Change Outlook Quotes

It's a funny thing about life, once you begin to take note of the things you are grateful for, you begin to lose sight of the things that you lack.

I was just as in love with her in our eleventh year as I was in the first. Every anniversary was a victory, a middle finger to everyone who thought we wouldn't last. Abby tamed me, marriage settled me down, and when I became a father, my entire outlook changed.

Never underestimate the power you have to take your life in a new direction.

How to win in life: 1 work hard 2 complain less 3 listen more 4 try, learn, grow 5 don't let people tell you it cant be done 6 make no excuses

Gratitude is one of the most powerful human emotions. Once expressed, it changes attitude, brightens outlook, and broadens our perspective.

Doubt--because doubt is not a sin, it is a sign of your intelligence. You are not responsible to any nation, to any church, to any God. You are responsible only for one thing, and that is self knowledge. And the miracle is, if you can fulfill this responsibility, you will be able to fulfill many other responsibilities without any effort. The moment you come to your own being, a revolution happens in your vision. Your whole outlook about life goes through a radical change. You start feeling new responsibilities--not as some thing to be done, not as a duty to be fulfilled, but as a joy to do.

Worry may not change the outcome, but it definately affects the outlook.

You can change the place you live, your clothes, your interests, your friends, your religion and even your partner. However, if you forgot to change your mind, attitude, beliefs about the world, how you treat people and how you plan to be different this time around, why did you even bother?

The most incredible architecture Is the architecture of Self, which is ever changing, evolving, revolving and has unlimited beauty and light inside which radiates outwards for everyone to see and feel. With every in breathe you are adding to your life and every out breathe you are releasing what is not contributing to your life. Every breathe is a re-birth.

Any day above ground is a good day. Before you complain about anything, be thankful for your life and the things that are still going well.

You become what you digest into your spirit. Whatever you think about, focus on, read about, talk about, you’re going to attract more of into your life. Make sure they're all positive.

It is not a person or situation that affects your life; it is the meaning you give to that person or situation, which influences your emotions and actions. Your choice is to change the meaning you gave it or to change your response, in order to create the outcome you want.

You have to change your thinking if you desire to have a future different from your present.

You can make heaven out of hell, or hell out of heaven. The choice is yours.

Think about every good thing in your life right now. Free yourself of worrying. Let go of the anxiety, breathe. Stay positive, all is well.

Today, spend a little time cultivating relationships offline. Never forget that everybody isn't on social media.

Often people ask, "How can you say you're blessed to have a son with Down syndrome?" My outlook on life has forever changed. I see my own challenges differently. He's always showing me that life is so much bigger than self.

If it doesn't agree with your spirit let it go.

A little leavening of dissatisfied temper will spread through a group and change outlooks.

Changing yourself changes everything.

Don’t ignore pain; appreciate its message: You need to change now!

Magic always happens when you direct your inner powers to the object you want to change.

Don't promote negativity online and expect people to treat you with positivity in person.

Life always gives us another change: It's called "To Move On".

Though no one can backtrack and create a brand new start, Everyone is capable of taking their life in a brand new direction.

I don't really care if people forget me. My legacy wasn't about me. It was about everything I could do for another. When that sinks in...well you try a little harder. You dream a little broader. Your heart stretches a little farther and you find that you can't go back to the same place and make it fit. You become a person of ideas and seek out your own kind. And then it happens: One day you discover that staying the same is scary and changing has become your new home.

You can't change where you come from, but you can change where you go from here. Just like a book. If you don't like the ending, you can make up a new one.

Life has a plan for each of us; we may not understand the whys on our journey but every event is meaningful nonetheless.

I really believe that if the political leaders of the world could see their planet from a distance of, let's say 100,000 miles, their outlook would be fundamentally changed. The all-important border would be invisible, that noisy argument suddenly silenced. The tiny globe would continue to turn, serenely ignoring its subdivisions, presenting a unified facade that would cry out for unified understanding, for homogeneous treatment. The earth must become as it appears: blue and white, not capitalist or communist; blue and white, not rich or poor; blue and white, not envious or envied.

This world is not a wonderful place where unfortunately many evil things happen; but this world is a terrible place where fortunately many miracles and other wonderful things happen.

