and Kat just really wished her Uncle Eddie believed in leaving a key under the mat instead of maintaining his strict stance that anyone who could not break into his Brooklyn brownstone had absolutely no business staying there without him. “Is there a problem, Kitty Kat?” a voice said from over Kat’s shoulder. Kat’s fingers were frozen and her breath fogged, and she’d had a far too upbeat rendition of “White Christmas” stuck in her head on a perpetual loop for the past eight hours. So, yes, there was a problem. But Kat would never, ever admit it. “I’m fine, Gabrielle,” she told her cousin. “Really?” Gab asked. “Because if you can’t handle Uncle Eddie’s lock then someone is going to get a lump of coal in her stocking again this Christmas.” “It wasn’t coal,” Kat shot back. “It was a very rare mineral from a condemned mine in South Africa, and it was a very thoughtful gift.

There is no such thing as hell, of course, but if there was, then the sound track to the screaming, the pitchfork action and the infernal wailing of damned souls would be a looped medley of “show tunes” drawn from the annals of musical theater. The complete oeuvre of Lloyd Webber and Rice would be performed, without breaks, on a stage inside the fiery pit, and an audience of sinners would be forced to watch—and listen—for eternity. The very worst among them, the child molesters and the murderous dictators, would have to perform them.

....Yes, San Francisco was far from all I longed to forget. But I was weary of the flat earth, the heat of summer and hard press of winter cold. The etchings in "Scribners" made me yearn for the loop and roll of land. I wanted to break free of the squeeze of buildings and streets running endlessly out to the horizon. p. 254

Ultimately, what helped me understand addiction and how I came to be ensnared was first realizing that we all suffer some degree of addiction. While not all of us give our lives over to it as much as I did, or get tangled up in chemical addictions, the fact remains that all humans suffer, all look outside themselves to manage that suffering, and all get stuck in feedback loops that run through the same wiring in our brain that alcohol addiction runs through. The second thing that helped me pull apart my own addiction, and thus understand how to approach it and overcome it, was breaking it up into two distinct parts: the root causes, or the things that drive us out of ourselves to cope, and the cycle of addiction, or what happens to us biologically, spiritually, socially, and psychologically over time when we use an effective but addictive substance or behavior in an attempt to regulate ourselves. I call it the Two-Part Problem, and in order to heal, we need to address both parts.

It has come to my belated attention, due to a loop that I only recently managed to break, that, although you are undoubtedly human, and fragile, I am still fond of you. I’ve tried to fight it. I’ve asked the doctor if I can be cured or operated on, but it seems there is no cure, lobotomy, or programming solution to my dilemma but one. I need to keep you.

Something similar often happens to people who develop an anxiety disorder, such as agoraphobia. People with agoraphobia can become so overwhelmed with fear that they will no longer leave their homes. Agoraphobia is the consequence of a positive feedback loop. The first event that precipitates the disorder is often a panic attack. The sufferer is typically a middle-aged woman who has been too dependent on other people. Perhaps she went immediately from over-reliance on her father to a relationship with an older and comparatively dominant boyfriend or husband, with little or no break for independent existence. In the weeks leading up to the emergence of her agoraphobia, such a woman typically experiences something unexpected and anomalous.

Habits are a dopamine-driven feedback loop. When dopamine rises, so does our motivation to act. It is the anticipation of a reward—not the fulfillment of it—that gets us to take action. The greater the anticipation, the greater the dopamine spike. Temptation bundling is one way to make your habits more attractive. The strategy is to pair an action you want to do with an action you need to do.

I can make you feel touched.” He paused. “It would be easier if I showed you. Do I have permission?” Yes. “No.” Being touched by Mad Rogan wasn’t a good idea. We kept walking. What would it be like?” “Does it hurt?” “No.” How would it feel? Would it feel . . . oh hell. “Okay.” I stopped. We were in front of a small alcove. Nobody was around. If I made an idiot out of myself, nobody would notice. “Just once.” A soft burst of heat touched the back of my neck. I’d never felt anything like it before. It was as if someone had touched me with a heated mink glove, but the touch wasn’t soft, it was firm. It felt . . . it felt . . . The heat slid down my neck, fast, over my spine, setting every single nerve on fire before melting in the small of my back, its echoes pulsing through me. My body sang. He’d strummed me like I was a guitar. I wanted him and I wanted him now. “That was . . .” I saw his eyes. Words died. All the hardness had vanished from his eyes. They were alive and heated from within. “You want me.” “What?” The magic warmth slid over my shoulders, melting into pure pleasure. “I feel the feedback.” He took a step toward me, grinning. “Nevada, you’re a liar.” Uh-oh. I backed up. “What feedback?” “When I do this . . .” The heated pressure zinged from my back up my ribs. I gasped. Oh dear God. “. . . what you feel loops back to me. I’m partially emphatic.” “You didn’t mention that.” My heart was doing its best to break through my chest, and I couldn’t tell if it was alarm, lust, or some weird mix of both. He grinned, coming closer. “The hotter you are, the hotter I am. And you’re on fire.

Jason grins. “I’d never miss your birthday. Remember last year?” “Ugh! I thought I’d never thaw out after we went skiing in a blizzard. We were stranded for three days in that cabin we found in the woods.” “Aw, come on, you didn’t even get frostbite. I took care of you.” “At least I didn’t end up with any broken limbs. That time.” “I still can’t believe we went snow-boarding on East Pillar Mountain Loop. That’s a tough trail, and then you broke your arm slipping in the parking lot on the way to the truck.” My muscles were exhausted, and carrying my board on my shoulder, I wasn’t watching where I was going. I didn’t see the patch of ice. “Remember when you took me spelunking?” “I had no idea that bear was in there.” “I can’t remember ever being that scared.” “But it was fun! Come on. We can’t break tradition.

This feeling of stress triggers a cascade of physiological consequences. The hypothalamus and pituitary gland in the brain release hormones that cause the release of cortisol from the adrenal glands located on the kidneys. Cortisol increases heart rate, among other things, readying the body for “fight” or “flight.” Acutely, the release of cortisol is beneficial and helps you cope with whatever is urgently being demanded of you. But if the stress becomes chronic, maladaptive things begin to happen. Normally, the release of cortisol turns the hypothalamus and pituitary off, stopping the release of hormone, which in turn stops the further release of cortisol from the adrenal glands. It’s a nice, clean, negative feedback loop. But in the chronically stressed, the loop breaks. The brain stops reacting to cortisol. Our natural, automatic shutoff valve stops working. The brain keeps releasing hormone, and the adrenal glands keep dumping cortisol into the bloodstream, even when the stressful thing that initially triggered the stress response is no longer around. Chronic, elevated levels of cortisol have been associated with a weakened immune system, deficits in short-term memory, chronic fatigue syndrome, anxiety disorders, and depression.

When a habit emerges, the brain stops fully participating in decision making. It stops working so hard, or diverts focus to other tasks. So unless you deliberately fight a habit—unless you find new routines—the pattern will unfold automatically. However, simply understanding how habits work—learning the structure of the habit loop—makes them easier to control. Once you break a habit into its components, you can fiddle with the gears.

