Concentrating On Yourself Quotes

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He smiled understandingly-much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced--or seemed to face--the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.
F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)
Concentrate on what you want to say to yourself and your friends. Follow your inner moonlight; don't hide the madness. You say what you want to say when you don't care who's listening.
Allen Ginsberg
The secret to life is to put yourself in the right lighting. For some, it's a Broadway spotlight; for others, a lamplit desk. Use your natural powers -- of persistence, concentration, and insight -- to do work you love and work that matters. Solve problems. make art, think deeply.
Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking)
You should never read just for "enjoyment." Read to make yourself smarter! Less judgmental. More apt to understand your friends' insane behavior, or better yet, your own. Pick "hard books." Ones you have to concentrate on while reading. And for god's sake, don't let me ever hear you say, "I can't read fiction. I only have time for the truth." Fiction is the truth, fool! Ever hear of "literature"? That means fiction, too, stupid.
John Waters (Role Models)
Never trust to general impressions, my boy, but concentrate yourself upon details.
Arthur Conan Doyle (The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sherlock Holmes, #3))
All profound distraction opens certain doors. You have to allow yourself to be distracted when you are unable to concentrate.
Julio Cortázar (Around the Day in Eighty Worlds)
Don’t concern yourself with being right in others’ eyes. And don’t secretly hope that their lives will fall apart so that your opinion will be vindicated. Instead, concentrate on obeying God in your own life and, when possible, helping others to obey Him as well. You don’t have to prove others wrong to continue on the course you know God has shown you.
Joshua Harris (I Kissed Dating Goodbye)
To dwell in the here and now does not mean you never think about the past or responsibly plan for the future. The idea is simply not to allow yourself to get lost in regrets about the past or worries about the future. If you are firmly grounded in the present moment, the past can be an object of inquiry, the object of your mindfulness and concentration. You can attain many insights by looking into the past. But you are still grounded in the present moment.
Thich Nhat Hanh (The Art of Power)
Concentrate every minute like a Roman— like a man— on doing what’s in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice. And on freeing yourself from all other distractions. Yes, you can— if you do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life, and stop being aimless, stop letting your emotions override what your mind tells you, stop being hypocritical, self-centered , irritable. You see how few things you have to do to live a satisfying and reverent life? If you can manage this, that’s all even the gods can ask of you.
Marcus Aurelius (Meditations)
When you do something, you should do it with your whole body and mind; you should be concentrated on what you do. You should do it completely, like a good bonfire. You should not be a smoky fire. You should burn yourself completely. If you do not burn yourself completely, a trace of yourself will be left in what you do.
Shunryu Suzuki (Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice)
The real thinkers of the world aren't the best dressed. Staying on top of the latest fashions, accessorizing, and presenting oneself is time consuming. It takes a lot of effort, energy and concentration to be incessantly happy and perfectly groomed. You meet somebody like that- ask yourself what they're running from.
Karen Marie Moning (Shadowfever (Fever, #5))
Deep down, I don’t believe it takes any special talent for a person to lift himself off the ground and hover in the air. We all have it in us—every man, woman, and child—and with enough hard work and concentration, every human being is capable of…the feat….You must learn to stop being yourself. That’s where it begins, and everything else follows from that. You must let yourself evaporate. Let your muscles go limp, breathe until you feel your soul pouring out of you, and then shut your eyes. That’s how it’s done. The emptiness inside your body grows lighter than the air around you. Little by little, you begin to weigh less than nothing. You shut your eyes; you spread your arms; you let yourself evaporate. And then, little by little, you lift yourself off the ground. Like so.
Paul Auster (Mr. Vertigo)
Fearing a competition is okay, but what is not okay is not making yourself strong enough to face that fear.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
Most of the time, you’ll concentrate just on your website but when you take your focus off of it, you’ll realize that there’s more to a business than that.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
The secret of success is to try always to improve yourself no matter where you are or what your position. Learn all you can. Don't see how little you can do, but how much you can do.
William Walker Atkinson (The Power of Concentration)
So they gave me love in form of poison and tiny little pills, programming my emotions, teaching me how to feel. To act correct and talk correct and answer without knowing the question, because that, my dear, is how you get love. Yes that, dear youth, is how you'll be loved. I tried to medicate my own fucked up little mind with chemicals and adrenaline, tasting sweeter every night, shaking louder every time. Sitting wide awake in bed until the world disappears, writing poetry to concentrate on something real while waiting for the love to arrive. I've been looking for it night after night, waiting patiently for it to show up, maybe somewhere in between the state of awake and asleep, alive and not so alive, sober and not so sober. (I lost track of the difference somewhere in between.)
Charlotte Eriksson (Empty Roads & Broken Bottles: in search for The Great Perhaps)
You can either set brick as a laborer or as an artist. You can make the work a chore, or you can have a good time. You can do it the way you used to clear the dinner dishes when you were thirteen, or you can do it as a Japanese person would perform a tea ceremony, with a level of concentration and care in which you can lose yourself, and so in which you can find yourself.
Anne Lamott
Your concentration must come as easily as the breath. Fix yourself on one thing and try to hold onto it. All will come right. Meditation is sticking to one thought. That single thought keeps away other thoughts. The dissipated mind is a sign of its weakness. By constant meditation it gains strength.
Ramana Maharshi (The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi in His Own Words)
Success and failure can both make you lose appetite and concentration, don't let it bother or over-excite you, just think them away as a mere thing that had just happened, and get along with your life.
Michael Bassey Johnson
Listen to me, kid. Don't forget that you are in a concentration camp. In this place, it is every many for himself, and you cannot think of others. Not even you father. In this place, there is no such thing as father, brother, friend. Each of us lives and dies alone. Let me give you good advice: stop giving your ration of bread and soup to your old father. You cannot help him anymore. And you are hurting yourself. In fact, you should be getting his rations...
Elie Wiesel (Night (The Night Trilogy, #1))
Imagine your body replaced by dust and vapor, and having a tingly feeling in your stomach without even having a stomach. Imagine having to concentrate just to keep yourself from dispersing into nothing. I got so angry, a flash of lightning crackled inside me. “Don’t be that way,” Amos chuckled. “It’s only for a few minutes.
Rick Riordan (The Red Pyramid (The Kane Chronicles, #1))
It's said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That's false, tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance, it was done by dogma, it was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods. Science is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at the brink of the known; we always feel forward for what is to be hoped. Every judgment in science stands on the edge of error and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible. In the end, the words were said by Oliver Cromwell: "I beseech you in the bowels of Christ: Think it possible you may be mistaken." I owe it as a scientist to my friend Leo Szilard, I owe it as a human being to the many members of my family who died here, to stand here as a survivor and a witness. We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power. We have to close the distance between the push-button order and the human act. We have to touch people.
Jacob Bronowski
Life is achievement....Give yourself an aim, something you want to do, then go after it, breaking through everything, with nothing in mind but your aim, all will, all concentration, and get it.
Ayn Rand
If, by the virtue of charity or the circumstance of desperation, you ever chance to spend a little time around a Substance-recovery halfway facility like Enfield MA’s state-funded Ennet House, you will acquire many exotic new facts… That certain persons simply will not like you no matter what you do. That sleeping can be a form of emotional escape and can with sustained effort be abused. That purposeful sleep-deprivation can also be an abusable escape. That you do not have to like a person in order to learn from him/her/it. That loneliness is not a function of solitude. That logical validity is not a guarantee of truth. That it takes effort to pay attention to any one stimulus for more than a few seconds. That boring activities become, perversely, much less boring if you concentrate intently on them. That if enough people in a silent room are drinking coffee it is possible to make out the sound of steam coming off the coffee. That sometimes human beings have to just sit in one place and, like, hurt. That you will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do. That there is such a thing as raw, unalloyed, agendaless kindness. That it is possible to fall asleep during an anxiety attack. That concentrating intently on anything is very hard work. That 99% of compulsive thinkers’ thinking is about themselves; that 99% of this self-directed thinking consists of imagining and then getting ready for things that are going to happen to them; and then, weirdly, that if they stop to think about it, that 100% of the things they spend 99% of their time and energy imagining and trying to prepare for all the contingencies and consequences of are never good. In short that 99% of the head’s thinking activity consists of trying to scare the everliving shit out of itself. That it is possible to make rather tasty poached eggs in a microwave oven. That some people’s moms never taught them to cover up or turn away when they sneeze. That the people to be the most frightened of are the people who are the most frightened. That it takes great personal courage to let yourself appear weak. That no single, individual moment is in and of itself unendurable. That other people can often see things about you that you yourself cannot see, even if those people are stupid. That having a lot of money does not immunize people from suffering or fear. That trying to dance sober is a whole different kettle of fish. That different people have radically different ideas of basic personal hygiene. That, perversely, it is often more fun to want something than to have it. That if you do something nice for somebody in secret, anonymously, without letting the person you did it for know it was you or anybody else know what it was you did or in any way or form trying to get credit for it, it’s almost its own form of intoxicating buzz. That anonymous generosity, too, can be abused. That it is permissible to want. That everybody is identical in their unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else. That this isn’t necessarily perverse. That there might not be angels, but there are people who might as well be angels.