There are more benefits to happiness. The power of happiness enables more success in marriages, added friendships, higher incomes, and better work performance. With more friends, happy people have a superior support system. They have an easier time navigating through life because their optimistic outlook eases pain, sadness, and grief. They smile more and engage in more in-depth and more meaningful conversations.

Happiness depends less on what happens to us and more on how we view the past positively, enjoy the moment and create the future.

I can and will improve the world. I will smile, show kindness, and be grateful. I refuse to be unhappy.

Having gone through it all had changed our outlooks. You can't be as much of a bitch as you were before, you can't be as much as an egomaniac, you can't feel as much like the world owed you something, you can't be the 'where's mine?' guy.

Courage is being who you are. Courage is sacred of thyself.

You can't reach your potential by remaining in a past due season. Your breakthrough is coming. Strongholds are breaking. Get Ready!

Do the new, be the change.

If we all work together there is no telling how we can change the world through the impact of promoting positivity online.

Stay strong. Don't worry about things you cannot change and don't worry about things changing that you cannot stop.

Stand for something. Make your life mean something. Start where you are with what you have. You are enough.

The ego might resist change until a person’s level of discomfort becomes unbearable. A person can employ logic to overcome the ego’s defense mechanism and intentionally integrate needed revisions in a person’s obsolete or ineffective beliefs and behavior patterns. The subtle sense that something is amiss in a person’s life can lead to a gradual or quick alteration in a person’s conscious thoughts and outlook on life. Resisting change can prolong unhappiness whereas implementing change can establish internal harmony and instate joy in a person’s life.

If you want to be happy you have to study people who are happy. You have to hang out with people that are happy. Life won't go in the direction you want, by simply trying to stay positive in a life you're not happy with. You have to know what you want and why you truly want it so badly. When you figure that out then you need to change your current identity, in order to fit the type of person you envision would make those dreams come true. Happiness is not reliant on the actions or inactions of other people. It is your “courage in motion” toward your dreams.

Changes in Meaning: Finally, chronically traumatized people lose faith that good things can happen and people can be kind and trustworthy. They feel hopeless, often believing that the future will be as bad as the past, or that they will not live long enough to experience a good future. People who have a dissociative disorder may have different meanings in various dissociative parts. Some parts may be relatively balanced in their worldview, others may be despairing, believing the world to be a completely negative, dangerous place, while other parts might maintain an unrealistic optimistic outlook on life

Don’t settle for living mediocre. Focus on all the positive and embrace it. Ignore the negative and be thankful for every single day.

A simple prayer can change your entire outlook on your day.

The victory is not to change the mind of the critic; it is to evaluate what you can learn and discard, yet still walk away with peace in your heart.

Change is possible. You must want it enough for the change to take place.

So, as we have our tea, I propose not only to operate on your heart so as to change your will, but also on your eyes so as to change your outlook. But wait a minute. No, I do not propose to operate at all. I myself cannot do anything of the sort. I am just mildly suggesting that you are perhaps dead, and perhaps blind, leaving you to think the matter over for yourself. If an operation is to be performed it must be performed by God Himself.

When people tell you that you are good for nothing, remember that God made the world from nothing and nothing can change into something anytime.

I feel the reason we are all here, our purpose of being, is to help others find their little piece of happiness and heaven right here on earth...

Nothing in life is a foregone conclusion unless and until it is foregone and concluded

We each have the power to give. It’s the most gratifying feeling ever. By reaching out to help another human being you're sending ripples of positive change.

Every stage of life is unique. At any age and stage of life there are obstacles and opportunities, trials and triumphs. Never allow the negative bring to you to sudden halt. Make the most of the positive opportunities and stay positive.

transition always starts with an ending. To become something else, you have to stop being what you are now; to start doing things a new way, you have to end the way you are doing them now; and to develop a new attitude or outlook, you have to let go of the old

People always complain that they can't do this and they can't do that." "If we look at our lives and concentrate on things that we don't have or wish to have, that doesn't change the circumstances. The truth is that we have to focus on what we have and make the best out of it.

scientific literacy and numeracy were not very good predictors of people’s beliefs about the risks of climate change. Instead, their beliefs were well predicted by their general cultural outlooks—by their tribal memberships (see

Change your experience of life.