Did you know that simply walking through a door-frame can break a repetitive thought-loop? It literally causes a memory lapse, which is why we leave the living room and go into the kitchen for something, and then stand in the kitchen cluelessly scratching our heads. In a fascinating study aptly called ‘Walking through doorways causes forgetting’, professors at Notre Dame University discovered that this worked in both virtual and real-world settings.

Dwarf things. Small things. Little things in relation to the norm. Insignificant things. Things with different dimensions. Curiously, the stories I like the most are made up of trivialities. Details. Trifles. These days, people look to what's big. The big picture, big sales figures, success. Bright lights, interviews, breaking news. Whatever's famous. Importance judged by fame. Maybe small things are subversive. Living on a modest scale compared to the norm. Maybe the dwarf is the hero of our time.

Now,” Samite continued, “after Essel has just spent time warning you about generalities and how they often don’t apply, I’m going to use some. Because some generalities are true often enough that we have to worry about them. So here’s one: men will physically fight for status. Women, generally, are more clever. The why of it doesn’t matter: learned, innate, cultural, who cares? You see the chest-bumping, the name-calling, performing for their fellows, what they’re really doing is getting the juices flowing. That interval isn’t always long, but it’s long enough for men to trigger the battle juice. That’s the terror or excitation that leads people to fight or run. It can be useful in small doses or debilitating in large ones. Any of you have brothers, or boys you’ve fought with?” Six of the ten raised their hands. “Have you ever had a fight with them—verbal or physical—and then they leave and come back a little later, and they’re completely done fighting and you’re just fully getting into it? They look like they’ve been ambushed, because they’ve come completely off the mountain already, and you’ve just gotten to the top?” “Think of it like lovemaking,” Essel said. She was a bawdy one. “Breathe in a man’s ear and tell him to take his trousers off, and he’s ready to go before you draw your next breath. A woman’s body takes longer.” Some of the girls giggled nervously. “Men can switch on very, very fast. They also switch off from that battle readiness very, very fast. Sure, they’ll be left trembling, sometimes puking from it, but it’s on and then it’s off. Women don’t do that. We peak slower. Now, maybe there are exceptions, maybe. But as fighters, we tend to think that everyone reacts the way we do, because our own experience is all we have. In this case, it’s not true for us. Men will be ready to fight, then finished, within heartbeats. This is good and bad. “A man, deeply surprised, will have only his first instinctive response be as controlled and crisp as it is when he trains. Then that torrent of emotion is on him. We spend thousands of hours training that first instinctive response, and further, we train to control the torrent of emotion so that it raises us to a heightened level of awareness without making us stupid.” “So the positive, for us Archers: surprise me, and my first reaction will be the same as my male counterpart’s. I can still, of course, get terrified, or locked into a loop of indecision. But if I’m not, my second, third, and tenth moves will also be controlled. My hands will not shake. I will be able to make precision movements that a man cannot. But I won’t have the heightened strength or sensations until perhaps a minute later—often too late. “Where a man needs to train to control that rush, we need to train to make it closer. If we have to climb a mountain more slowly to get to the same height to get all the positives, we need to start climbing sooner. That is, when I go into a situation that I know may be hazardous, I need to prepare myself. I need to start climbing. The men may joke to break the tension. Let them. I don’t join in. Maybe they think I’m humorless because I don’t. Fine. That’s a trade I’m willing to make.” Teia and the rest of the girls walked away from training that day somewhat dazed, definitely overwhelmed. What Teia realized was that the women were deeply appealing because they were honest and powerful. And those two things were wed inextricably together. They said, I am the best in the world at what I do, and I cannot do everything. Those two statements, held together, gave them the security to face any challenge. If her own strengths couldn’t surmount an obstacle, her team’s strengths could—and she was unembarrassed about asking for help where she needed it because she knew that what she brought to the team would be equally valuable in some other situation.

The shadow-Saphira looped over the city, lighting several buildings on fire. As she did, a flock of arrows shot up from archers stationed on a nearby rooftop. The apparition swerved to avoid the darts and, seemingly by accident, crashed into one of the six green elf towers scattered throughout Urû’baen. The collision looked perfectly real. Eragon winced with sympathy as he saw the dragon’s left wing break against the tower, the bones snapping like stalks of dry grass. The imitation Saphira roared and thrashed as she spiraled down to the streets. The buildings hid her after that, but her roars were audible for miles around, and the flame she seemed to breathe painted the sides of the houses and lit the underside of the stone shelf that hung over the city. I would never have been so clumsy, sniffed Saphira. I know.

Tobias is standing in the hallway outside the dormitory. I am breathless, and I can feel my heartbeat even in my fingertips; I am overwhelmed, teeming with loss and wonder and anger and longing. “Tris,” Tobias says, his brow furrowed with concern. “Are you all right?” I shake my head, still struggling for air, and crush him against the wall with my body, my lips finding his. For a moment he tries to push me away, but then he must decide that he doesn’t care if I’m all right, doesn’t care if he’s all right, doesn’t care. We haven’t been alone together in days. Weeks. Months. His fingers slide into my hair, and I hold on to his arms to stay steady as we press together like two blades at a stalemate. He is stronger than anyone I know, and warmer than anyone else realizes; he is a secret that I have kept, and will keep, for the rest of my life. He leans down and kisses my throat, hard, and his hands smooth over me, securing themselves at my waist. I hook my fingers in his belt loops, my eyes closing. In that moment I know exactly what I want; I want to peel away all the layers of clothing between us, strip away everything that separates us, the past and the present and the future. I hear footsteps and laughter at the end of the hallway, and we break apart. Someone--probably Uriah--whistles, but I barely hear it over the pulsing in my ears. Tobias’s eyes meet mine, and it’s like the first time I really looked at him during my initiation, after my fear simulation; we stare too long, too intently. “Shut up,” I call out to Uriah, without looking away. Uriah and Christina walk into the dormitory, and Tobias and I follow them, like nothing happened.

For years, she had a debilitating habit. She would sit on the bus on the way home from her lab creating a long list of her perceived failings. It was her mental default mode. “I could have done that better,” she would say to herself. “That wasn’t as good as it could have been. I shouldn’t have been so nervous speaking in public.” Recently, she vowed to make a change. To break this negative pattern, Petitto decided to react to it by reminding herself of three things she’d done well. Now, when the negative ruminations start, she consciously goes through her list of achievements and successes: “That was a good paper I finished,” the interior monologue might now go. “I got that lab report done quicker than I expected. I had a good conversation with my new grad student.” Such thought exercises rewire the brain and break the negative feedback loop.

We like to think of ourselves as immune from influence or our cognitive biases, because we want to feel like we are in control, but industries like alcohol, tobacco, fast food, and gaming all know we are creatures that are subject to cognitive and emotional vulnerabilities. And tech has caught on to this with its research into “user experience,” “gamification,” “growth hacking,” and “engagement” by activating ludic loops and reinforcement schedules in the same way slot machines do. So far, this gamification has been contained to social media and digital platforms, but what will happen as we further integrate our lives with networked information architectures designed to exploit evolutionary flaws in our cognition? Do we really want to live in a “gamified” environment that engineers our obsessions and plays with our lives as if we are inside its game?

