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Love is our most unifying and empowering common spiritual denominator. The more we ignore its potential to bring greater balance and deeper meaning to human existence, the more likely we are to continue to define history as one long inglorious record of man’s inhumanity to man.
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Aberjhani (Journey through the Power of the Rainbow: Quotations from a Life Made Out of Poetry)
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Love is that condition in the human spirit so profound that it empowers us to develop courage; to trust that courage and build bridges with it;
to trust those bridges and cross over them so we can attempt to reach each other.
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Maya Angelou
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The most empowering relationships are those in which each partner lifts the other to a higher possession of their own being.
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Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
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That is why we women have to lift each other up—not to replace men at the top of the hierarchy, but to become partners with men in ending hierarchy.
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Melinda French Gates (The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World)
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We live in a society where too many women tear each other down instead of raising each other up. That's absurd to me. We need to empower one another, teach future generations of girls that it's important to stand together. Once upon a time, we had a common goal and a common enemy. We were burning bras, and fighting for the right to vote.
Now we're body shaming each other on social media and blaming the mistress if our man cheats.
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Elle Kennedy (The Chase (Briar U, #1))
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Fill your life with women that empower you, that help you believe in your magic and aid them to believe in their own exceptional power and their incredible magic too. Women that believe in each other can survive anything. Women who believe in each other create armies that will win kingdoms and wars.
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Nikita Gill
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A therapist once said to me, “If you face the choice between feeling guilt and resentment, choose the guilt every time.” It is wisdom I have passed on to many others since. If a refusal saddles you with guilt, while consent leaves resentment in its wake, opt for the guilt. Resentment is soul suicide. Negative thinking allows us to gaze unflinchingly on our own behalf at what does not work.
We have seen in study after study that compulsive positive thinkers are more likely to develop disease and less likely to survive. Genuine positive thinking — or, more deeply, positive being — empowers us to know that we have nothing to fear from truth. “Health is not just a matter of thinking happy thoughts,” writes the molecular researcher Candace Pert. “Sometimes the biggest impetus to healing can come from jump-starting the immune system with a burst of long-suppressed anger.” Anger, or the healthy experience of it, is one of the seven A’s of healing. Each of the seven A’s addresses one of the embedded visceral beliefs that predispose to illness and undermine healing.
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Gabor Maté (When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress)
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Jealousy says, “Compete with each other.” Envy says, “Destroy each other.” Empathy says, “Help each other.” Love says, “Empower each other.
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Matshona Dhliwayo
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. . . [O]nce we begin to feel deeply all the aspects of our lives, we begin to demand from ourselves and from our life-pursuits that they feel in accordance with that joy which we know ourselves to be capable of. Our erotic knowledge empowers us, becomes a lens through which we scrutinize all aspects of our existence, forcing us to evaluate those aspects honestly in terms of their relative meaning within our lives."
"The erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feeling."
"Of course, women so empowered are dangerous. So we are taught to separate the erotic from most vital areas of our lives other than sex.
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Audre Lorde
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If women work together instead of trying to hurt or compete against each other, we most definitely will be a powerful force. We have to be open-minded and realize that if we come together and do the unexpected, everything will work together for good. Not only will it work together for good but we will be strong warriors from the side effects that tried to weaken our inner peace of mind.
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Charlena E. Jackson (A Woman's Love Is Never Good Enough)
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There are too many women who haven’t had the chance to fall in love with themselves. Your sacrifices weren’t for nothing. Each sacrifice you made was by choice to help others as you put them first. With each sacrifice that you made, you took chances, and the uphill battles of carrying the weight on your shoulders toned your core.
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Charlena E. Jackson (A Woman's Love Is Never Good Enough)
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If we, as women, embrace each other we will be unstoppable. We must stand together and be counted as one.
As one we are strong.
As one we are tough.
As one we can challenge what the future holds.
As one we are survivors.
As one we have unbelievable courage.
As one we can face any obstacle.
As one we are centered and balanced.
As one we will transform the world.
As one we are pioneers and trailblazers.
As one our opportunities are endless.
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Charlena E. Jackson (A Woman's Love Is Never Good Enough)
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So for those who think abuse survivors can simply logically process their situation and get out of and over the situation easily, think again. The parts of our brain that deal with planning, cognition, learning, and decision-making become disconnected with the emotional parts of our brain – they can cease to talk to each other when an individual becomes traumatized. It usually takes a great deal of effort, resources, strength, validation, addressing wounding on all levels of body and mind, for a survivor to become fully empowered to begin to heal from this form of trauma.