Art has a way of anticipating future changes in man’s fundamental outlook.

Changing your attitude, your outlook, your mindset, perspective, disposition, or mood—they all mean controlling where you allow your thoughts to linger.

Keep creating, it will change your life.” Not only does creating add beauty to your life, but also it improves our attitude and personal outlook.

There is a very thin line between- Gobar(cow dung) and Go-Uber!!!!

I need a time out. Send me to the beach and don't let me come back until my attitude changes.

When darkness falls upon you, turn your face to the sun and your shadows will fall behind you.

If 10 percent of the population were to take a consciously ethical outlook on life and act accordingly, the resulting change would be more significant than any change of government,

Every day is a new day. It took me years to believe that, Faith, but it’s true. Every day is a new opportunity to be the person you’ve always wanted to be. Some days your heart will be in it, and some days you’ll fake it, but eventually it will become a habit and without thinking about it, you will be changed anew. A new attitude. A new outlook. A new perspective. The human mind is a wonderful thing to grant us that kind of change.

A person’s outlook on life colors their interpretation of specific events. Human beings’ behavioral and thinking patterns enable people to thrive or cause them to live in despondency and despair.

Polyamory can feel threatening because it upsets our fairy-tale assumption that the right partner will keep us safe from change. Polyamory introduces the prospect of chaos and uncertainty into what's supposed to be a straightforward progression to bliss. But a healthy relationship must first of all be resilient, able to respond to the changes and complexity life brings. Nor is happiness actually a state of being. It is a process, a side effect of doing other things. The fairy tale tells us that with the right partner, happiness just happens. But happiness is something we re-create every day. And it comes more from our outlook than from the things around us.

Replace the word can’t with can. Know that you can, believe that you can, and know with ALL of your heart that you will. You will succeed in spite of any obstacles that may try to hinder you! There’s so much power in having a positive attitude, positive mindset, and positive outlook.

If you get stuck in the memories of those times, you won't be able to appreciate all the fun that's happening right now. So don't think 'That time was fun', instead you should be thinking 'That time was also fun'. The really fun things can't be compared with one another. Ah, but here's a piece of advice: being able to find the fun that's happening right now, that is the best way to enjoy the present. Because of that you should be try your best to value the present, since it's going to change, sooner or later.

To be joyous of heart is to hold an optimistic outlook, to see adversity as opportunity, to see failure as the starting point of success, to view our stubbed toes as the release of acupuncture points, to wake with a feeling of gratitude, and to sleep with a sustaining, unfaltering trust in the Universe of which we are a part. The person with a joyous heart is a treasure to be with, a wellspring of inspiration, and a fit companion. When we are joyous of heart, we hear a resonance in the songs of the birds, see resonance in the opening of a flower, and feel it in the pressure of a friend’s hand.

You cannot hear a poem without it changing you," she told me. "They heard it, and it colonized them. It inherited them and it inhabited them, its rhythms becoming part of the way that they thought; its images permanently transmuting their metaphors; its verses, its outlook, its aspirations becoming their lives. Within a generation their children would be born already knowing the poem, and, sooner rather than later, as these things go, there were no more children born. There was no need for them, not any longer. There was only a poem, which took flesh and walked and spread itself across the vastness of the known.

there's something about trauma to the mind, body and soul. One day your normal and the next your different; you don't know what changed but you know nothing's the same and all of a sudden you are learning to adapt yourself to the same environment with a whole new outlook. I guess you realise your not invisible and every aching bone bleeds it's sorrow through anguish in your movements. One day it'll get easier, because I'm telling myself it will and that's the difference between becoming a pioneer through this disaster when all thought I'd be a slave to pity.

The philosophical assumptions, underlying values, social relations, customs, and overall outlooks on life differ significantly among civilizations. The revitalization of religion throughout much of the world is reinforcing these cultural differences. Cultures can change, and the nature of their impact on politics and economics can vary from one period to another. Yet the major differences in political and economic development among civilizations are clearly rooted in their different cultures. East Asian economic success has its source in East Asian culture, as do the difficulties East Asian societies have had in achieving stable democratic political systems. Islamic culture explains in large part the failure of democracy to emerge in much of the Muslim world.