Let’s take a look at one couple. Carol and Jim have a long-running quarrel over his being late to engagements. In a session in my office, Carol carps at Jim over his latest transgression: he didn’t show up on time for their scheduled movie night. “How come you are always late?” she challenges. “Doesn’t it matter to you that we have a date, that I am waiting, that you always let me down?” Jim reacts coolly: “I got held up. But if you are going to start off nagging again, maybe we should just go home and forget the date.” Carol retaliates by listing all the other times Jim has been late. Jim starts to dispute her “list,” then breaks off and retreats into stony silence. In this never-ending dispute, Jim and Carol are caught up in the content of their fights. When was the last time Jim was late? Was it only last week or was it months ago? They careen down the two dead ends of “what really happened”—whose story is more “accurate” and who is most “at fault.” They are convinced that the problem has to be either his irresponsibility or her nagging. In truth, though, it doesn’t matter what they’re fighting about. In another session in my office, Carol and Jim begin to bicker about Jim’s reluctance to talk about their relationship. “Talking about this stuff just gets us into fights,” Jim declares. “What’s the point of that? We go round and round. It just gets frustrating. And anyway, it’s all about my ‘flaws’ in the end. I feel closer when we make love.” Carol shakes her head. “I don’t want sex when we are not even talking!” What’s happened here? Carol and Jim’s attack-withdraw way of dealing with the “lateness” issue has spilled over into two more issues: “we don’t talk” and “we don’t have sex.” They’re caught in a terrible loop, their responses generating more negative responses and emotions in each other. The more Carol blames Jim, the more he withdraws. And the more he withdraws, the more frantic and cutting become her attacks. Eventually, the what of any fight won’t matter at all. When couples reach this point, their entire relationship becomes marked by resentment, caution, and distance. They will see every difference, every disagreement, through a negative filter. They will listen to idle words and hear a threat. They will see an ambiguous action and assume the worst. They will be consumed by catastrophic fears and doubts, be constantly on guard and defensive. Even if they want to come close, they can’t. Jim’s experience is defined perfectly by the title of a Notorious Cherry Bombs song, “It’s Hard to Kiss the Lips at Night that Chew Your Ass Out All Day Long.

Take this message to your people, you obsequious little worm,” I murmured. “Anyone who lays a hand on Jordan Amador will have to answer to me. Now do me a favor and go to hell.” I removed my sword from his hand and then decapitated him. His severed head tumbled across the floor like a wayward bowling ball. Good riddance. I set my sword aside, found a stool in the corner, and climbed up in front of Jordan. Her handcuffs were attached to a huge meat hook bolted into the ceiling. I lifted her off of it with great care, unsure if she had the strength to stand. As soon as her arms were free, she looped them around my shoulders and pressed her face against my neck. She was trembling, but not crying. I sank to the floor and cradled her in my lap, breathing out the last of my anger now that she was safe. “‘M sorry,” she mumbled in a small voice. “I’m so sorry, Michael.” I snorted. “What the hell do you have to apologize for? You got kidnapped. Pretty sure that’s not your fault.” She shook her head, her words partially muffled as she pressed her face against my shirt. “Should’ve been stronger. I could’ve gotten you killed.” “By Heckle and Jeckle here? Not likely.” A shaky laugh rattled through her. She slid her fingers into the hairs along the nape of my neck and hugged me tighter. I knew from experience she didn’t want me to see her face because she knew she was only seconds away from breaking down. No one would ever accuse Jordan Amador of being a crybaby, not if she could help it. It was a ridiculous notion at best, but I indulged her anyway. “Thank you.” “Just doing my job. But you’re welcome.” I smoothed the sweaty hairs away from her forehead enough to kiss it. She didn’t move away. We stayed there for a while without speaking, just clinging to each other until we felt strong enough to separate.

There is no such thing as hell, of course, but if there was, then the sound track to the screaming, the pitchfork action and the infernal wailing of damned souls would be a looped medley of “show tunes” drawn from the annals of musical theater. The complete oeuvre of Lloyd Webber and Rice would be performed, without breaks, on a stage inside the fiery pit, and an audience of sinners would be forced to watch—and listen—for eternity. The very worst among them, the child molesters and the murderous dictators, would have to perform them. Save for the exquisite oeuvre of a certain Mr. Lomond, I have yet to find a genre of music I enjoy; it’s basically audible physics, waves and energized particles, and, like most sane people, I have no interest in physics. It therefore struck me as bizarre that I was humming a tune from Oliver! I mentally added the exclamation mark, which, for the first time ever, was appropriate. Who will buy this wonderful evening? Who indeed?

He kept his distance from the villa. It was too easy to slip in Kestrel’s presence. One day, Lirah came to the forge. Arin was sure that he was being called to serve as Kestrel’s escort somewhere. He felt an eager dread. “Enai would like to see you,” Lirah said. Arin set the hammer on the anvil. “Why?” His interactions with Enai had been limited, and he liked to keep them that way. The woman’s eyes were too keen. “She’s very sick.” Arin considered this, then nodded, following Lirah from the forge. When they entered the cottage, they could hear the sounds of sleep from beyond the open bedroom door. Enai coughed, and Arin heard fluid in her lungs. The coughing subsided, then gave way to ragged breath. “Someone should fetch a doctor,” Arin told Lirah. “Lady Kestrel has gone for one. She was very upset. She’ll return soon, I hope.” Haltingly, Lirah said, “I’d like to stay with you, but I have to get back to the house.” Arin barely noticed her touch his arm before leaving him. Reluctant to wake Enai, Arin studied the cottage. It was snug and well maintained. The floor didn’t creak. There were signs, everywhere, of comfort. Slippers. A stack of dry wood. Arin ran a hand along the smooth mantel of the fireplace until he touched a porcelain box. He opened it. Inside was a small braid of dark blond hair with a reddish tinge, looped in a circle and tied with golden wire. Although he knew he shouldn’t, Arin traced the braid with one fingertip. “That’s not yours,” a voice said. He snatched his hand away. He turned, his face hot. Through the open bedroom door, Arin saw Enai staring at him from where she lay. “I’m sorry.” He set the lid on the box. “I doubt it,” she muttered, and told him to come near. Arid did, slowly. He had the feeling he was not going to like this conversation. “You spend a lot of time with Kestrel,” Enai said. He shrugged. “I do what she asks.” Enai held his gaze. Despite himself, he looked away first. “Don’t hurt her,” the woman said. It was a sin to break a deathbed promise. Arin left without making one.

When Vince came into the room, necklace of onyx draped over his throat, and one attached to his arm like a leash, his eyes changed at the sight of her. He turned to Bellamy. “But where’s Adeline?” “We sent her home,” Malik said. “Then who—” “Me,” Charlie said. “If you can make a stupid decision, then I can make one too.” He shook his head. “This is supposed to be a punishment.” “Oh, I know,” she said. “You’re going to be stuck in my head, with all my secrets. Even I don’t know all my secrets. It’s going to be awful.” He appeared to be seriously considering strangling her. “Char.” “She volunteered,” Vicereine said. “And confessed to quite a few crimes just to convince us.” The look he gave her was scathing. “Did she?” “I’ll need your feet to be bare,” Vicereine said, all business now. Charlie reached down to take off her boots. They were already untied, the laces loose from kicking them off in the tower. Vince appeared to be belatedly wondering if he could break free of the onyx chains and escape. She saw him pull against the shining loop over his wrist. It must have held, because his expression set into grim lines. “You don’t know what I’ll be like, after. No one does,” he said under his breath. “You’ll still be you,” Charlie whispered back.