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Shahida Arabi (Becoming the Narcissist’s Nightmare: How to Devalue and Discard the Narcissist While Supplying Yourself)
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But the more empowered women in the workforce, the better. The more that women mentor women, the stronger our answer is to the old-boys’ network that we’ve been left out of. We can’t afford to leave any woman behind. We need every woman on the front lines lifting each other up . . . for the good of all of us and the women who come behind us.
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Gabrielle Union (We're Going to Need More Wine)
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As women, we have come a long way but the struggle is real and our hunger is stirring up the right to be treated equally regardless of age, religion, race, and or which “group” we belong to. There is so much more that needs to be done but if we continue to come together as women instead of being each other’s enemies, filled with the rage of envy and competition, we will be able to move further along a lot faster than expected.
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Charlena E. Jackson (A Woman's Love Is Never Good Enough)
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There is something exceedingly ridiculous in the composition of monarchy; it first excludes a man from the means of information, yet empowers him to act in cases where the highest judgment is required. The state of a king shuts him from the world, yet the business of a king requires him to know it thoroughly; wherefore the different parts, by unnaturally opposing and destroying each other, prove the whole character to be absurd and useless.
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Thomas Paine (Common Sense)
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Trailblazer, you are a warrior! At times, are you underestimated? There were so many sacrifices you made, and afterward, you felt like pure shit. The resentment pulled and spread like mold, and the mold’s side effects made you sick and disgusted from loving so hard and losing so much. The ripple effects crossed each other as they manipulated your mind to think negative thoughts. However, the ripple effects also opened your heart to feel and know how to love yourself. As you started your journey of self-fulfillment, all the hell you’ve been through changed you from a fallen warrior into a fearless powerful force with fabulous potential!
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Charlena E. Jackson (A Woman's Love Is Never Good Enough)
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I’ve never held the view that women are better than men, or that the best way to improve the world is for women to gain more power than men. I think male dominance is harmful to society because any dominance is harmful: It means society is governed by a false hierarchy where power and opportunity are awarded according to gender, age, wealth, and privilege—not according to skill, effort, talent, or accomplishments. When a culture of dominance is broken, it activates power in all of us. So the goal for me is not the rise of women and the fall of man. It is the rise of both women and men from a struggle for dominance to a state of partnership.
If the goal is partnership between women and men, why do I put so much emphasis on women’s empowerment and women’s groups? My answer is that we draw strength from each other, and we often have to convince ourselves that we deserve an equal partnership before we get one.
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Melinda French Gates (The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World)
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If you don't make a conscious effort to visualize, who you are and what you want to become in life, then you empower other people and circumstances to shape your journey by default. Your silence makes you reactive vs. proactive. God will bring people in your life that can take you on many different journeys that will bring about different outcomes to your life mission. However, if you are not proactive and define your dreams you will never know where “you” need to be and who needs to be with you to fulfill what God is asking you to do. Your life is your own. You must define your dreams, not live someone else’s vision of a good life. What is it that God is asking you to do with the talents and hobbies you enjoy? What were you blessed with a desire for? A good life is one spent in the service of helping others. Find a life partner that will help you reach God’s highest potential—service to humanity, service to his Kingdom, service to building others up. Also, begin any choice with the end in mind. This means to begin each day with a clear vision of your desired direction. It is not enough to live a passive life of religious devotion. God asked you to do more than worship. He has called you to serve, not to be a servant to other people’s dreams. You and only you know where your heart must travel. God brings you storms in life to wake you up. Don’t see it as his disappointment, but as his parental love for you. Life was not meant to stay the same. If someone truly loves you they will never take you away from God’s plan, they will only magnify it.
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Shannon L. Alder
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We are all part of a loving gestation process. We are here to empower each other to face the journey through unconditional love. This voyage involves stopping over in conditioned configurations, such as our physical reality. Yet, these are all provisional abodes, and every step through this voyage entails becoming more whole, retrieving further pieces of the soul. All human sufferance derives from lack of awareness of this process.
Read on at: //www.facebook.com/notes/astroshamanism...
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Franco Santoro
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for the pathfinders and those who empower them to discover the space where we each can belong
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Maureen Dunne (The Neurodiversity Edge: The Essential Guide to Embracing Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia, and Other Neurological Differences for Any Organization)
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My science is not separate from my humanity - they fulfill each other - they empower each other.
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Abhijit Naskar (Revolution Indomable)
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Moral relativism is ultimately self-defeating because on one hand, it demands that everybody tolerate each other. On the other hand, it is very intolerant of those who are seen as intolerant.