David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest)
A good thing about talking to someone who is standing behind you is that you can pretend you don't know they're crying, and not trouble yourself too much with working out why. You can simply concentrate on helping them feel better.
Nathan Filer (The Shock of the Fall)
... Like having to be able to say to yourself, ‘I am pretending to sit here reading Albert Camus’s The Fall for the Literature of Alienation midterm, but actually I’m really concentrating on listening to Steve try to impress this girl over the phone, and I am feeling embarrassment and contempt for him, and am thinking he’s a poser, and at the same time I am also uncomfortably aware of times that I’ve also tried to project the idea of myself as hip and cynical so as to impress someone, meaning that not only do I sort of dislike Steve, which in all honesty I do, but part of the reason I dislike him is that when I listen to him on the phone it makes me see similarities and realize things about myself that embarrass me, but I don’t know how to quit doing them—like, if I quit trying to seem nihilistic, even just to myself, then what would happen, what would I be like?
David Foster Wallace (The Pale King)
Don’t concentrate on what you don’t have or have lost. The Lord promised the obedient to share all that He possesses with them. You may temporarily lack here, but in the next life, if you prove yourself worthy by living valiantly, a fulness will be your blessing.
Richard G. Scott
The first step: Don’t be anxious. Nature controls it all. And before long you’ll be no one, nowhere—like Hadrian, like Augustus. The second step: Concentrate on what you have to do. Fix your eyes on it. Remind yourself that your task is to be a good human being; remind yourself what nature demands of people. Then do it, without hesitation, and speak the truth as you see it. But with kindness. With humility. Without hypocrisy.
Marcus Aurelius (Meditations)
I think as you get older you become more of who you always were. You become a more concentrated version of yourself. You really learn who you are, why you're unique, who you've always been [...] There's a winnowing away of nonessentials, sometimes essentials, it's true, but what remains is your core, your essence, the real 'you,' and you realize you're still you without what you've lost as long as you still have all your marbles--or most of them anyway.
Stacey McGlynn (Keeping Time)
Stop minding other people's business. What they are thinking about you is their business. Don't mind it. Be focused.
Israelmore Ayivor (Let's go to the Next Level)
When you're traveling you need to take care of yourself to get by, you have to keep an eye on yourself and your place in the world. It means concentrating on yourself, thinking about yourself and looking after yourself. So when you travel all you really encounter is yourself, as if that were the whole point of it. When you're at home you simply are, you don't have to struggle with anything or achieve anything. You don't have to worry about the railways connections, and timetables, you don't need to experience any thrills or disappointments. You can put yourself to one side - and that's when you see the most.
Olga Tokarczuk
Don’t dash off a six-thousand-word story before breakfast. Don’t write too much. Concentrate your sweat on one story, rather than dissipate it over a dozen. Don’t loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club, and if you don’t get it you will none the less get something that looks remarkably like it. Set yourself a “stint,” [London wrote 1,000 words nearly every day of his adult life] and see that you do that “stint” each day; you will have more words to your credit at the end of the year. Study the tricks of the writers who have arrived. They have mastered the tools with which you are cutting your fingers. They are doing things, and their work bears the internal evidence of how it is done. Don’t wait for some good Samaritan to tell you, but dig it out for yourself. See that your pores are open and your digestion is good. That is, I am confident, the most important rule of all. Keep a notebook. Travel with it, eat with it, sleep with it. Slap into it every stray thought that flutters up into your brain. Cheap paper is less perishable than gray matter, and lead pencil markings endure longer than memory. And work. Spell it in capital letters. WORK. WORK all the time. Find out about this earth, this universe; this force and matter, and the spirit that glimmers up through force and matter from the maggot to Godhead. And by all this I mean WORK for a philosophy of life. It does not hurt how wrong your philosophy of life may be, so long as you have one and have it well. The three great things are: GOOD HEALTH; WORK; and a PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE. I may add, nay, must add, a fourth—SINCERITY. Without this, the other three are without avail; with it you may cleave to greatness and sit among the giants." [Getting Into Print (The Editor magazine, March 1903)]
Jack London
Never underestimate a well-dressed bimbo. The real thinkers of the world aren’t the best dressed. Staying on top of the latestfashions, accessorizing, and presenting oneself is time consuming. It takes a lot of effort, energy, and concentration to be incessantly happy and perfectly groomed. You meet somebody like that—ask yourself what they’re running from.
Karen Marie Moning (Shadowfever (Fever, #5))
When your meta-attention becomes strong, you will be able to recover a wandering attention quickly and often, and if you recover attention quickly and often enough, you create the effect of continuous attention, which is concentration.
Chade-Meng Tan (Search Inside Yourself: The Unexpected Path to Achieving Success, Happiness (And World Peace))
The first thing to do is to keep silent – to abolish audiences and learn to be your own judge. To keep a balance between active concern for the body and an attentive awareness of being alive. To abandon all claims and devote yourself to achieving two kinds of freedom: freedom from money, and freedom from your own vanity and cowardice. To have rules and stick to them. Two years is not too long to spend thinking about one single point. You must wipe out all earlier stages, and concentrate all your strength on forgetting nothing and learning patiently.
Albert Camus (Notebooks, 1935-1951)
When you ignore your belly, you become homeless. You spend your life trying to erase your own existence. Apologizing for yourself. Feeling like a ghost. Eating to take up space, eating to give yourself the feeling that you have weight here, you belong here, you are allowed to be yourself -- but never quite believing it because you don't sense yourself directly. . . . I started teaching a simple belly meditation in which I asked people to become aware of sensations in their belly (numbness and emptiness count as sensations). Every time their mind wandered . . . I asked them to begin counting their breaths so they could anchor their concentration. Starting with the number one and saying it on the out breath, they'd count to seven and begin again. If they were able to stay concentrated on the sensations in their belly centers, they didn't need to use counting as a concentration anchor. . . . you begin the process of bringing yourself back to your body, to your belly, to your breath because they -- not the mind medleys -- are here now. And it is only here, only now that you can make a decision to eat or not eat. To occupy your own body or to vacate your arms and your legs while still breathing and go through your days as a walking head. . . . Meditation is a tool to shake yourself awake. A way to discover what you love. A practice to return yourself to your body when the mind medleys threaten to usurp your sanity.
Geneen Roth (Women, Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything)
Being a winner in life means finding a way to keep yourself in the personal space where you’re being the best and most vibrant you instead of the smallest you. That is the secret to success in anything you want to do in life. That means not comparing yourself to anyone else and concentrating on you. Because when your self-esteem is in the shitter and you don’t feel worthy, you look to others for validation, you settle for crappy things and all you get is crappy things and who wants that?
Greg Behrendt (It's Just a F***ing Date: Some Sort of Book About Dating)
Fight your genes.' The Big Hoom said to us once, to Susan and me. He did not explain. He did not know how to. But we knew what it meant. It meant that we were to march into the hall and take out our school books and reproduce the slipper-shaped animalcule whose psuedopodia power it through a world without feeling; to learn how to inscribe a hexagon into a circle without tearing the paper; to assimilate the causes and consequences of the battle of Panipat without ever identifying your own enemy because that would be mean identifying yourself. 'Fight your genes'. Focus. Be diligent. Concentrate. Do
Jerry Pinto (Em and The Big Hoom)
..when you do something, you should do it with your whole body and mind; you should be concentrated on what you do. You should do it completely... You should burn yourself completely.
Shunryu Suzuki (Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice)
The most desired gift of love is not diamonds or roses or chocolate. It is focused attention. Love concentrates so intently on another that you forget yourself at that moment. Attention says, “I value you enough to give you my most precious asset — my time.” Whenever you give your time, you are making a sacrifice, and sacrifice is the essence of love. Jesus modeled this: “Be full of love for others, following the example of Christ who loved you and gave Himself to God as a sacrifice to take away your sins” (Ephesians 5:2, LB).
Rick Warren (The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?)
THE LAMPS ARE DIFFERENT BUT THE LIGHT IS THE SAME So many garish lamps in the dying brain’s lamp-show, Forget about them. Concentrate on the essence, concentrate on the Light. In lucid bliss, calmly smoking off its own holy fire, The Light streams towards you from all things, All people, all possible permutations of good, evil, thought, passion. The lamps are different, but the Light is the same. One matter, one energy, one Light, one Light-mind, Endlessly emanating all things. One turning and burning diamond, One, one, one. Ground yourself, strip yourself down, To blind loving silence. Stay there, until you see You are gazing at the Light With its own ageless eyes
Rumi (Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi)
If we're afraid, sometimes there are things that can feed on that fear. Fear makes it worse for us. The trick is to concentrate on what you can see and stop thinking about yourself. It works every time...
Joseph Delaney (Revenge of the Witch (The Last Apprentice / Wardstone Chronicles, #1))
You know, it set you at war with yourself.