It was amazing,really,how two people could live and work in basically the same place,and one could completely avoid the other.It just took setting your mind to it. Brian set his mind to it for several days.There was plenty of work to keep him occupied and more than enough reason for him to spend time away from the farm and on the tracks.But he found avoidance scared his pride. It was too close a kin to cowardice. Added to that,he'd told Keeley he wanted to help her at the school and had done nothing abuot it.He asn't a man to break his word, no matter what it cost him.And, he reminded himself as he walked to Keeley's stables, he was also a man of some self-control. He had no intention of seducing or taking the advantage of innocence. He'd made up his mind on it. Then he stepped into the stables and saw her.He wouldn't have said his mouth watered, but it was a very close thing. She was wearing one of those fancy rigs again-jodhpurs the color of dark chocolate and a cream sort of blouse that looked somehow fluid.her hair was down, all tumbled and wild as if she'd just pulled the pins from it. And indeed,as he watched she flipped it back and looped it through a wide elastic band. He decided the best place in the universe for his hands to be were in his pockets. "Lessons over?" She glanced back, her hands still up in her hair.Ah,she thought.She'd wondered how long it would take him to wander her way again. "Why? Did you want one?

Death Vision I think it’s a multiplication of sight, Like after a low hovering autumn rain When the invisible web of funnel weaves And sheetweb weavers all at once are seen Where they always were, spread and looping The grasses, every strand, waft and leaf- Crest elucidated with water-light and frost, completing the fullest aspect of field. Or maybe the grace of death is split-second Transformation of knowledge, an intricate, Turning realization, as when a single Sperm-embracing deep ovum transforms, In an instant, from stasis to replicating, Star-shifting shimmer, rolls, reaches, Alters its plane of intentions, becomes A hoofing, thumping host of purpose. I can imagine not merely The falling away of blank walls And blinds in that moment, not merely A shutter flung open for the first time Above a valley of interlocking forests And constellations but a sweeping, Penetrating circumference of vision Encompassing both knotweed bud And its seed simultaneously, seeing Blood bone and its ash as one, The repeated light and fall and flight Of hawk-owl and tundra vole As a union of origin and finality. A mathematics of flesh and space might Take hold if we ask for it in that last Moment, might appear as if it had always Existed within the eyes, translucent, Jewel-like in stained glass patterns Of globes and measures, equations, Made evident by a revelation of galaxies In the knees, spine, fingers, all The ceasings, all the deaths within deaths That compose the body becoming at once Their own symbolic perception and praise Of river salt, blooms and breaths, strings, Strains, sun-seas of gravels and gills; This one expression breaking, this same Expression healing.

You're a taffy-puller." "I'm a what?" "A taffy-puller. They hypnotize me. Didn't you ever see one? " I don't think so," she breathed. " But - " " You see them on the boardwalk. Beautifully machined little rigs, all chrome-plated eccentrics and cams. There are two cranks set near each other so that the 'handle' of each passes the axle of the other. They stick a big mass of taffy on one `handle' and start the machine. Before that sticky, homogeneous mass has a chance to droop and drip off, the other crank has swung up and taken most of it. As the crank handles move away from each other the taffy is pulled out, and then as they move together again it loops and sags; and at the last possible moment the loop is shoved together. The taffy welds itself and is pulled apart again." Robin's eyes were shining and his voice was rapt. "Underneath the taffy is a stainless steel tray. There isn't a speck of taffy on it, not a drop, not a smidgen. You stand there, and you look at it, and you wait for that lump of guff to slap itself all over those roller bearings and burnished cam rods, but it never does. You wait for it to get tired of thar fantastic juggling, and it never does. Sometimes gooey little bubbles get in the taffy and get carried around and squashed flat, and when they break they do it slowly, leaving little soft craters that take a long time to fill up; and they're being mauled around the way the bubbles were." He sighed. "There's almost too much contrast - that competent, beautiful machinist's dream handling - what? Taffy - no definition, no boundaries, no predictable tensile strength. I feel somehow as if there ought to be an intermediate stage somewhere. I'd feel better if the machine handled one of Dali's limp watches, and the watch handled the mud. But that doesn't matter. How I feel, I mean. The taffy gets pulled. You're a taffy-puller. You've never done a wasteful or incompetent thing in your life, no matter what you were working with.

Jak’ri nodded toward the cliff’s edge. “Shall we?” “Not if you give me time to think about it.” He flashed his teeth in a boyish grin. “One-two-three, jump!” he called and took off running, pulling her after him. Ava’s eyes widened and her heart thudded hard in her chest as she ran alongside him. Their feet hit the edge at the same time, and together they leapt off. Jak’ri whooped as they plummeted toward the ocean, the sound so wonderfully carefree and appealing that Ava found herself grinning big even as she shrieked and squeezed the hell out of his hand. He hit the water a split second before her. Cool liquid closed over their heads. Bubbles surrounded them as if they’d just jumped into a vat of club soda. Then he looped an arm around her waist and propelled them both to the surface. “That was crazy!” she blurted, unable to stop smiling as she swiped water from her face. “Crazy but fun?” he quipped, eyes sparkling with amusement. “Maybe,” she hedged. “But not as fun at this.” Propelling her upper body out of the water, she planted her hands atop his head and dunked him. As soon as she released him, she began a lazy backstroke. Jak’ri surfaced with a sputter and a laugh. When his silver eyes found her a few yards away, they acquired a devilish glint. “Oh, you’re going to regret that, little Earthling.” Ava shrieked when he dove for her. Rolling onto her stomach, she took off, swimming in earnest. Jak’ri’s fingers closed around one of her ankles. “Caught you!” She swam harder, getting absolutely nowhere, breaking into giggles as he issued dire threats in a villainous voice. When was the last time she had honest-to-goodness giggled? She yelped when he gave her ankle a yank. Then she was in his arms and he was grinning wickedly at her. “Think you can get the best of me, do you?” he taunted. Tucking his hands under her arms, he kicked his feet. Ava laughed as he tossed her up out of the water. Through the air she flew, landing on her back several yards away. The water again closed over her head. When she surfaced, she quickly bent her head to hide her smile and rubbed her eyes. “Hang on a sec,” she mumbled. Jak’ri immediately stopped laughing and swam toward her. “I’m sorry. Did you get something in your eye?” “No.” She grinned at him. “I just needed to lure you closer.” Then she swept her arm through the water in front of him, sending a cascade over his head. Sputtering, Jak’ri dove for her. Laughter abounded as they played, even more so when he started sharing tales of his exploits with his brother. Clunk. Ava jerked awake. Damn it! She really hated to wake up. She and Jak’ri had been romping and playing like children. Having to come back to the reality of this cell and the assholes who’d put her in it sucked.

sometimes you need to sacrifice relationships that typically lead to self-destructive habit loops.

loop, okay?” She met

The good news is that since you created this loop, you can choose to end it. The quantum model of reality tells us that to change our lives, we must fundamentally change the ways we think, act, and feel. We must change our state of being. Because how we think, feel, and behave is, in essence, our personality, it is our personality that creates our personal reality. So to create a new personal reality, a new life, we must create a new personality; we must become someone else. To change, then, is to think and act greater than our present circumstances, greater than our environment.