He was drowning in depression and contemplating suicide. One day a friend noticed that his outlook had changed to hopeful serenity. The soldier attributed his transformation to reading Man’s Search for Meaning. When he was told about the soldier, Frankl wondered whether “there may be such a thing as autobibliotherapy—healing through reading.

He will also make use of what he learns as the months or years of the war strengthen his revolutionary convictions, making him more radical as the potency of arms is demonstrated, as the outlook of the inhabitants becomes a part of his spirit and of his own life, and as he understands the justice and the vital necessity of a series of changes, of which the theoretical importance appeared to him before, but devoid of practical urgency.

The very act of writing assumes, to begin with, that someone cares to hear what you have to say. It assumes that people share, that people can be reached, that people can be touched and even in some cases changed. So many of the things in our world lead us to despair. It seems to me that the final symptom of despair is silence, and that storytelling is one of the sustaining arts; it’s one of the affirming arts. A writer may have a certain pessimism in his outlook, but the very act of being a writer seems to me to be an optimistic act.

On the day I learned of Vati's death, my outlook on life changed profoundly. I had discovered that a good day could never be trusted to remain good, indeed, a good day would inevitably lead to disaster, and I must always be prepared for the worst. The glass was now half empty.

You cannot hear a poem without it changing you," she told me. "They heard it, and it colonized them. It inherited them, its rhythms becoming part of the way that they thought; its images permanently transmuting their metaphors; its verses; its outlook; its aspirations becoming their lives.

You have the power to change the happiness level in someone’s life and in the process you change your mind-set and the level of your own happiness. Practicing kindness and compassion will change your life, your environment, your outlook on your future, and how you view what has happened in your past.

I haven’t quite thought of it that way, but as always, the man has a point. How we frame something affects not just our thinking but our emotional state. It may seem a small deal, but the words we select—the ones we filter out and the ones we eventually choose to put forward—are a mirror to our thinking. Clarity of language is clarity of thought—and the expression of a certain sentiment, no matter how innocuous it seems, can change your learning, your thinking, your mindset, your mood, your whole outlook

You are the water that flows freely, the most dynamic force on the planet with the ability to change course and outlook at any time. You can be a raging river or a placid pond. A source of nourishment, or a breaker of walls. Part of an ocean or a solitary drop. You are dynamic, you are beauty, you are life.

Fundamentalist preaching may and sometimes does induce a dramatically changed life, but its converts tend to be judgemental and elitist. And fundamentalism deadens the mind. Who can measure the psychological warping that can stem from constant exposure to a black/white, right/wrong, sinner/saved outlook on life?

Again, they have no idea of what could be called the evolution of the world or the evolution of society; that is, they do not look back towards a series of successive changes, which happened in nature or in humanity, as we do. We, in our religious and scientific outlook alike, know that earth ages and that humanity ages, and we think of both in these terms; for them, both are eternally the same, eternally youthful.

A black African, she should have been able to fit without difficulty into a black African society, Senegal and the Ivory Coast both having experienced the same colonial power. But Africa is diverse, divided. The same country can change its character and outlook several times over, from north to south or from east to west.

Death went on, If I'd sent you, with your taste for expeditious methods, the matter would have been resolved, but times have changed a lot lately, and one has to update the means and the systems one uses, to keep up with the new technologies, by using e-mail, for example, I've heard tell that it's the most hygienic way, one that does away with inkblots and fingerprints, besides which it's fast, you just open up outlook express on microsoft and it's gone, the difficulty would be having to work with two separate archives, one for those who use computers and another for those who don't, anyway, we've got plenty of time to think about it, they're always coming out with new models and new designs, with new improved technologies, perhaps I'll try it some day, but until then, I'll continue to write with pen, paper and ink, it has the charm of tradition, and tradition counts for a lot when it comes to dying.

We change our attitudes, our careers, our relationships. Even our age changes minute by minute. We change our politics, our moods, and our sexual preferences. We change our outlook, we change our minds, we change our sympathies. Yet when someone changes hir gender, we put hir on some television talk show. Well, here’s what I think: I think we all of us do change our genders. All the time. Maybe it’s not as dramatic as some tabloid headline screaming “She Was A He!” But we do, each of us, change our genders. In response to each interaction we have with a new or different person, we subtly shift the kind of man or woman, boy or girl, or whatever gender we’re being at the moment. We’re usually not the same kind of man or woman with our lover as we are with our boss or a parent. When we’re introduced for the first time to someone we find attractive, we shift into being a different kind of man or woman than we are with our childhood friends. We all change our genders.