Elizabeth Wein (Rose Under Fire)
you want to know what reality is, you must look directly at it and see for yourself. But this needs a certain kind of concentration, because reality is not symbols, it is not words and thoughts, it is not reflections and fantasies. Therefore to see it clearly, your mind must be free from wandering words and from the floating fantasies of
Alan W. Watts (Become What You Are)
I like your body and your face and your hair and your skin, and I like how you’re always warmer than me, and how you never sit still except when you’re really trying to concentrate on what someone’s saying, and I like how you always fix things without being asked. You’re the only one of us who will actually take out the trash before it’s spilling over. And every time you’re doing anything—going to the store or doing laundry or making yourself breakfast—you’ll always ask if anyone else needs anything, and I like how I know when you’re about to text me from the other side of the room because you make this really specific face.
Emily Henry (Happy Place)
Some Mistakes Some People Make. If you waste your time reading sensational stories or worthless newspaper items, you excite the impulsive and the emotional faculties, and this means you are weakening your power of concentration. You will not be a free engineer, able to pilot yourself to success.
William Walker Atkinson (The Power Of Concentration)
No easy way out. No escape. From yourself. You had to LEARN to DEAL with the cards you were dealt. Had to learn the hard way that the world doesn't OWE you a fucking thing. Not a reason, nor excuse. No apologies. Had to learn that some forms of insanity run in the family, pure genetics, polluted lifelines, full of disease. Profanity. Addiction. Co-addiction. Inability to deal with reality, what the fuck ever that's suppose to mean when you're born into an emotional ghetto of endless abuse. Where the only way out is in...deep, deep inside, so you poke holes in your skin, thinking that if you could just concentrate the pain it wouldn't remain an all-consuming surround which suffocates you from the first breath of day to your last dying day. Day in. Day out. Day in. Day out. I knew all about it.
Lydia Lunch (Paradoxia: A Predator's Diary)
You cannot allow yourself to become distracted. Everything in this room, especially the uninvited third wheel, needs to fade away.” “Hey,” Roth scuffed. “That’s offensive.” “This is my I-don’t-care face,” Zayne replied. I planted my hands on my hips. “I think I know how to concentrate, Zayne.” “And I think I’ve been around you enough to know that you have the concentration level of a puppy on its first car ride.” Roth laughed.
Jennifer L. Armentrout (Rage and Ruin (The Harbinger, #2))
You can't try. Trying is a struggle and doing is an act. You can't witness the act of trying, but you can see the results of doing. Trying brings on stress because not only do you have the problem, but now you have all this frustration with it not going away just because you want it to. It's kind of like being told not to think of pink elephants—impossible. What you have to do is stop. You say to yourself, this is over for now. I'm done for now. Take your mind to another place and concentrate on that peaceful place. Deep breaths. Go limp. Put your mind in another state. It takes practice, but it gets easier, over time.
Robyn Carr (Forbidden Falls (Virgin River, #8))
Some in the outside world might call our traumas trivial. Were you gang-raped? Sold into slavery? Imprisoned in a concentration camp? Did you accidentally tweet a naked picture of yourself to twenty million strangers? No? Then stop whining! They would not understand that it is possible to be annihilated by a smirk, a scowl, an empty threat.
Anneli Rufus (Unworthy: How to Stop Hating Yourself)
I turned my back to her. I felt a slight burning on the back of my neck. “Listen to me,” I went on. “I never was much for fucking around, I never got much out of it. I know that everybody else does it; but it’s no fun if you just do like everybody else. To tell you the truth, it bores me, It does you good to live according to your ideas, to not betray yourself, not cop out at the last minute just because some girl has a nice ass, or someone offers you a huge check, or because the path of least resistance runs by your front door. It does you good to hang tough. It’s good for the soul.” I turned around to tell her the Big Secret; “Over Dispersal, I choose Concentration. I have one life—the only thing I’m interested in is making it shine.
Philippe Djian (Betty Blue)
I hear You saying to me: "I will give you what you desire. I will lead you into solitude. I will lead you by the way that you cannot possibly understand, because I want it to be the quickest way. "Therefore all the things around you will be armed against you, to deny you, to hurt you, to give you pain, and therefore to reduce you to solitude. "Because of their enmity, you will soon be left alone. They will cast you out and forsake you and reject you and you will be alone. "Everything that touches you shall burn you, and you will draw your hand away in pain, until you have withdrawn yourself from all things. Then you will be all alone. "Everything that can be desired will sear you, and brand you with a cautery, and you will fly from it in pain, to be alone. Every created joy will only come to you as pain, and you will die to all joy and be left alone. All the good things that other people love and desire and seek will come to you, but only as murderers to cut you off from the world and its occupations. "You will be praised, and it will be like burning at the stake. You will be loved, and it will murder your heart and drive you into the desert. "You will have gifts, and they will break you with their burden. You will have pleasures of prayer, and they will sicken you and you will fly from them. "And when you have been praised a little and loved a little I will take away all your gifts and all your love and all your praise and you will be utterly forgotten and abandoned and you will be nothing, a dead thing, a rejection. And in that day you shall being to possess the solitude you have so long desired. And your solitude will bear immense fruit in the souls of men you will never see on earth. "Do not ask when it will be or where it will be or how it will be: On a mountain or in a prison, in a desert or in a concentration camp or in a hospital or at Gethsemani. It does not matter. So do not ask me, because I am not going to tell you. You will not know until you are in it. "But you shall taste the true solitude of my anguish and my poverty and I shall lead you into the high places of my joy and you shall die in Me and find all things in My mercy which has created you for this end and brought you from Prades to Bermuda to St. Antonin to Oakham to London to Cambridge to Rome to New York to Columbia to Corpus Christi to St. Bonaventure to the Cistercian Abbey of the poor men who labor in Gethsemani: "That you may become the brother of God and learn to know the Christ of the burnt men.
Thomas Merton (The Seven Storey Mountain)
Never trust to general impressions, my boy, but concentrate yourself upon details. My first glance is always at a woman's sleeve. In a man, it is perhaps better to take the knee of the trouser. Chance has put in our way a most singular and whimsical problem, and its solution is its own reward.
Arthur Conan Doyle (The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle - a Sherlock Holmes Short Story (The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, #7))
Voluntary simplicity is at once joyous and altruistic. Joyous because it is not permanently plagued by the hunger for “more”; altruistic because it does not encourage the disproportionate concentration of resources in the hands of a few, resources which—were they to be spread evenly—would significantly improve the lives of those deprived of basic needs.
Matthieu Ricard (Altruism: The Power of Compassion to Change Yourself and the World)
Once you familiarize yourself with your tools, you should forget about them. It will only throw you off-balance. In all these ‘rolling shit into little balls’ types who spend hours of time and reams of paper saying nothing, literary masturbators, they concentrate on the vehicle more than what they want to produce. That impedes the end result and defeats the purpose. You must lose consciousness of the medium or mechanics to do the impossible. Like Nijinsky who explained how he gave the impression of hovering in mid-air – ‘I just pause when I get there.’ In a child-like way, real magicians innocently do the simplest thing. The objective is all they think about. I just want to make music the way I hear it. The ends justify the means, and the means become inconsequential.
Anton Szandor LaVey (The Secret Life of a Satanist: The Authorized Biography of Anton LaVey)
Helen opened her eyes and gazed into the luminous blue of the sky. Was it crazy, she wondered, to be as grateful as she felt now, for moments like this, in a world that had atomic bombs in it—and concentration camps, and gas chambers? People were still tearing each other into pieces. There was still murder, starvation, unrest, in Poland, Palestine, India—God knew where else. Britain itself was sliding into bankruptcy and decay. Was it a kind of idiocy or selfishness, to want to be able to give yourself over to the trifles: to the parp of the Regent’s Park Band; to the sun on your face, the prickle of grass beneath your heels, the movement of cloudy beer in your veins, the secret closeness of your lover? Or were those trifles all you had? Oughtn’t you, precisely, to preserve them? To make little crystal drops of them, that you could keep, like charms on a bracelet, to tell against danger when next it came?
Sarah Waters (The Night Watch)
If you can cut yourself—your mind—free of what other people do and say, of what you’ve said or done, of the things that you’re afraid will happen, the impositions of the body that contains you and the breath within, and what the whirling chaos sweeps in from outside, so that the mind is freed from fate, brought to clarity, and lives life on its own recognizance —doing what’s right, accepting what happens, and speaking the truth— If you can cut free of impressions that cling to the mind, free of the future and the past—can make yourself, as Empedocles says, “a sphere rejoicing in its perfect stillness,” and concentrate on living what can be lived (which means the present) . . . then you can spend the time you have left in tranquillity. And in kindness. And at peace with the spirit within you.