Occasionally, I give kids days off. If a child seems to be losing ground at school, return him home for a few days or even a week or two to recoup. He rests from so much outside contact, and gets recharged to cope with the world in a constructive way again. Parents usually only use a few days a year, so school progress is not much affected. For the occasional child who is out ten days in a year, the problems are serious enough that school achievement is secondary to health. In these cases the school is the communication loop with parents and therapist. Working parents have used sick days to stay out with their child. Some parents have asked a grandparent or relative to come in while they work. Often the regression has so worn the parent down, that a two-day break is a welcome respite for both of them to sleep in and recharge. Using these breaks has helped keep kids from ruining the gains that they have made in the school and community over a series of months. While these breaks need to be used judiciously, they have helped children to keep friendships and reputations that would otherwise be at risk.

I worked on one monolithic system, for example, where we had 4,000 unit tests, 1,000 service tests, and 60 end-to-end tests. We decided that from a feedback point of view we had way too many service and end-to-end tests (the latter of which were the worst offenders in impacting feedback loops), so we worked hard to replace the test coverage with smaller-scoped tests. A common anti-pattern is what is often referred to as a test snow cone, or inverted pyramid. Here, there are little to no small-scoped tests, with all the coverage in large-scoped tests. These projects often have glacially slow test runs, and very long feedback cycles. If these tests are run as part of continuous integration, you won’t get many builds, and the nature of the build times means that the build can stay broken for a long period when something does break.

I usually struggle to answer many questions people ask because my mind is always in the future, while the questions they ask are always in the past, or at best, in the present. That is a very factual way of observing the spiritual level of someone. The "what job you have?" and "how much money do you make?" that people stuck in a present time loop obsessively ask is based on what they see, while the "where are you from?" and "what did you study?" comes from people stuck in the past, and with the idea that the past conditions the present, not your decisions. The first thinks matter controls life and the second that life is the result of randomity and chaos. Both represent the vast majority of the population and both are absolutely stupid. As they are too stupid to perceive the future, they call it dreaming, insanity or, at best, motivation and inspiration. They don't know what consciousness is, even when using this word. Thus, every change is for them like a spontaneous miracle, or a mistake in the system that shouldn't have occurred. They look at those who break their mental laws as criminals because when someone is too stupid, he perceives knowledge as a threat to his values. Jealousy and competition come precisely from this state of mind. These subhumans think like a character of a video game that is trapped in a world that never changes and in which they have no capacity to make effective decisions. When they are faced with a library or a religion that promotes wisdom, they close their eyes to escape or read about fantasies, because they are not mentally capable of processing reality.

Sometimes a person's brain starts cycling. No matter what you do, the same thoughts just keep repeating, over and over. You get stuck in a loop, you can't see past it. You'll keep coming up with possibilities, to no end, because the answers you need. They're outside the loop. Distractions aren't just distractions. Sometimes they can break you out of the loop, and once you're out, once your brain stops cycling. You see the things you missed before

The concept of identity-based habits is our first introduction to another key theme in this book: feedback loops. Your habits shape your identity, and your identity shapes your habits. It’s a two-way street. The formation of all habits is a feedback loop (a concept we will explore in depth in the next chapter), but it’s important to let your values, principles, and identity drive the loop rather than your results. The focus should always be on becoming that type of person, not getting a particular outcome.

it’s important to let your values, principles, and identity drive the loop rather than your results. The focus should always be on becoming that type of person, not getting a particular outcome.

If you think about it, there are several ways possible for feminine consciousness to find a position from which it cannot proceed. In such circumstances, masculine consciousness always arrives to just decide seemingly at random to break out of the recursive loop, because reality cannot stop, not even for an instant. Sometimes it's only possible to ask for forgiveness rather than permission.

You are standing in front of your "bear that walks like a man" and he has his arms about you, squeezing you mightily. You have sunk to your knees. His arms loosed their hold and slipped higher and are now near your throat. You give him credit for the same specialized knowledge you have.  You expect him to try to gain that strangle hold.  What do you do? You lift your left arm out of the loop formed by his arm around your neck, reach across that left arm of his, thus breaking his hold around your neck. You continue the motion. You place your hand around both of his legs which are in back of you, gripping them in back of his knees and drawing them together. Fig. 37 Your right arm, which is still under the loop formed by my right arm over and around your neck, you raise until it is loosened from the pressure of his right arm; then you reach across that right arm, loosening that right arm from his grip around you, and continue on till you have seized the wrist of his left arm. He couldn't strangle you now or ever hereafter. But you are not finished. He may be captive but still dangerous. Now you rise from your knees, but remain slightly bent. You swing around with his body to your left—heave your right shoulder to the right, urge his legs upward with your left arm, and releasing your holds simultaneously, you throw him over your head to the right. He will most assuredly land on his head or some other part of his body. Fig. 38 From there on, you can repeat the previous lesson. Just drop your knee or knees, if you wish, on his body and hold him thus imprisoned.  (See Fig. 37) All of the foregoing, presupposes that you have learned this lesson by heart and so thoroughly digested it, that you can escape all of the holds and motions like an automaton. For it to be serviceable, it must have become second nature with you. You have no time for independent thought. Any slight pause may become fatal,

Any habit can be broken down into a feedback loop that involves four steps: cue, craving, response, and reward. The Four Laws of Behavior Change are a simple set of rules we can use to build better habits. They are (1) make it obvious, (2) make it attractive, (3) make it easy, and (4) make it satisfying.

Let's imagine we're standing together on the launch pad at NASA's Cape Canaveral facility near Orlando, and staring up at the stars together. As I write this, the last constellation above the horizon is Centaurus. The centaur's front head is a bright star. In fact, it's three stars—a pair called Alpha Centauri A and B, and, dimmest of the trio, Proxima Centauri. Here, look through this telescope. See? You can tell them apart. But what we can't see is that there is, in fact, a planet circling the faint light of Proxima Centauri. Man, I wish we could see it. Because that planet, Proxima Centauri b, is the nearest known exoplanet to Earth. [...] If we were to board a spacecraft and ride it from the outer edge of our atmosphere all the way to Proxima Centauri b, you and I, who boarded the ship fit and trim, chosen as we were from billions of applicants, would die before the voyage reached even 1/100th of the intervening distance. [...] At a speed of 20,000 miles per hour—the speed of our top-performing modern rockets—4.2 light years translates to more than 130,000 years of space travel. [...] So how will we ever get there? A generation ship. [...] the general notion is this: get enough human beings onto a ship, with adequate genetic diversity among us, that we and our fellow passengers cohabitate as a village, reproducing and raising families who go on to mourn you and me and raise new of their own, until, thousands of years after our ship leaves Earth's gravity, the distant descendants of the crew that left Earth finally break through the atmosphere of our new home. [...] A generation ship is every sociological and psychological challenge of modern life squashed into a microcosmic tube of survival and amplified—generation after generation. [...] The idea of a generation ship felt like a pointless fantasy when I first encountered it. But as I've spent the last few years speaking with technologists, academics, and policy makers about the hidden dangers of building systems that could reprogram our behavior now and for generations to come, I realized that the generation ship is real. We're on board it right now. On this planet, our own generation ship, we were once passengers. But now, without any training, we're at the helm. We have built lives for ourselves on this planet that extend far beyond our natural place in this world. And now we are on the verge of reprogramming not only the planet, but one another, for efficiency and profit. We are turning systems loose on the decks of the ship that will fundamentally reshape the behavior of everyone on board, such that they will pass those behaviors on to their progeny, and they might not even realize what they've done. This pattern will repeat itself, and play out over generations in a behavioral and technological cycle.