So do not expect always to get an emotional charge or a feeling of quiet peace when you read the Bible. By the grace of God you may expect that to be a frequent experience, but often you will get no emotional response at all. Let the Word break over your heart and mind again and again as the years go by, and imperceptibly there will come great changes in your attitude and outlook and conduct. You will probably be the last to recognize these. Often you will feel very, very small, because when your eyes close for the last time in death, and never again read the Word of God in Scripture you will open them to the Word of God in the flesh, that same Jesus of the Bible whom you have known for so lng, standing before you to take you for ever to His eternal home.

both the immigrants from the tribe and bloodline and the activists of prosperity share a common delusion: they believe that it is possible to make this transition without paying the price of choosing between values. One side wants change in their circumstances without letting go of tradition; the other, overcome with guilt and pity, wants to help newcomers with the material change but cannot bring themselves to demand that they excise traditional, outdated values from their outlook.

Affirmations work for anyone striving for self-acceptance. Although I had for years been interested in therapeutic modes of healing and self-help, affirmations always seemed to me a bit corny. My sister, who was then working as a therapist in the field of chemical dependency, encouraged me to give affirmations a try to see if I would experience any concrete changes in my outlook. I wrote affirmations relevant to my daily life and began to repeat them in the morning as part of my daily meditations. At the top of my list was the declaration: "I'm breaking with old patterns and moving forward with my life." I not only found them to be a tremendous energy boost--a way to kick off the day by my accentuating the positive--I also found it useful to repeat them during the day if I felt particularly stressed or was falling into the abyss of negative thinking. Affirmations helped restore my emotional equilibrium.

I could still see that Pauline was one of the most beautiful girls I had ever met, but of the ancient fire which had caused me to bung my heart at her feet that night at the Plaza there remained not a trace. Analysing this, if analyzing is the word I want, I came to the conclusion that this changed outlook was due to the fact that she was so dashed dynamic. Unquestionably an eyeful, Pauline Stoker had the grave defect of being one of those girls who want you to come and swim a mile before breakfast and rout you out when you are trying to snatch a wink of sleep after lunch for a merry five sets of tennis.

We have reached the end of one era, and now we don't know what is all around us. Because we're already in a new era, and it is very different from the old one. Science and the world of technology are both changing everything so quickly, even our bodies. So the original ancient culture was present here, but to no avail, at this point in history it has come to stop. It still has some effect, some kind of continuity, but it cannot analyse and reformulate things, it cannot impact things with absolute strength. The age to follow will be full of dangers. It will be full of difficulties. In all likelihood, it will not be a good future for mankind. It is even possible this new era will mean the end of mankind.

There's folly in her stride that's the rumor justified by lies I've seen her up close beneath the sheets and sometime during the summer she was mine for a few sweet months in the fall and parts of December ((( To get to the heart of this unsolvable equation, one must first become familiar with the physical, emotional, and immaterial makeup as to what constitutes both war and peace. ))) I found her looking through a window the same window I'd been looking through She smiled and her eyes never faltered this folly was a crime ((( The very essence of war is destructive, though throughout the years utilized as a means of creating peace, such an equation might seem paradoxical to the untrained eye. Some might say using evil to defeat evil is counterproductive, and gives more meaning to the word “futile”. Others, like Edmund Burke, would argue that “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men and women to do nothing.” ))) She had an identity I could identify with something my fingertips could caress in the night ((( There is such a limitless landscape within the mind, no two minds are alike. And this is why as a race we will forever be at war with each other. What constitutes peace is in the mind of the beholder. ))) Have you heard the argument? This displacement of men and women and women and men the minds we all have the beliefs we all share Slipping inside of us thoughts and religions and bodies all bare ((( “Without darkness, there can be no light,” he once said. To demonstrate this theory, during one of his seminars he held a piece of white chalk and drew a line down the center of a blackboard. Explaining that without the blackness of the board, the white line would be invisible. ))) When she left she kissed with eyes open I knew this because I'd done the same Sometimes we saw eye to eye like that Very briefly, she considered an apotheosis a synthesis a rendering of her folly into solidarity ((( To believe that a world-wide lay down of arms is possible, however, is the delusion of the pacifist; the dream of the optimist; and the joke of the realist. Diplomacy only goes so far, and in spite of our efforts to fight with words- there are times when drawing swords of a very different nature are surely called for. ))) Experiencing the subsequent sunrise inhaling and drinking breaking mirrors and regurgitating just to start again all in all I was just another gash in the bark ((( Plato once said: “Only the dead have seen the end of war.” Perhaps the death of us all is called for in this time of emotional desperation. War is a product of the mind; only with the death of such will come the end of the bloodshed. Though this may be a fairly realistic view of such an issue, perhaps there is an optimistic outlook on the horizon. Not every sword is double edged, but every coin is double sided. ))) Leaving town and throwing shit out the window drinking boroughs and borrowing spare change I glimpsed the rear view mirror stole a glimpse really I've believed in looking back for a while it helps to have one last view a reminder in case one ever decides to rebel in the event the self regresses and makes the declaration of devastation once more ((( Thus, if we wish to eliminate the threat of war today- complete human annihilation may be called for. )))