Marcus Aurelius (Meditations)
Later, Bishop Crandall dropped by The house to give me a stern reprimand. He sat across the cluttered table, playing with a paper clip. 'Your parents are worries about you, Pattyn.' I was worried about myself. But I wasn't about to let him know it. "Really?" 'Really. What have you got to say for yourself? You've always been such a good girl.' Good girl. Sit. Stay. Fetch. Bristles rose up along my spine. "Define good." 'I don't appreciate your attitude, Pattyn. Fast and pray. Search your soul for the inequities in your life.' "Any inequity in my life began when I was born female. Can you fix that?" 'You'll have to fix that yourself, by concentrating on the things God expects of you.' His two-faced rhetoric was pissing me off. "You mean like kissing your ass?" He slammed his hand on the table. 'I will not listen to that sort of language. Apologize!' Behind me, I hear Mom gasp. But I was on a roll. "I'm sorry, Bishop I'm sorry I ever believed you might have something worthwhile to say.
Ellen Hopkins (Burned (Burned, #1))
You should not have any remains after you do something. But this does not mean to forget all about it. In order not to leave any traces, when you do something, you should do it with your whole body and mind; you should be concentrated on what you do. You should do it completely, like a good bonfire. You should not be a smoky fire. You should burn yourself completely. If you do not burn yourself completely, a trace of yourself will be left in what you do.
Shunryu Suzuki
The overwhelming noise we live with has made a fundamental pleasure like sex somehow less exciting, less satisfying, than it was for our libidinous forefathers and mothers. It seems to me that for sex and other pleasures to be enjoyed to the fullest, a certain contemplative quality to life must be present. If you doubt this imagine yourself for a moment having sex. Now imagine you wished to increase the pleasure you were feeling, feel it more intensely. What might you do? Well one of the things you'd probably do is close your eyes. What this does of course is shut out other stimuli. The visual quiet increases your sensual enjoyment and you concentrate more fully on the pleasure. The same is true for the removal of auditory noise as well. Well my feeling is that the average person has a much harder time doing this today than they would have decades ago. Today you close your eyes and shut off Television but the noise persists. It's part of our fabric now, our biology, and all other pleasures including sex are diminished as a result. We don't notice this derogation by the way and sex still feels great, don't get me wrong, but I think the difference is there nonetheless. Like the difference between seeing breasts when you're thirty as opposed to when you were thirteen.
Sergio de la Pava (A Naked Singularity)
There are any number of reasons to want novels to survive. The way [Jonathan] Franzen thinks about it is that books can do things, socially useful things, that other media can't. He cites -- as one does -- the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard and his idea of busyness: that state of constant distraction that allows people to avoid difficult realities and maintain self-deceptions. With the help of cell phones, e-mail and handheld games, it's easier to stay busy, in the Kierkegaardian sense, than it's ever been. Reading, in its quietness and sustained concentration, is the opposite of busyness. "We are so distracted by and engulfed by the technologies we've created, and by the constant barrage of so-called information that comes our way, that more than ever to immerse yourself in an involving book seems socially useful," Franzen says. "The place of stillness that you have to go to to write, but also to read seriously, is the point where you can actually make responsible decisions, where you can actually engage productively with an otherwise scary and unmanageable world.
Lev Grossman
My dear friends, from the devil's standpoint there is not the slightest difference between being puffed up with pride in yourself or spending the whole of your time condemning yourself. Either way the devil is very well-pleased. Any concentration upon self in any shape or form is of the devil.
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
Love is essential, gregariousness is optional...The secret to life is to put yourself in the right lighting. For some it's a Broadway spotlight; for others, a lamplit desk. Use your natural powers - of persistence, concentration, insight, and sensitivity - to do work you love and work that matters.
Susan Cain
Choir is the one time of day when he lets down his guard; there is peace in the strict concentration that Faughnan demands of all of them, in the sweet dissonance of voices in chorus. He has sung in here since he was a freshman. Faughnan is a serious student of music; also, a perfectionist of the sternest sort, who cares about nobody, about nothing other than the music. His shirt sleeves rolled to the elbows, his tie undone, he drives them. Every minute of every hour that is spent there, they work, and there is only one way to prove yourself. You sing, and sing, and sing. All else is unimportant.
Judith Guest
WHEN SOME BASIC NEED IS LACKING—time, energy, money—consider yourself blessed. Your very lack is an opportunity to latch onto Me in unashamed dependence. When you begin a day with inadequate resources, you must concentrate your efforts on the present moment. This is where you are meant to live—in the present;
Sarah Young (Jesus Calling, with Scripture References: Enjoying Peace in His Presence (A 365-Day Devotional) (Jesus Calling®))
In order not to leave any traces, when you do something, you should do it with your whole body and mind; you should be concentrated on what you do. You should do it completely, like a good bonfire. You should not be a smoky fire. You should burn yourself completely. If you do not burn yourself completely, a trace of yourself will be left in what you do. You will have something remaining which is not completely burned out. Zen activity is activity which is completely burned out, with nothing remaining but ashes. This is the goal of our practice. That is what Dogen meant when he said, “Ashes do not come back to firewood.” Ash is ash. Ash should be completely ash. The firewood should be firewood. When this kind of activity takes place, one activity covers everything.
Shunryu Suzuki (Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice)
The development of inner skills is required, but it is interesting to note that if, while learning tennis, you begin to learn how to focus your attention and how to trust in yourself, you have learned something far more valuable than how to hit a forceful backhand. The backhand can be used to advantage only on a tennis court, but the skill of mastering the art of effortless concentration is invaluable in whatever you set your mind to.
Zach Kleiman (The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance)
The effective leader should keep the following guidelines in mind when it is necessary to change attitudes or behavior:   1 Be sincere. Do not promise anything that you cannot deliver. Forget about the benefits to yourself and concentrate on the benefits to the other person. 2 Know exactly what it is you want the other person to do. 3 Be empathetic. Ask yourself what is it the other person really wants. 4 Consider the benefits that person will receive from doing what you suggest. 5 Match those benefits to the other person’s wants. 6 When you make your request, put it in a form that will convey to the other person the idea that he personally will benefit.
Dale Carnegie (How to Win Friends and Influence People)
Concentrate every minute like a Roman—like a man—on doing what’s in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice. And on freeing yourself from all other distractions. Yes, you can—if you do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life, and stop being aimless, stop letting your emotions override what your mind tells you, stop being hypocritical, self-centered, irritable.
Marcus Aurelius (Meditations)
Self-parenting exercises taught me to slowly rebuild healthy self-talk. But it must be said: Even though I know reparenting had helped dozens of my friends and acquaintances, almost everyone has told me it’s exhausting. Reparenting takes time, and concentration, and calmness. It takes an intellectual and physical effort to shove aside the comfortably worn neural pathways and go in a different direction. And even though that effort comes with joyous rewards, sometimes it also comes with sadness. Because expressing the kindness to yourself that you deserve often reminds you of the kindness you didn’t get.
Stephanie Foo (What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma)
I told my daughter, the first time she fell in love, not to hold it too close. Think of yourself in a warm, summer pool, I told her, concentric circles rippling all around you. Golden beams of sunlight flooding your hair, striking your face. Inhale it. Breathe it. It will not leave you. If you place sunlight in your palms, it will turn to shadow. If you put fireflies in a jar, they will die. But if you love with wings on, you will always feel the exhilaration of being suspended in flight.
Alyson Richman (The Lost Wife)
Your three components: body, breath, mind. Two are yours in trust; to the third alone you have clear title. If you can cut yourself—your mind—free of what other people do and say, of what you’ve said or done, of the things that you’re afraid will happen, the impositions of the body that contains you and the breath within, and what the whirling chaos sweeps in from outside, so that the mind is freed from fate, brought to clarity, and lives life on its own recognizance—doing what’s right, accepting what happens, and speaking the truth— If you can cut free of impressions that cling to the mind, free of the future and the past—can make yourself, as Empedocles says, “a sphere rejoicing in its perfect stillness,” and concentrate on living what can be lived (which means the present) . . . then you can spend the time you have left in tranquillity. And in kindness. And at peace with the spirit within you.
Marcus Aurelius (Meditations)
I will tell you sincerely and without exaggeration that the best part of lunch today at the NASA Ames cafeteria is the urine. It is clear and sweet, though not in the way mountain streams are said to be clear and sweet. More in the way of Karo syrup. The urine has been desalinated by osmotic pressure. Basically it swapped molecules with a concentrated sugar solution. Urine is a salty substance (though less so than the NASA Ames chili), and if you were to drink it in an effort to rehydrate yourself, it would have the opposite effect. But once the salt is taken care of and the distasteful organic molecules have been trapped in an activated charcoal filter, urine is a restorative and surprisingly drinkable lunchtime beverage. I was about to use the word unobjectionable, but that's not accurate. People object. They object a lot.