I’ve found that it’s useful to distinguish between pain and suffering, because pain and suffering are two different things. Pain is the inevitable and unavoidable part of being human and of being an estranged parent. Unfortunately, you have relatively little control over that. However, you can gain increasing control and awareness over how long you feel pain. You can reduce the meaning of it, the actions you take that increase it, and the distance the pain travels through other aspects of your life. That’s the suffering part. The difference between pain and suffering is an insight that found its way from Buddhist teachings into contemporary psychotherapy. Psychiatrist Mark Levine, who developed the Mind to Mindful program, gives this example: “Let’s say I stub my toe walking across the kitchen floor and it really hurts. That’s pain. But then I start telling myself a bunch of things about stubbing my toe such as ‘You idiot, why don’t you watch where you’re going?’ Or ‘Next time you’re going to fall flat on your face or break your hip!’ Or ‘This is so typical of you to be so clumsy. Just one more example of what a screw-up you are!’ ” That’s suffering. Suffering lengthens the experience of pain because it creates an endless cognitive feedback loop where pain is always its terminus. Where suffering begets suffering begets suffering.

other words, we are brought up within a system that teaches us to postpone, defer, and eliminate most incoming sense data in favor of a future reward. We live in a feedback loop of perpetual postponement. For the most part, we are not even aware of what we have lost.

The more you think of yourself as worthless, stupid, or ugly, the more you condition yourself to interpret life that way. You get trapped in a thought loop. The same is true for how you think about others. Once you fall into the habit of seeing people as angry, unjust, or selfish, you see those kind of people everywhere.

Habits are a dopamine-driven feedback loop.

FIGURE 6: The four stages of habit are best described as a feedback loop. They form an endless cycle that is running every moment you are alive. This “habit loop” is continually scanning the environment, predicting what will happen next, trying out different responses, and learning from the results.*

let your values, principles, and identity drive the loop rather than your results.

habit: a cue, or something that triggers us to perform a routine, so that we may receive a reward. For example: You smell cigarette smoke (the cue), you reach for a cigarette and light it up (the routine), and you get a nicotine buzz (the reward). Duhigg asserts that we don’t really break habits; rather we change out the routine from existing habit loops. In other words, when we are trying to extinguish a habit, the cue remains and the reward remains, we just change out the middle part. In the case of cigarette smoking, you still have the same cues (stress, the smell of smoke, seeing people inhale). The difference is what you do with those cues. Maybe you go for a run, or make a pot of coffee, or do some breathing exercises instead. Whatever it is, the new, healthier routine needs to provide a similar reward so you are motivated to replicate it in the future.

It’s more than just an electrical conductor, it’s a superconductor. “You might think of it this way: the conductor is a road with lots of obstacles in it. The electrons carrying the charge are deflected from their path so the traffic is slowed up. But this plastic is like a wide speedway. The electrons can move in large loops and avoid all the obstacles. So they go around and around at high speed, and if the speedway is a circle, they will never stop.” “Never?” Danny gazed up at the Professor in wonder. “You mean it would be a kind of perpetual motion? But I thought that wasn’t possible.” “Nevertheless, that’s just what it would be.” Professor Bullfinch leaned forward to inspect the plastic. “Look here. The two ends of this coil are touching. It forms a closed ring. When you dropped the cable, it started a charge going through the coil. Now, my boy, a moving charge of electricity flowing around a circuit produces a magnetic field. What we have here is a very powerful ring magnet, so powerful that when I tried to touch it the magnetic field caught and held the metal of my wrist watch.” “A supermagnet,” said Danny. “That’s right. And it will go on being a magnet, with the current flowing on and on around the circle until I break the current. Like this.” Professor Bullfinch glanced about. He found a pair of heavy rubber gloves and put them on. He seized the coil and pulled its two ends apart. There was a flash and a snap. The Professor turned to Dr. Fenster. “As you can see, this means—” he was beginning.

Our environment significantly influences our daily habits, whether good or bad. 2.​Some people are not more disciplined than others; they simply live in a more disciplined environment. 3.​Cue-induced wanting followed by discouraging defeat create a never-ending feedback loop that keeps people mired in their bad habits. 4.​Self-control is a short-term solution; it’s easier to avoid temptation than

great way to make a good habit irresistible is to create what is called a dopamine feedback loop. This happens when you are in the response stage of habit formation, and you feel the anticipation of the expected reward. In fact, the anticipation of the reward is more powerful than the reward itself, which completes the loop. In order to make sure a habit sticks, the craving must be attractive. Another method is called temptation bundling. This technique works by pairing a task you want to do (playing a video game) with one you need to do (cleaning your house). "If I clean for two hours, I can play my games afterward." To make this even more effective, pair it with habit stacking: "Every Wednesday after work, I will clean the house for two hours, then I can play my games.” Key Points

Subnormal stimuli like high-calorie foods are heightened versions of the stimuli that were programmed into our brains long before we had regular access to those foods. 2.​A dopamine feedback loop occurs when a reward is achieved, triggering the craving. After the first cycle, we release more dopamine from anticipation than from the reward itself, reinforcing the behavior. 3.​Temptation bundling means pairing a necessary activity with a likable one. For example,  listening to your favorite podcast ONLY while cleaning makes the cleaning seem much more appealing. Questions to Guide the Reader 1.​If you want to start a running regimen, how can you use temptation bundling to make a habit easier to repeat? 2.​Do we lose our cravings after achieving the goal and receiving the reward?