Although the idea has been around for ages, most depressed people do not really comprehend it. If you feel depressed, you may think it is because of bad things that have happened to you. You may think you are inferior and destined to be unhappy because you failed in your work or were rejected by someone you loved. You may think your feelings of inadequacy result from some personal defect—you may feel convinced you are not smart enough, successful enough, attractive enough, or talented enough to feel happy and fulfilled. You may think your negative feelings are the result of an unloving or traumatic childhood, or bad genes you inherited, or a chemical or hormonal imbalance of some type. Or you may blame others when you get upset: “It’s these lousy stupid drivers that tick me off when I drive to work! If it weren’t for these jerks, I’d be having a perfect day!” And nearly all depressed people are convinced that they are facing some special, awful truth about themselves and the world and that their terrible feelings are absolutely realistic and inevitable. Certainly all these ideas contain an important gem of truth—bad things do happen, and life beats up on most of us at times. Many people do experience catastrophic losses and confront devastating personal problems. Our genes, hormones, and childhood experiences probably do have an impact on how we think and feel. And other people can be annoying, cruel, or thoughtless. But all these theories about the causes of our bad moods have the tendency to make us victims—because we think the causes result from something beyond our control. After all, there is little we can do to change the way people drive at rush hour, or the way we were treated when we were young, or our genes or body chemistry (save taking a pill). In contrast, you can learn to change the way you think about things, and you can also change your basic values and beliefs. And when you do, you will often experience profound and lasting changes in your mood, outlook, and productivity. That, in a nutshell, is what cognitive therapy is all about. The theory is straightforward

But what is the use of the humanities as such? Admittedly they are not practical, and admittedly they concern themselves with the past. Why, it may be asked, should we engage in impractical investigations, and why should we be interested in the past? The answer to the first question is: because we are interested in reality. Both the humanities and the natural sciences, as well as mathematics and philosophy, have the impractical outlook of what the ancients called vita contemplativa as opposed to vita activa. But is the contemplative life less real or, to be more precise, is its contribution to what we call reality less important, than that of the active life? The man who takes a paper dollar in exchange for twenty-five apples commits an act of faith, and subjects himself to a theoretical doctrine, as did the mediaeval man who paid for indulgence. The man who is run over by an automobile is run over by mathematics, physics and chemistry. For he who leads the contemplative life cannot help influencing the active, just as he cannot prevent the active life from influencing his thought. Philosophical and psychological theories, historical doctrines and all sorts of speculations and discoveries, have changed, and keep changing, the lives of countless millions. Even he who merely transmits knowledge or learning participates, in his modest way, in the process of shaping reality - of which fact the enemies of humanism are perhaps more keenly aware than its friends. It is impossible to conceive of our world in terms of action alone. Only in God is there a "Coincidence of Act and Thought" as the scholastics put it. Our reality can only be understood as an interpenetration of these two.