Mary Roach (Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void)
Don’t strive to be a well-rounded leader. Instead, discover your zone and stay there. Then delegate everything else. Admitting a weakness is a sign of strength. Acknowledging weakness doesn’t make a leader less effective. Everybody in your organization benefits when you delegate responsibilities that fall outside your core competency. Thoughtful delegation will allow someone else in your organization to shine. Your weakness is someone’s opportunity. Leadership is not always about getting things done “right.” Leadership is about getting things done through other people. The people who follow us are exactly where we have led them. If there is no one to whom we can delegate, it is our own fault. As a leader, gifted by God to do a few things well, it is not right for you to attempt to do everything. Upgrade your performance by playing to your strengths and delegating your weaknesses. There are many things I can do, but I have to narrow it down to the one thing I must do. The secret of concentration is elimination. Devoting a little of yourself to everything means committing a great deal of yourself to nothing. My competence in these areas defines my success as a pastor. A sixty-hour workweek will not compensate for a poorly delivered sermon. People don’t show up on Sunday morning because I am a good pastor (leader, shepherd, counselor). In my world, it is my communication skills that make the difference. So that is where I focus my time. To develop a competent team, help the leaders in your organization discover their leadership competencies and delegate accordingly. Once you step outside your zone, don’t attempt to lead. Follow. The less you do, the more you will accomplish. Only those leaders who act boldly in times of crisis and change are willingly followed. Accepting the status quo is the equivalent of accepting a death sentence. Where there’s no progress, there’s no growth. If there’s no growth, there’s no life. Environments void of change are eventually void of life. So leaders find themselves in the precarious and often career-jeopardizing position of being the one to draw attention to the need for change. Consequently, courage is a nonnegotiable quality for the next generation leader. The leader is the one who has the courage to act on what he sees. A leader is someone who has the courage to say publicly what everybody else is whispering privately. It is not his insight that sets the leader apart from the crowd. It is his courage to act on what he sees, to speak up when everyone else is silent. Next generation leaders are those who would rather challenge what needs to change and pay the price than remain silent and die on the inside. The first person to step out in a new direction is viewed as the leader. And being the first to step out requires courage. In this way, courage establishes leadership. Leadership requires the courage to walk in the dark. The darkness is the uncertainty that always accompanies change. The mystery of whether or not a new enterprise will pan out. The reservation everyone initially feels when a new idea is introduced. The risk of being wrong. Many who lack the courage to forge ahead alone yearn for someone to take the first step, to go first, to show the way. It could be argued that the dark provides the optimal context for leadership. After all, if the pathway to the future were well lit, it would be crowded. Fear has kept many would-be leaders on the sidelines, while good opportunities paraded by. They didn’t lack insight. They lacked courage. Leaders are not always the first to see the need for change, but they are the first to act. Leadership is about moving boldly into the future in spite of uncertainty and risk. You can’t lead without taking risk. You won’t take risk without courage. Courage is essential to leadership.
Andy Stanley (Next Generation Leader: 5 Essentials for Those Who Will Shape the Future)
When I feel compelled to interfere in someone else’s business, I try to ask myself, “Am I concentrating on the task I have been given?” When my meditation practice is going well, I am too busy looking within myself to bother with other people’s affairs. But when I cannot concentrate on my meditation practice, my mind starts to wander and notice the faults in others. And I soon see they are my own faults reflected back at me. No one has asked me to focus my attention there. In moments like this, I recall my original intention of being a monk and return to my practice.
Haemin Sunim (Love for Imperfect Things: How to Accept Yourself in a World Striving for Perfection)
5. Concentrate every minute like a Roman—like a man—on doing what’s in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice. And on freeing yourself from all other distractions. Yes, you can—if you do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life, and stop being aimless, stop letting your emotions override what your mind tells you, stop being hypocritical, self-centered, irritable. You see how few things you have to do to live a satisfying and reverent life? If you can manage this, that’s all even the gods can ask of you.
Marcus Aurelius (Meditations)
A rhinoceros charges with singleness of purpose. All energy is directed toward the attainment of one burning desire. The reason you are so dangerous is that once you set yourself charging at something, nothing can distract you. And you never charge two things at once. You concentrate on getting your first target and then you fix your concentration on your next goal. Never spread yourself thin.   A magnifying glass will not start a fire until it remains in one spot continuously for a certain length of time. If it is constantly moved from spot to spot, nothing will get warmed up, much less start a fire.
Scott Alexander (Rhinoceros Success)
Buddha taught, “Breathing in, I recognize my feeling. Breathing out, I calm my feeling.” If you practice this, not only will your feeling be calmed down but the energy of mindfulness will also help you see into the nature and roots of your anger. Mindfulness helps you be concentrated and look deeply. This is true meditation. The insight will come after some time of practice. You will see the truth about yourself and the truth about the person who you thought to be the cause of your suffering. This insight will release you from your anger and transform the roots of anger in you. The transformation in you will also help transform the other person. Mindful speaking can bring real happiness, and unmindful speech can kill. When someone tells us something that makes us happy, that is a wonderful gift. But sometimes someone says something to us that is so cruel and distressing that we feel like committing suicide. We lose our joie de vivre.
Thich Nhat Hanh (Living Buddha, Living Christ)
YOU SHOULD NOW be well on your way to using disputation, the prime technique for learned optimism, in your daily life. You first saw the ABC link—that specific beliefs lead to dejection and passivity. Emotions and actions do not usually follow adversity directly. Rather they issue directly from your beliefs about adversity. This means that if you change your mental response to adversity, you can cope with setbacks much better. The main tool for changing your interpretations of adversity is disputation. Practice disputing your automatic interpretations all the time from now on. Anytime you find yourself down or anxious or angry, ask what you are saying to yourself. Sometimes the beliefs will turn out to be accurate; when this is so, concentrate on the ways you can alter the situation and prevent adversity from becoming disaster. But usually your negative beliefs are distortions. Challenge them. Don’t let them run your emotional life. Unlike dieting, learned optimism is easy to maintain once you start. Once you get into the habit of disputing negative beliefs, your daily life will run much better, and you will feel much happier.
Martin E.P. Seligman (Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life)
Years before this country had a significant black and immigrant presence, there was an entrenched class hierarchy. The people who maintain these class divisions didn't care about those on the bottom rung then, and they don't care now. But immigration blamers encourage you to point to your neighbour and convince yourself that they are the problem, rather than question where wealth is concentrated in this country and exactly why resources are so scarce. And the people who push this rhetoric couldn't care less either way, just as long as you're not pointing the finger at them. It isn't right to suggest that every win for race equality results in a loss for white working-class people.
Reni Eddo-Lodge (Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race)
Most of us in our thinking are wandering from this to that to the other thing, and are constantly distracted. And Zen is the opposite of that. It’s being completely here, fully in the present. And you know when you’re completely concentrated, you’re not really aware of your own existence. It’s rather the same as the sense of sight. If you see your eyes, that is to say if you see spots in front of your eyes, or something on the lens of the eye, then you’re not seeing properly. To the degree to which you’re seeing properly, you’re unaware of your eyes. In the same way, if your clothes fit well, you’re unaware of them on your body. And if you’re completely concentrated on what you’re doing, you’re unaware of yourself.
Alan W. Watts (Eastern Wisdom, Modern Life)
When you look at a tree in a storm, you see that the top of the tree is very unstable and vulnerable. The wind can break the smaller branches at any time. But when you look down to the trunk of the tree, you have a different impression. You see that the tree is very solid and still, and you know that it will be able to withstand the storm. We are also like a tree. Our head is like the top of the tree during a tempest of a strong emotion, so we have to bring our attention down to the level of our navel. We begin to practice mindful breathing. We concentrate just on our breathing and on the rise and fall of our abdomen. It is a very important practice because it helps us to see that, although an emotion may be very strong, it will stay only for a while and then go; it cannot last forever. If you train yourself to practice like this during difficult times, you will survive these storms. You have to be aware that your emotion is just an emotion. It comes, stays for some time, and then goes away. Why should someone die because of an emotion? You are more than your emotions. It is important to remember this. During a crisis, when you breathe in and out, maintain the awareness that your emotion will go away if you continue to practice. After you have succeeded a few times, you will have confidence in yourself and in the practice. Let us not get caught by our thoughts and feelings. Let us bring our attention down to our belly and breathe in and out. This storm will go away, so don’t be afraid.
Thich Nhat Hanh (Anger)
He said sometimes when you're young you have to think about things, because you're forming your value-sets and you keep coming up with Data Insufficient and finding holes in your programs. So you keep trying to do a fix on your sets. And the more powerful your mind is and the more intense your concentration is, the worse damage you can do to yourself, which is why, Justin says, Alphas always have trouble and some of them go way off and out-there, and why almost all Alphas are eccentric. But he says the best thing you can do if you're too bright for your own good is what the Testers do, be aware where you got which idea, keep a tab on everything, know how your ideas link up with each other and with your deep-sets and value-sets, so when you're forty or fifty or a hundred forty and you find something that doesn't work, you can still find all the threads and pull them. But that's not real easy unless you know what your value-sets are, and most CITs don't. CITs have a trouble with not wanting to know that kind of thing. Because some of them are real eetee once you get to thinking about how they link. Especially about sex and ego-nets. Justin says inflexibility is a trap and most Alpha types are inward-turned because they process so fast they're gone and thinking before a Gamma gets a sentence out. Then they get in the habit of thinking they thought of everything, but they don't remember everything stems from input. You may have a new idea, but it stems from input somebody gave you, and that could be wrong or your senses could have been lying to you. He says it can be an equipment-quality problem or a program-quality problem, but once an Alpha takes a falsehood for true, it's a personal problem.