Overcrowding works in a different way for creators than for viewers. For creators, the problem becomes—how do you stand out? How do you get your videos watched? This is particularly acute for new creators, who face a “rich get richer” phenomenon. Across many categories of networked products, when early users join a network and start producing value, algorithms naturally reward them—and this is a good thing. When they do a good job, perhaps they earn five-star ratings, or they quickly gain lots of followers. Perhaps they get featured, or are ranked highly in popularity lists. This helps consumers find what they want, quickly, but the downside is that the already popular just get more popular. Eventually, the problem becomes, how does a new member of the network break in? If everyone else has millions of followers, or thousands of five-star reviews, it can be hard. Eugene Wei, former CTO of Hulu and noted product thinker, writes about the “Old Money” in the context of social networks, arguing that established networks are harder for new users to break into: Some networks reward those who gain a lot of followers early on with so much added exposure that they continue to gain more followers than other users, regardless of whether they’ve earned it through the quality of their posts. One hypothesis on why social networks tend to lose heat at scale is that this type of old money can’t be cleared out, and new money loses the incentive to play the game. It’s not that the existence of old money or old social capital dooms a social network to inevitable stagnation, but a social network should continue to prioritize distribution for the best content, whatever the definition of quality, regardless of the vintage of user producing it. Otherwise a form of social capital inequality sets in, and in the virtual world, where exit costs are much lower than in the real world, new users can easily leave for a new network where their work is more properly rewarded and where status mobility is higher.75 This is true for social networks and also true for marketplaces, app stores, and other networked products as well. Ratings systems, reviews, followers, advertising systems all reinforce this, giving the most established members of a network dominance over everyone else. High-quality users hogging all of the attention is the good version of the problem, but the bad version is much more problematic: What happens, particularly for social products, when the most controversial and opinionated users are rewarded with positive feedback loops? Or when purveyors of low-quality apps in a developer platform—like the Apple AppStore’s initial proliferation of fart apps—are downloaded by users and ranked highly in charts? Ultimately, these loops need to be broken; otherwise your network may go in a direction you don’t want.

The 2nd Law of Behavior Change is make it attractive. The more attractive an opportunity is, the more likely it is to become habit-forming. Habits are a dopamine-driven feedback loop. When dopamine rises, so does our motivation to act. It is the anticipation of a reward—not the fulfillment of it—that gets us to take action. The greater the anticipation, the greater the dopamine spike. Temptation bundling is one way to make your habits more attractive. The strategy is to pair an action you want to do with an action you need to do.

Chapter Summary A habit is a behavior that has been repeated enough times to become automatic. The ultimate purpose of habits is to solve the problems of life with as little energy and effort as possible. Any habit can be broken down into a feedback loop that involves four steps: cue, craving, response, and reward. The Four Laws of Behavior Change are a simple set of rules we can use to build better habits. They are (1) make it obvious, (2) make it attractive, (3) make it easy, and (4) make it satisfying.

Chapter Summary The 2nd Law of Behavior Change is make it attractive. The more attractive an opportunity is, the more likely it is to become habit-forming. Habits are a dopamine-driven feedback loop. When dopamine rises, so does our motivation to act. It is the anticipation of a reward—not the fulfillment of it—that gets us to take action. The greater the anticipation, the greater the dopamine spike. Temptation bundling is one way to make your habits more attractive. The strategy is to pair an action you want to do with an action you need to do.

The 2nd Law of Behavior Change is make it attractive. ■ The more attractive an opportunity is, the more likely it is to become habit-forming. ■ Habits are a dopamine-driven feedback loop. When dopamine rises, so does our motivation to act. ■ It is the anticipation of a reward—not the fulfillment of it—that gets us to take action. The greater the anticipation, the greater the dopamine spike. ■ Temptation bundling is one way to make your habits more attractive. The strategy is to pair an action you want to do with an action you need to do.

Advantages of the ASP I have already explained how the ASP is advantageous with regard to its compactness and ease of carry, but there are other advantages. Carrying an impact weapon gives you the ability to counter a threat with less than lethal force, which may save you a long stint in prison. The compact ASP has advantages over the 28-inch stick of the traditional Filipino martial arts. When you are chest-to-chest against an opponent, it's difficult to hit him decisively with a 26-28 inch long stick. Filipino martial artists practice raising the arm and twisting the wrist to snap the tip into an opponent's head, but these flicking strikes can't be counted on to drop an attacker. Also, because of the stick's light weight, space and distance are needed to wind up and generate power. At very close range the short, heavy stick –such as a blackjack, sap, or an 8-inch steel bar-- is a better weapon. The striking tip of the ASP is made of steel, and the middle section is high-grade aluminum. This solid construction means that the ASP hits hard. The unexpanded ASP can be used like a metal yawara (palm stick), which is devastating in close. The Knife The second weapon in Steel Baton EDC is a knife carried at the neck. The knife should be compact and relatively light so that it is comfortable enough for neck carry. Get a light beaded chain that will break away, so that you aren't strangled with your own neck lanyard. The knife should have a straight handle without loops or fingerholes, because you want to be able to access the knife with either hand in an instant, without having to thread your fingers into holes or work to secure a grip. Avoid folding knives. You want a knife that you can draw in an instant. No matter how much you practice drawing and opening your knife, or even if you get an automatic (switchblade) or assisted opener, you will always be slower getting the folding knife open and into action, particularly under stress. Keep in mind that “under stress” may mean somebody socking you in the face repeatedly. Once again, you want open carry. Open carry is almost always legal and is more easily accessible if you are under attack. You can get a neodymium magnet and put it in the gap between the seam of your shirt, in between the buttons. The magnet will attract the steel blade of your knife so that the knife will stay centered and not flop around if you're moving. My recommended knives for neck carry are the Cold Steel Super Edge and the Cold Steel Hide Out. The Super Edge is small, light, and inconspicuous. It also comes in useful as a day-to-day utility tool, opening packages, trimming threads, removing tags, and so on. Get the Rambo knife image out of your mind. You only need a small knife to deter an attacker, because nobody wants to get cut. And if your life is on the line, you can still do serious damage with a small blade.

A habit is a behavior that has been repeated enough times to become automatic. ■ The ultimate purpose of habits is to solve the problems of life with as little energy and effort as possible. ■ Any habit can be broken down into a feedback loop that involves four steps: cue, craving, response, and reward. ■ The Four Laws of Behavior Change are a simple set of rules we can use to build better habits. They are (1) make it obvious, (2) make it attractive, (3) make it easy, and (4) make it satisfying.

Here are some tips on finding a mentor: 1. Identify who could be a good mentor for you. Remember, you don’t need to aim too high; somebody simply a couple of years ahead of you on their journey might be enough. 2. Get their attention ‒ break through the noise. These people receive huge numbers of messages asking for help and advice, and offers to meet for lunch or coffee so that their brains can be picked. Naturally, they put most of these long emails (they’re often really long) straight in the junk folder to protect the most valuable thing for them ‒ their time. Bear that in mind. To break through the noise, you need to be straight to the point and you need to do Step 3… 3. Seek to add value. Just because potential mentors are successful or higher status, this doesn’t mean you can’t add value to them. Have faith that you have some way of helping them. Study what they’re doing. Are they involved in any philanthropy or social impact causes? How can you help? That’s a great way to get their attention. 4. Act normal. This applies wherever there’s an imbalance of status. For example, when you meet somebody that you’re interested in romantically, and you feel as if they’re probably ‘out of your league, you have to not let that make you behave strangely. If you are too deferential, too reverent, and basically tripping over yourself to do stuff for them because you perceive them to be on another level, then they are unlikely to feel attracted to you. And conversely, sometimes acting ‘not normal’ means you go the other way, and behave like a schoolboy pulling the pigtails of the girl he fancies, going too far in overcompensating. Again, that is not good. Be pleasant to be around. 5. Apply what your mentor advises you to do as quickly as possible, then immediately feedback to them on the outcome of the action. This feedback loop will generate and strengthen the mentor-mentee relationship in the fastest possible way, because entrepreneurial mentors love coachable people who take action. And they feel more and more responsibility when they’re the ones directing your action and you’re coming back to them to report what happened. It’s like an interesting and fun game for them, and they want to know that they’re helping you in a tangible way. Be coachable.