Until fairly recently, every family had a cornucopia of favorite home remedies--plants and household items that could be prepared to treat minor medical emergencies, or to prevent a common ailment becoming something much more serious. Most households had someone with a little understanding of home cures, and when knowledge fell short, or more serious illness took hold, the family physician or village healer would be called in for a consultation, and a treatment would be agreed upon. In those days we took personal responsibility for our health--we took steps to prevent illness and were more aware of our bodies and of changes in them. And when illness struck, we frequently had the personal means to remedy it. More often than not, the treatment could be found in the garden or the larder. In the middle of the twentieth century we began to change our outlook. The advent of modern medicine, together with its many miracles, also led to a much greater dependency on our physicians and to an increasingly stretched healthcare system. The growth of the pharmaceutical industry has meant that there are indeed "cures" for most symptoms, and we have become accustomed to putting our health in the hands of someone else, and to purchasing products that make us feel good. Somewhere along the line we began to believe that technology was in some way superior to what was natural, and so we willingly gave up control of even minor health problems.

Professionalism is “postindustrial ideology,” and today the Democrats are the party of the professional class. The party has other constituencies, to be sure—minorities, women, and the young, for example, the other pieces of the “coalition of the ascendant”—but professionals are the ones whose technocratic outlook tends to prevail. It is their tastes that are celebrated by liberal newspapers and it is their particular way of regarding the world that is taken for granted by liberals as being objectively true. Professionals dominate liberalism and the Democratic Party in the same way that Ivy Leaguers dominate the Obama cabinet. In fact, it is not going too far to say that the views of the modern-day Democratic Party reflect, in virtually every detail, the ideological idiosyncrasies of the professional-managerial class. Liberalism itself has changed to accommodate its new constituents’ technocratic views. Today, liberalism is the philosophy not of the sons of toil but of the “knowledge economy” and, specifically, of the knowledge economy’s winners

When I was a kid, summers were the most glorious time of life. Because my parents believed in hands-off, free-range parenting, I’d usually be out the door before ten and wouldn’t return until dinner. There were no cell phones to keep track of me and whenever my mom called a neighbor to ask where I was, the neighbor was often just as clueless as to her own child’s whereabouts. In fact, there was only one rule as far as I could tell: I had to be home at half past five, since my parents liked to eat dinner as a family. I can’t remember exactly how I used to spend those days. I have recollections in snapshot form: building forts or playing king of the hill on the high part of the jungle gym or chasing after a soccer ball while attempting to score. I remember playing in the woods, too. Back then, our home was surrounded by undeveloped land, and my friends and I would have dirt-clod wars or play capture the flag; when we got BB guns, we could spend hours shooting cans and occasionally shooting at each other. I spent hours exploring on my bicycle, and whole weeks would pass where I’d wake every morning with nothing scheduled at all. Of course, there were kids in the neighborhood who didn’t lead that sort of carefree existence. They would head off to camp or participate in summer leagues for various sports, but back then, kids like that were the minority. These days, kids are scheduled from morning to night because parents have demanded it, and London has been no exception. But how did it happen? And why? What changed the outlook of parents in my generation? Peer pressure? Living vicariously through a child’s success? Résumé building for college? Or was it simply fear that if their kids were allowed to discover the world on their own, nothing good would come of it? I don’t know. I am, however, of the opinion that something has been lost in the process: the simple joy of waking in the morning and having nothing whatsoever to do.

The idea of an earthly paradise in which men should live together in a state of brotherhood, without laws and without brute labor, had haunted the human imagination for thousands of years. And this vision had had a certain hold even on the groups who actually profited by each historic change. The heirs of the French, English, and American revolutions had partly believed in their own phrases about the rights of man, freedom of speech, equality before the law, and the like, and had even allowed their conduct to be influenced by them to some extent. But by the fourth decade of the twentieth century all the main currents of political thought were authoritarian. The earthly paradise had been discredited at exactly the moment when it became realizable. Every new political theory, by whatever name it called itself, led back to hierarchy and regimentation. And in the general hardening of outlook that set in round about 1930, practices which had been long abandoned, in some cases for hundreds of years—imprisonment without trial, the use of war prisoners as slaves, public executions, torture to extract confessions, the use of hostages and the deportation of whole populations—not only became common again, but were tolerated and even defended by people who considered themselves enlightened and progressive.