C.J. Cherryh (Cyteen (Cyteen, #1-3))
When you ask the question, “Who am I?”—if you have enough time and concentration—you may find some surprising answers. You may see that you are a continuation of your ancestors. Your parents and your ancestors are fully present in every cell of your body; you are their continuation. You don’t have a separate self. If you remove your ancestors and your parents from you, there’s no “you” left. You may see that you’re made of elements, like water for example. If you remove the water from you, there’s no “you” left. You’re made of earth. If you remove the element earth from you, there’s no “you” left. You’re made of air. You need air desperately; without air you cannot survive. So if you remove the element of air from you, there’s no “you” left. And there’s the fire element, the element of heat, the element of light, in you. You know that you are made of light. Without sunlight, nothing can grow on Earth. If you continue to look, you see that you are made of the sun, one of the biggest stars in the galaxy. And you know that the Earth, as well as yourself, is made of the stars. So you are the stars. On a clear night, look up, and you can see that you are the stars above. You’re not just the tiny body you normally may think of as “yourself.
Thich Nhat Hanh (Silence: The Power of Quiet in a World Full of Noise)
Hanging on to it a little, are you? … There’s a trick to letting it go, in case you’re interested… You can’t try. Trying is a struggle and doing is an act. You can’t witness the act of trying, but you can see the results of doing. Trying brings on stress because not only do you have the problem, but now you have all this frustration with it not going away just because you want it to. It’s kind of like being told not to think of pink elephants- impossible. What you have to do is stop. You say to yourself, this is over for now. I’m done for now. Take your mind to another place and concentrate on that peaceful place. Deep breaths. Go limp. Put your mind in another state. It takes practice, but it gets easier, over time… My gramma used to say, you can only feel one feeling at a time. For example, you can’t feel trust and fear together. If you want to trust but you’re afraid, fear is still in charge. If you trusted, there wouldn’t be fear. She also used to say you have to listen to what you feel- feeling fear could be warning, right? ... Don’t make love to your problems- they’ll never give you back the satisfaction you give them. And, your troubles aren’t worth the paper they’re written on, but that doesn’t mean writing them down won’t help you get a fix on ‘em. And, God respects you when you work, but he loves you when you dance… she also used to say, ‘if Jesus walked the earth today, he wouldn’t be hanging out with Billy Graham. He’d be found with the drug addicts and prostitutes and the like.
Robyn Carr (Forbidden Falls (Virgin River, #8))
Should you happen to be possessed of a certain verbal acuity coupled with a relentless, hair-trigger humor and surface cheer spackling over a chronic melancholia and loneliness - a grotesquely caricatured version of your deepest self, which you trot out at the slightest provocation to endearing and glib comic effect, thus rendering you the kind of fellow who is beloved by all yet loved by none, all of it to distract, however fleetingly, from the cold and dead-faced truth that with each passing year you face the unavoidable certainty of a solitary future in which you will perish one day while vainly attempting the Heimlich maneuver on yourself over the back of a kitchen chair - then this confirmation that you have triumphed again and managed to gull yet another mark, except this time it was the one person you’d hoped might be immune to your ever-creakier, puddle-shallow, sideshow-barker variation on adorable, even though you’d been launching this campaign weekly with a single-minded concentration from day one - well, it conjures up feelings that are best described as mixed, to say the least.
David Rakoff (Half Empty)
The human mind has limits. We can only remember so many things; we can really only concentrate on one thing at a time. This tendency—for the process of fixing things to get harder as more time elapses—represents a similar limitation. When you’re working on a project, there’s a whole mind space that you create around it. You know all the different reasons why something is being done. You’re holding a pretty complicated construct in your head. Re-creating that construct a week later is hard. You have to remember all the factors that you were considering when you made that choice. You have to re-create the thought process that led you to that decision. You have to become your past self again, put yourself back inside a mind that no longer exists. Doing that takes time. A long time. Twenty-four times as long as it would take if you had fixed the problem when you first discovered it.
Jeff Sutherland (Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time)
Sow the seeds of hard work and you will reap the fruits of success. Find something to do, do it with all your concentration. You will excel. Show the world you are not here to just pass through. Leave great footprints wherever you pass and be remembered for the change you initiated. Flow wherever you go. You can’t be limited. Dare to rise above all limitations and become better than you were. Strive to arrive at the top. Glow wherever you go and let the light of God reflect in the world around you. You carry the light of God and wherever you pass, darkness must flee. Grow your talents and skills through a consistent practice and progressive learning. Learn to relearn and unlearn. Raise the bar for yourself always. Blow out all negative attitudes and live true to your dreams. Talks less and act more. Be confident and see yourself wining even before the victory comes. Know God and let Him be known. You were saved by grace for greater works apportioned for you even before you were born. Share the good news. I am proud of you because greater things that eyes have not seen yet, the Lord will do through you.
Israelmore Ayivor (Become a Better You)
Sometimes when we pray, we are so busy concentrating on ourselves, and the problems we have, that we forget to be thankful.   "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God." (Philippians 4:6)               God has stood by you in the past and He continues to do so now. Despite the mess you’ve gotten yourself into, He has been right there waiting for you to decide change is necessary. Thank Him for that.   Whatever you’re facing, know that things could have been a whole lot worse. Thank Him for that.   God’s mercies are new every morning, you are still here. In spite of your enemies, you are still living and breathing. And as long as you are breathing, you can succeed. With God, you will. Thank Him for that.   “Let them give thanks to the Lord for His loving kindness, and for His wonders to the sons of men!” (Psalms 107:8)   Remember: Forgiveness is not for your enemy, it’s for you. Holding a grudge blocks God’s ability to forgive and bless you. Let it go. Move on and watch God work. Be thankful for what God has already done and what He will do in your future.
Lynn R. Davis (Faith Without Works Is Dead: The Power of Prayer Mixed With Demonstrations of Faith)
But whenever I tried to pin down this idea of self-esteem, the specific qualities we hoped to inculcate, the specific means by which we might feel good about ourselves, the conversation always seemed to follow a path of infinite regress. Did you dislike yourself because of your color or because you couldn’t read and couldn’t get a job? Or perhaps it was because you were unloved as a child—only, were you unloved because you were too dark? Or too light? Or because your mother shot heroin into her veins … and why did she do that anyway? Was the sense of emptiness you felt a consequence of kinky hair or the fact that your apartment had no heat and no decent furniture? Or was it because deep down you imagined a godless universe? Maybe one couldn’t avoid such questions on the road to personal salvation. What I doubted was that all the talk about self-esteem could serve as the centerpiece of an effective black politics. It demanded too much honest self-reckoning from people; without such honesty, it easily degenerated into vague exhortation. Perhaps with more self-esteem fewer blacks would be poor, I thought to myself, but I had no doubt that poverty did nothing for our self-esteem. Better to concentrate on the things we might all agree on. Give that black man some tangible skills and a job. Teach that black child reading and arithmetic in a safe, well-funded school. With the basics taken care of, each of us could search for our own sense of self-worth.
Barack Obama (Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance)
Hey.’ Annabeth slid next to me on the bench. ‘Happy birthday.’ She was holding a huge misshapen cupcake with blue icing. I stared at her. ‘What?’ ‘It’s August eighteenth,’ she said. ‘Your birthday, right?’ I was stunned. It hadn’t even occurred to me, but she was right. I had turned sixteen this morning – the same morning I’d made the choice to give Luke the knife. The prophecy had come true right on schedule, and I hadn’t even thought about the fact that it was my birthday. ‘Make a wish,’ she said. ‘Did you bake this yourself?’ I asked. ‘Tyson helped.’ ‘That explains why it looks like a chocolate brick,’ I said. ‘With extra-blue cement.’ Annabeth laughed. I thought for a second then blew out the candle. We cut it in half and shared, eating with our fingers. Annabeth sat next to me and we watched the ocean. Crickets and monsters were making noise in the woods, but otherwise it was quiet. ‘You saved the world,’ she said. ‘We saved the world.’ ‘And Rachel is the new Oracle, which means she won’t be dating anybody.’ ‘You don’t sound disappointed,’ I noticed. Annabeth shrugged. ‘Oh, I don’t care.’ ‘Uh-huh.’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘You got something to say to me, Seaweed Brain?’ ‘You’d probably kick my butt.’ ‘You know I’d kick your butt.’ I brushed the cake off my hands. ‘When I was at the River Styx, turning invulnerable … Nico said I had to concentrate on one thing that kept me anchored to the world, that made me want to stay mortal.’ Annabeth kept her eyes on the horizon. ‘Yeah?’ ‘Then up on Olympus,’ I said, ‘when they wanted to make me a god and stuff, I kept thinking –’ ‘Oh, you so wanted to.’ ‘Well, maybe a little. But I didn’t, because I thought – I didn’t want things to stay the same for eternity, because things could always get better. And I was thinking …’ My throat felt really dry. ‘Anyone in particular?’ Annabeth asked, her voice soft. I looked over and saw that she was trying not to smile. ‘You’re laughing at me,’ I complained. ‘I am not!’ ‘You are so not making this easy.’ Then she laughed for real, and she put her hands around my neck. ‘I am never, ever going to make things easy for you, Seaweed Brain. Get used to it.’ When she kissed me, I had the feeling my brain was melting right through my body.