You may have noticed that there has been no mention of break or continue. Scala leaves out these commands because they do not mesh well with function literals, a feature described in the next chapter. It is clear what continue means inside a while loop, but what would it mean inside a function literal? While Scala supports both imperative and functional styles of programming, in this case it leans slightly towards functional programming in exchange for simplifying the language.

Any habit can be broken down into a feedback loop that involves four steps: cue, craving, response, and reward. ■ The Four Laws of Behavior Change are a simple set of rules we can use to build better habits. They are (1) make it obvious, (2) make it attractive, (3) make it easy, and (4) make it satisfying.

A habit is a behavior that has been repeated enough times to become automatic. The ultimate purpose of habits is to solve the problems of life with as little energy and effort as possible. Any habit can be broken down into a feedback loop that involves four steps: cue, craving, response, and reward. The Four Laws of Behavior Change are a simple set of rules we can use to build better habits. They are (1) make it obvious, (2) make it attractive, (3) make it easy, and (4) make it satisfying.

This is the feedback loop behind all human behavior: try, fail, learn, try differently. With practice, the useless movements fade away and the useful actions get reinforced. That’s a habit forming.

That leaves us with the second way to make sure you finish. A friend. Time and again, when I researched what really helped people finally finish, it was a friend who did the trick. The artist who shredded her work, experienced that firsthand. One day, she mentioned to a friend that she had been destroying the things she made. It wasn’t a big intervention moment; she shared it casually, in passing. The friend’s eyes grew wide and he said to her, “No more shredding!” That was the day she quit. What I love about the story is that the friend didn’t give her some eloquent explanation of why she needed to stop. The friend didn’t show her a framed photo of other artists and tell a Robin Williams–style story about how they are all quietly telling her “carpe diem.” The friend didn’t commit to track her progress over the following months and rearrange his entire life. The friend wasn’t Morgan Freeman. I think that’s what we want sometimes. We expect a wise guru to emerge from the shadows of the day and tell us, “Either get busy living or get busy dying.” Granted, everything sounds better in Freeman’s accent, but the change we need is usually not that elaborate. It’s usually not complicated. It’s usually not that dramatic. It’s a friend who breaks the habit loop and tells you to stop shredding. It’s a friend who tells you the thing you’ve accepted as normal isn’t normal.

Your habits shape your identity, and your identity shapes your habits. It’s a two-way street. The formation of all habits is a feedback loop (a concept we will explore in depth in the next chapter), but it’s important to let your values, principles, and identity drive the loop rather than your results. The focus should always be on becoming that type of person, not getting a particular outcome.

This is the feedback loop behind all human behavior: try, fail, learn, try differently

Your habits shape your identity, and your identity shapes your habits. It’s a two-way street. The formation of all habits is a feedback loop

the feedback loop behind all human behavior: try, fail, learn, try differently. With practice, the useless movements fade away and the useful actions get reinforced. That’s a habit forming.

The first three laws of behavior change—make it obvious, make it attractive, and make it easy—increase the odds that a behavior will be performed this time. The fourth law of behavior change—make it satisfying—increases the odds that a behavior will be repeated next time. It completes the habit loop.

Possibilities! In the loop of possibilities, There is always one reality, As you enter this cycle of possibilities, You unknowingly make a pact with eternity, To seek the new and to seek the original, And as you leave one loop only to enter another, You wonder what is fake and what is original, Because the loops are infinite and they hold this universe together, Where real is never obvious and fake is hidden too, And as you seek the real with your relentless prudence, You are cast in the dimensions fake and real too, Then to establish the reality is what defines that crescendo of prudence, And as ripples of time move over these loops of possibilities, You somehow segregate the unreal loops from the real, And in this intertwining net of possibilities, Now you, your thoughts, your desires are true and real, Whatever you seek now, seeks you as well, And the infinity breaks its endless loop, Because now you are part of eternity as well, Where you now can tell the fake from the original loop, Then the dimensions of the universe attain a singular state, Where universe is like a geometry with just one rule, That it is you who defines its every known and unknown state, And you become part of the reality integrated in every rule!

Habit formation, in The Power of Habit, author Charles Duhigg talks about three components necessary to form a habit. A cue, or something that triggers us to perform a routine so that we may receive a reward. For example, you smell cigarette smoke, the cue, you reach for a cigarette, and light it up, the routine, and you get a nicotine buzz, the reward. Duhigg asserts that we don't really break habits, rather we change out the routine from existing habit loops. In other words, when we are trying to extinguish a habit, the cue remains, and the reward remains, we just change out the middle part. In the case of cigarette smoking, you still have the same cues, the stress, the smell, the smoke, seeing people inhale. The difference is what you do with those cues. Maybe you go for a run or make a pot of coffee or do some breathing exercises instead. Whatever it is, the new healthier routine needs to provide a similar reward, so you're motivated to replicate it in the future. If it doesn't get you off it won't work.

a behavior, it’s happening. Mental behaviors still count as behaviors and can have tangible results. (A) Habit loop that starts the worry cycle: Unpleasant emotion triggers worry as

In summary, the cue triggers a craving, which motivates a response, which provides a reward, which satisfies the craving and, ultimately, becomes associated with the cue. Together, these four steps form a neurological feedback loop—cue, craving, response, reward;

Break statement is used to unconditionally terminate the execution of a loop and come out of it.

Continue statement is used to skip the current execution and return to the next iteration value of the loop. b)     Example: Program to break out of the for loop if x becomes 5

There are moments in time that will stay with you forever. Little snippets of your life that your brain will capture and hang onto. Other moments will slip by in their insignificance, but some will hold so much sense and purpose to you that you can never let them go. The first time you fall in love, the first time your heart is broken, the first time you break a heart. It’s an endless loop of big moments that make up your life and the people you love. It’s those memories that will cling to you on your deathbed when you talk about your regrets.

The tattoos that adorn his body--how clearly Bridie sees them now--are, in fact, moving. She is put in mind of Monsieur Desvigne's Mimoscope. A device of cunning construction (a wonder among wonders at the Great Exhibition), pictures looped between spools, illuminated by a spark. Bridie, transfixed, saw animals, insects, and machinery--static images--flickering to life, to bounce and flutter, slither and winch. Bridie watches this man with the same fascination as, in one continuous motion, an inked anchor drops the length of his biceps. High on his abdomen an empty-eyed skull, a grinning memento mori, chatters its jaw. A mermaid sits on his shoulder holding a looking glass, combing her blue-black hair. On finding herself observed the mermaid takes fright and swims off under the man's armpit with a deft beat of her tail. On his left pectoral an ornate heart breaks and re-forms over and over again. He is a circus to the eye.