The average household income in America is right around $50,000 per year, according to the Census Bureau. Joe and Suzy Average would invest $7,500 (15 percent) per year or $625 per month. If you make $50,000 per year and have no payments except the house mortgage and live on a budget, can you invest $625 per month? Follow me here. If Joe and Suzy invest $625 per month with no match into Roth IRAs from age thirty to age seventy, they will have $7,588,545 tax-FREE! That is almost $8 million. What if I’m half-wrong? What if you end up with only $4 million? What if I’m six times wrong? Sure beats the 97 out of 100 sixty-five-year-olds who can’t write a check for $600! I would submit to you that Joe and Suzy are well below average. Why? In our example they started at the average household income in America, and in forty years of work never got a raise. They saved 15 percent of income and never increased it by one dollar. There is no excuse to retire without financial dignity in the United States today. Most of you will have well over $2 million pass through your hands in your working lifetime, so do something about catching some of that money. Gayle asked me one day if it was too late for her to start saving. Gayle wasn’t twenty-seven like Joe and Suzy. She was fifty-seven years old, but with her attitude you would have thought this lady was 107. Harold Fisher had a much better outlook at age one hundred than Gayle did at age fifty-seven. Life had dealt her some blows and had knocked most of the hope out of her. A Total Money Makeover is not a magic show. You start where you are, and you do the steps. These steps work if you are twenty-seven or fifty-seven, and they don’t change. Gayle might be starting the retirement investing step at sixty that Joe and Suzy start at thirty years old. Gayle was unwise to enter her sixties without an emergency fund and with credit-card debt and a car payment. She, like all of us, couldn’t save when she has debt and no umbrella for when it rains. Would it have been better for Gayle to start when she was twenty-seven or even forty-seven? Obviously. But once she was done with the pity party, she still needed to start with Baby Step One and follow The Total Money Makeover step-by-step to put herself in the best position possible.

According to Yale’s Cultural Cognition Project, for example, one’s “cultural worldview”—that would be political leanings or ideological outlook to the rest of us—explains “individuals’ beliefs about global warming more powerfully than any other individual characteristic.”16 More powerfully, that is, than age, ethnicity, education, or party affiliation. The Yale researchers explain that people with strong “egalitarian” and “communitarian” worldviews (marked by an inclination toward collective action and social justice, concern about inequality, and suspicion of corporate power) overwhelmingly accept the scientific consensus on climate change. Conversely, those with strong “hierarchical” and “individualistic” worldviews (marked by opposition to government assistance for the poor and minorities, strong support for industry, and a belief that we all pretty much get what we deserve) overwhelmingly reject the scientific consensus.17 The evidence is striking. Among the segment of the U.S. population that displays the strongest “hierarchical” views, only 11 percent rate climate change as a “high risk,” compared with 69 percent of the segment displaying the strongest “egalitarian” views.18 Yale law professor Dan Kahan, the lead author on this study, attributes the tight correlation between “worldview” and acceptance of climate science to “cultural cognition,” the process by which all of us—regardless of political leanings—filter new information in ways that will protect our “preferred vision of the good society.” If new information seems to confirm that vision, we welcome it and integrate it easily. If it poses a threat to our belief system, then our brain immediately gets to work producing intellectual antibodies designed to repel the unwelcome invasion.19 As Kahan explained in Nature, “People find it disconcerting to believe that behavior that they find noble is nevertheless detrimental to society, and behavior that they find base is beneficial to it. Because accepting such a claim could drive a wedge between them and their peers, they have a strong emotional predisposition to reject it.” In other words, it is always easier to deny reality than to allow our worldview to be shattered, a fact that was as true of die-hard Stalinists at the height of the purges as it is of libertarian climate change deniers today. Furthermore, leftists are equally capable of denying inconvenient scientific evidence. If conservatives are inherent system justifiers, and therefore bridle before facts that call the dominant economic system into question, then most leftists are inherent system questioners, and therefore prone to skepticism about facts that come from corporations and government. This can lapse into the kind of fact resistance we see among those who are convinced that multinational drug companies have covered up the link between childhood vaccines and autism. No matter what evidence is marshaled to disprove their theories, it doesn’t matter to these crusaders—it’s just the system covering up for itself.20 This kind of defensive reasoning helps explain the rise of emotional intensity that surrounds the climate issue today. As