Rick Riordan (The Last Olympian (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #5))
I am in my old room once more, for a little, and I am caught in musing - - how life is a swift motion, a continuous flowing, changing, and how one is always saying goodbye and going places, seeing people, doing things. Only in the rain, sometimes, only when the rain comes, closing in your pitifully small radius of activity, only when you sit and listen by the window, as the cold wet air blows thinly by the back of your neck - only then do you think and feel sick. You feel the days slipping by, elusive as slippery pink worms, through your fingers, and you wonder what you have for your eighteen years, and you think about how, with difficulty and concentration, you could bring back a day, a day of sun, blue skies and watercoloring by the sea. You could remember the sensual observations that made that day reality, and you could delude yourself into thinking - almost - that you could return to the past, and relive the days and hours in a quick space of time. But no, the quest of time past is more difficult than you think, and time present is eaten up by such plaintive searchings. The film of your days and nights is wound up tight in you, never to be re-run - and the occasional flashbacks are faint, blurred, unreal, as if seen through falling snow. Now, you begin to get scared. You don't believe in God, or a life-after-death, so you can't hope for sugar plums when your non-existent soul rises. You believe that whatever there is has got to come from man, and man is pretty creative in his good moments - pretty mature, pretty perceptive for his age - how many years is it, now? How many thousands? Yet, yet in this era of specialization, of infinite variety and complexity and myriad choices, what do you pick for yourself out of the grab-bag? Cats have nine lives, the saying goes. You have one; and somewhere along the thin, tenuous thread of your existence there is the black knot, the blood clot, the stopped heartbeat that spells the end of this particular individual which is spelled "I" and "You" and "Sylvia." So you wonder how to act, and how to be - and you wonder about values and attitudes. In the relativism and despair, in the waiting for the bombs to begin, for the blood (now spurting in Korea, in Germany, in Russia) to flow and trickle before your own eyes, you wonder with a quick sick fear how to cling to earth, to the seeds of grass and life. You wonder about your eighteen years, ricocheting between a stubborn determination that you've done well for your own capabilities and opportunities... that you're competing now with girls from all over America, and not just from the hometown: and a fear that you haven't done well enough - You wonder if you've got what it takes to keep building up obstacle courses for your self, and to keep leaping through them, sprained ankle or not. Again the refrain, what have you for your eighteen years? And you know that whatever tangible things you do have, they cannot be held, but, too, will decompose and slip away through your coarse-skinned and death-rigid fingers. So you will rot in the ground, and so you say, what the hell? Who cares? But you care, and somehow you don't want to live just one life, which could be typed, which could be tossed off in a thumbnail sketch = "She was the sort of girl.... And end in 25 words or less.
Sylvia Plath (The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath)
In Boston right around the same time, another criminologist did a similar study: Half the crime in the city came from 3.6 percent of the city’s blocks. That made two examples. Weisburd decided to look wherever he could: New York. Seattle. Cincinnati. Sherman looked in Kansas City, Dallas. Anytime someone asked, the two of them would run the numbers. And every place they looked, they saw the same thing: Crime in every city was concentrated in a tiny number of street segments. Weisburd decided to try a foreign city, somewhere entirely different—culturally, geographically, economically. His family was Israeli, so he thought Tel Aviv. Same thing. “I said, ‘Oh my God. Look at that! Why should it be that five percent of the streets in Tel Aviv produce fifty percent of the crime? There’s this thing going on, in places that are so different.’” Weisburd refers to this as the Law of Crime Concentration.6 Like suicide, crime is tied to very specific places and contexts. Weisburd’s experiences in the 72nd Precinct and in Minneapolis are not idiosyncratic. They capture something close to a fundamental truth about human behavior. And that means that when you confront the stranger, you have to ask yourself where and when you’re confronting the stranger—because those two things powerfully influence your interpretation of who the stranger is.
Malcolm Gladwell (Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know)
You perform at your highest potential only when you are focusing on the most valuable use of your time. This is the key to personal and business success. It is the central issue in personal efficiency and time management. You must always be asking yourself, What is the most valuable use of my time right now? Discipline yourself to work exclusively on the one task that, at any given time, is the answer to this question. Keep yourself on track and focused on your most important responsibilities by asking yourself, over and over, What is the most valuable use of my time right now? How you can apply this law immediately: 1. Remember that you can do only one thing at a time. Stop and think before you begin. Be sure that the task you do is the highest-value use of your time. Remind yourself that anything else you do while your most important task remains undone is a relative waste of time. 2. Be clear about the most valuable work that you do for your organization. Whatever it is, resolve to concentrate on doing that specific task before anything else. Why are you on the payroll? What specific, tangible, measurable results are expected of you? And of all the different results you are capable of achieving, which are the most important to your career at this moment? Whatever the answer, this is where you must focus your energies, and nowhere else.
Brian Tracy (The 100 Absolutely Unbreakable Laws of Business Success)
Some gifted people have all five and some less. Every gifted person tends to lead with one. As I read this list for the first time I was struck by the similarities between Dabrowski’s overexcitabilities and the traits of Sensitive Intuitives. Read the list for yourself and see what you identify with: Psychomotor This manifests as a strong pull toward movement. People with this overexcitability tend to talk rapidly and/or move nervously when they become interested or passionate about something. They have a lot of physical energy and may run their hands through their hair, snap their fingers, pace back and forth, or display other signs of physical agitation when concentrating or thinking something out. They come across as physically intense and can move in an impatient, jerky manner when excited. Other people might find them overwhelming and they’re routinely diagnosed as ADHD. Sensual This overexcitability comes in the form of an extreme sensitivity to sounds, smells, bright lights, textures and temperature. Perfume and scented soaps and lotions are bothersome to people with this overexcitability, and they might also have aversive reactions to strong food smells and cleaning products. For me personally, if I’m watching a movie in which a strobe light effect is used, I’m done. I have to shut my eyes or I’ll come down with a headache after only a few seconds. Loud, jarring or intrusive sounds also short circuit my wiring. Intellectual This is an incessant thirst for knowledge. People with this overexcitability can’t ever learn enough. They zoom in on a few topics of interest and drink up every bit of information on those topics they can find. Their only real goal is learning for learning’s sake. They’re not trying to learn something to make money or get any other external reward. They just happened to have discovered the history of the Ming Dynasty or Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and now it’s all they can think about. People with this overexcitability have intellectual interests that are passionate and wide-ranging and they study many areas simultaneously. Imaginative INFJ and INFP writers, this is you. This is ALL you. Making up stories, creating imaginary friends, believing in Santa Claus way past the ordinary age, becoming attached to fairies, elves, monsters and unicorns, these are the trademarks of the gifted child with imaginative overexcitability. These individuals appear dreamy, scattered, lost in their own worlds, and constantly have their heads in the clouds. They also routinely blend fiction with reality. They are practically the definition of the Sensitive Intuitive writer at work. Emotional Gifted individuals with emotional overexcitability are highly empathetic (and empathic, I might add), compassionate, and can become deeply attached to people, animals, and even inanimate objects, in a short period of time. They also have intense emotional reactions to things and might not be able to stomach horror movies or violence on the evening news. They have most likely been told throughout their life that they’re “too sensitive” or that they’re “overreacting” when in truth, they are expressing exactly how they feel to the most accurate degree.
Lauren Sapala (The INFJ Writer: Cracking the Creative Genius of the World's Rarest Type)
The judicious words of Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), the first existentialist philosopher, are apropos to end this lumbering manuscript. 1. “One must learn to know oneself before knowing anything else.” 2. “Life always expresses the results of our dominate thoughts.” 3. “Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.” 4. “Personality is only ripe when a man has made the truth his own.” 5. “Love is all, it gives all, and it takes all.” 6. “Don’t forget to love yourself.” 7. “Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.” 8. “Life has its own hidden forces, which you can only discover by living.” 9. “The highest and most beautiful things in life are not to be heard about, or read about, nor seen, but if one will, are to be lived.” 10. “Patience is necessary, and one cannot reap immediately where one has sown.” 11. “It seems essential, in relationships and all tasks, that we concentrate on only what is most significant and important.” 12. “To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.” 13. “Since my earliest childhood, a barb of sorrow has lodged in my heart. As long as it stays I am ironic, if it is pulled out I shall die.” 14. “A man who as a physical being is always turned to the outside, thinking that his happiness lies outside of him, finally turns inward and discovers that the source is within him.” 15. “Just as in earthly life lovers long for the moment when they are able to breathe forth their love for each other, to let their souls blend into a soft whisper, so the mystic longs for the moment in prayer he can, as it were, creep into God.” Kierkegaard warned, “The greatest hazard of all, losing the self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss – an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc. – is sure to be noticed.” Kierkegaard said that the one method to avoid losing oneself is to live joyfully in the moment, which he described as “to be present in oneself in truth,” which in turn requires “to be today, in truth be today.
Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
In the meantime, she and Jay sat shoulder to shoulder throughout the movie, and the warmth of his pressed up against her made it difficult for Violet to concentrate. She tried to remember when exactly he’d started to smell so good to her, or when his touch had become like a mood-altering narcotic. She glanced sideways to see if she could tell what he was thinking, if their casual contact was affecting him the way it was her, but his face was blank, completely unreadable, as he watched the action on the oversized screen. She leaned toward him and whispered, “I have to go to the bathroom.” She stood up to go. And so did he. She gave him a questioning look. “I’ll be right back,” she said quietly. He followed right behind her. “What are you doing?” She was starting to get irritated. “I’m going with you.” “Yeah, I got that,” she said, her voice getting louder now. “Why?” He pushed her along from behind until they were out of the darkened theater and standing in the dimly lit hallway. “I can go to the bathroom by myself,” she insisted, putting her hands on her hips and cocking her head to the side. “No, Violet. You can’t. I told your parents I wouldn’t let you out of my sight, and I meant it. Besides, until you decide to stop hunting for this guy, I’m not letting you do anything by yourself.” That stubborn set to his jaw was back. “Now, hurry up,” he said as he leaned casually against the wall outside the ladies’ room. Violet didn’t want to water her time arguing, so she just shook her head as she opened the door. “You’re crazy! You know that, don’t you?” She didn’t wait for him to answer as she disappeared into the empty bathroom, but she swore she heard the sound of his laughter following her inside.
Kimberly Derting (The Body Finder (The Body Finder, #1))
In every interview I’m asked what’s the most important quality a novelist has to have. It’s pretty obvious: talent. Now matter how much enthusiasm and effort you put into writing, if you totally lack literary talent you can forget about being a novelist. This is more of a prerequisite than a necessary quality. If you don’t have any fuel, even the best car won’t run.The problem with talent, though, is that in most cases the person involved can’t control its amount or quality. You might find the amount isn’t enough and you want to increase it, or you might try to be frugal and make it last longer, but in neither case do things work out that easily. Talent has a mind of its own and wells up when it wants to, and once it dries up, that’s it. Of course, certain poets and rock singers whose genius went out in a blaze of glory—people like Schubert and Mozart, whose dramatic early deaths turned them into legends—have a certain appeal, but for the vast majority of us this isn’t the model we follow. If I’m asked what the next most important quality is for a novelist, that’s easy too: focus—the ability to concentrate all your limited talents on whatever’s critical at the moment. Without that you can’t accomplish anything of value, while, if you can focus effectively, you’ll be able to compensate for an erratic talent or even a shortage of it. I generally concentrate on work for three or four hours every morning. I sit at my desk and focus totally on what I’m writing. I don’t see anything else, I don’t think about anything else. … After focus, the next most important thing for a novelist is, hands down, endurance. If you concentrate on writing three or four hours a day and feel tired after a week of this, you’re not going to be able to write a long work. What’s needed of the writer of fiction—at least one who hopes to write a novel—is the energy to focus every day for half a year, or a year, or two years. … Fortunately, these two disciplines—focus and endurance—are different from talent, since they can be acquired and sharpened through training. You’ll naturally learn both concentration and endurance when you sit down every day at your desk and train yourself to focus on one point. This is a lot like the training of muscles I wrote of a moment ago. You have to continually transmit the object of your focus to your entire body, and make sure it thoroughly assimilates the information necessary for you to write every single day and concentrate on the work at hand. And gradually you’ll expand the limits of what you’re able to do. Almost imperceptibly you’ll make the bar rise. This involves the same process as jogging every day to strengthen your muscles and develop a runner’s physique. Add a stimulus and keep it up. And repeat. Patience is a must in this process, but I guarantee results will come. In private correspondence the great mystery writer Raymond Chandler once confessed that even if he didn’t write anything, he made sure he sat down at his desk every single day and concentrated. I understand the purpose behind his doing this. This is the way Chandler gave himself the physical stamina a professional writer needs, quietly strengthening his willpower. This sort of daily training was indispensable to him. … Most of what I know about writing I’ve learned through running every day. These are practical, physical lessons. How much can I push myself? How much rest is appropriate—and how much is too much? How far can I take something and still keep it decent and consistent? When does it become narrow-minded and inflexible? How much should I be aware of the world outside, and how much should I focus on my inner world? To what extent should I be confident in my abilities, and when should I start doubting myself? I know that if I hadn’t become a long-distance runner when I became a novelist, my work would have been vastly different. How different? Hard to say. But something would definitely have been different.
Haruki Murakami (What I Talk About When I Talk About Running)
Stop,” Jesse said. I stared up at him, almost panting with fear. “Stop, beloved,” he said more gently, and took up my clenched fist with both hands. “I’ve upset you, and I shouldn’t have. I don’t want you to dread yourself. I don’t want you to dread what is to come. Like I said, you’re exceptional, so there may be nothing to worry about at all. But whatever happens, whatever you face, I’ll face it with you. Do you hear?” “How can you say it? It nearly happened on the roof today. You can’t know-“ “I will be with you. We’re together now, and the universe knows I won’t let you make your sacrifice alone. Dragon protects star. Star adores dragon. An age-old axiom. Simple as that.” I looked down at our hands, both of his curled over mine. I unclenched my fist. Blood from the thorn smeared my skin. “The universe,” I muttered. “The same universe that has produced the Kaiser and bedbugs and Chloe Pemington. How reassuring.” With the same absolute concentration he might have shown for turning flowers into gold, Jesse Holms smoothed out my fingers between his, wiping away the blood. He turned my hand over and lifted it to his lips. His next words fell soft as velvet into the heart of my palm. “Those nights, in the sweetest dark, we shared our dreams. That’s you answer. I was stitched into yours, and you were stitched into mind, and that was real, I promise you.” I felt his lips curve into a smile. The unbelievably sensual, ticklish scuff of his whiskers. “Very good dreams they were, too,” he added. It was no use trying to cling to mortification or fear. He was holding my hand. He was smiling at me past the cup of my fingers, and although I couldn’t see it, the shape of it against my skin was beyond tantalizing, rough and masculine. I was a creature gone hot and cold and light-headed with pleasure. I wanted to snatch back my hand and I wanted him to go on touching me like this forever. I wanted to walk with him back to his cottage, to his bed, and to hell with the Germans and school and all the rest of the world. But he looked up suddenly. “They’re searching for you,” he said, releasing me at once, moving away. They were. I heard my name being called by a variety of voices in a variety of tones, all of them still inside the castle, none of them sounding happy. “Go on.” With a few quick steps, Jesse was less than a shadow, retreating into the black wall of the woods. “Don’t get into trouble. And, Lora?” “Yes?” There was hushed laughter in his voice. “Until we can see each other again, do us both a favor. Keep away from rooftops.
Shana Abe (The Sweetest Dark (The Sweetest Dark, #1))
Though all the brilliant intellects of the ages were to concentrate upon this one theme, never could they adequately express their wonder at this dense darkness of the human mind. Men do not suffer anyone to seize their estates, and they rush to stones and arms if there is even the slightest dispute about the limit of their lands, yet they allow others to trespass upon their life—nay, they themselves even lead in those who will eventually possess it. No one is to be found who is willing to distribute his money, yet among how many does each one of us distribute his life! In guarding their fortune men are often closefisted, yet, when it comes to the matter of wasting time, in the case of the one thing in which it is right to be miserly, they show themselves most prodigal. And so I should like to lay hold upon someone from the company of older men and say: "I see that you have reached the farthest limit of human life, you are pressing hard upon your hundredth year, or are even beyond it; come now, recall your life and make a reckoning. Consider how much of your time was taken up with a moneylender, how much with a mistress, how much with a patron, how much with a client, how much in wrangling with your wife, how much in punishing your slaves, how much in rushing about the city on social duties. Add the diseases which we have caused by our own acts, add, too, the time that has lain idle and unused; you will see that you have fewer years to your credit than you count. Look back in memory and consider when you ever had a fixed plan, how few days have passed as you had intended, when you were ever at your own disposal, when your face ever wore its natural expression, when your mind was ever unperturbed, what work you have achieved in so long a life, how many have robbed you of life when you were not aware of what you were losing, how much was taken up in useless sorrow, in foolish joy, in greedy desire, in the allurements of society, how little of yourself was left to you; you will perceive that you are dying before your season!"7 What, then, is the reason of this? You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed. You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply, though all the while that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last. You have all the fears of mortals and all the desires of immortals. You will hear many men saying: "After my fiftieth year I shall retire into leisure, my sixtieth year shall release me from public duties." And what guarantee, pray, have you that your life will last longer? Who will suffer your course to be just as you plan it? Are you not ashamed to reserve for yourself only the remnant of life, and to set apart for wisdom only that time which cannot be devoted to any business? How late it is to begin to live just when we must cease to live! What foolish forgetfulness of mortality to postpone wholesome plans to the fiftieth and sixtieth year, and to intend to begin life at a point to which few have attained!
Seneca (On the Shortness of Life: Life Is Long if You Know How to Use It (Penguin Great Ideas))