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Hillary Morgan Ferrer (Mama Bear Apologetics™: Empowering Your Kids to Challenge Cultural Lies)
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Successes are those highlights of life we look back on with a smile. But it's the day to day grind of getting them that defines the laugh lines etched until the end of time. Enjoy each moment along the way
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Aaron Lauritsen (100 Days Drive: The Great North American Road Trip)
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Way beyond the calls for equal pay, self-sovereignty, choice, political, legal and educational equality, as woman we each need to search our souls, grieve the enormity of what has befallen us, then find new ways to step outside the shame, to channel the outrage into outlets for progress. We need to cease identification with our oppressors so that we may lift up other women and learn the powerful word that means "no.
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Christina Crawford (Daughters of the Inquisition: Medieval Madness: Origins and Aftermath)
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Modern business is set up to squeeze out women who “want it all”—which is mostly just code for demanding equal pay for equal work. But the more empowered women in the workforce, the better. The more that women mentor women, the stronger our answer is to the old-boys’ network that we’ve been left out of. We can’t afford to leave any woman behind. We need every woman on the front lines lifting each other up . . . for the good of all of us and the women who come behind us. It’s tough to get past my own fears, so I have to remind myself that this is an experiment, to boldly go where no grown-ass woman has gone before. When we refuse to be exiled to the shadows as we mature, we get to be leaders who choose how we treat other women. If I don’t support and mentor someone like Ryan, that’s working from a place of fear. And if I put my foot on a rising star, that’s perpetuating a cycle that will keep us all weak. The actresses in the generation
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Gabrielle Union (We're Going to Need More Wine)
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We have to realize that we are a powerful force. If we work together, we can make a huge difference in the world, despite our race or religion. If we, as women, dare to come together we can help each other conquer our fears. We can help each other become wiser by teaching and learning from each other.
We need to lift each other up more. Reach down to lend a helping hand. Reach up and tell your sisters of all races and religions, “I am here for you.”
After all of the sacrifices we’ve made for others, surely, we can make sacrifices for each other. As much as we women have loved (and most definitely lost) due to heartbreak, being unappreciated, and working hard on a daily basis, why do we put each other down? Why do we use each other? What is the point in competing? Don’t we have enough going against us as it is? We should be able to come together and love one another. We should be able to help each other recover from our losses. That is what I call a powerful force.
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Charlena E. Jackson (A Woman's Love Is Never Good Enough)
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We live in a society where too many women tear each other down instead of raising each other up. That’s absurd to me. We need to empower one another, teach future generations of girls that it’s important to stand together.
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Elle Kennedy (The Chase (Briar U, #1))
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Women’s marches are a clever progressive divide and conquer strategy that not only turns women against men, but also turns women against each other in the guise of peace and solidarity. It is a brilliant tactic to employ media propaganda to make privileged women feel oppressed and then program them to think that vulgarity, exhibitionism and emasculation is empowering.
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Dawn Perlmutter
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For who can say which is the more empowered, them or us, if we can speak to each other successfully across the chasm of time and difference? Do we ourselves not become wiser and stronger every time we grasp the perspective of people whom we once dismissed?
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Camilla Townsend
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A unified team is a force to be reckoned with. When teams pull together to serve a higher purpose, the synergy builds momentum and helps everyone head in the right direction. When people reunite, pull together, have each other’s backs, and strive to achieve a clearly defined purpose, the culture is empowered to produce extraordinary outcomes.
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Susan C. Young
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All too frequently in today's world, a Christian is defined on the basis of the horizontal relationship between oneself and "neighbor" rather than the vertical relationship with Deity. In this distorted view of Christianity, our relationship with others becomes more important than loving God, having faith in Christ, and being a devoted disciple of His gospel. If God isn't first, sooner or later He will simply be a nice embellishment to our lives. When we put God first, we are empowered to love each other better, even if our love is not at first understood. The trouble is that too often we ignore things that should be first in our lives and go after secondary things, thereby losing both.
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Camille Fronk Olson (Mary, Martha, And Me: Seeking the One Thing That Is Needful)
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In order to build community we must clearly honor community and each other in meaningful ways and sharing our collective genius is the gold standard with this empowering program.
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Iris K Barratt
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Another lesson we kept learning is that the problems of poverty and disease are always connected to each other. There are no isolated problems.
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Melinda French Gates (The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World)
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problems of poverty and disease are always connected to each other.
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Melinda French Gates (The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World)
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Perhaps the biggest cost is that the two are cutting themselves off from each other.
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Melinda French Gates (The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World)
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I want us to see the ways we can help each other flourish. The engines are igniting; the earth is shaking; we are rising.
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Melinda French Gates (The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World)
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This better world—that is the world I’m fighting for from inside the whale, this world I want to be birthed into. A world that is kinder, more generous, more just. A world that takes care of the marginalized, the poor, the sick. Where wealth and resources are redistributed, where reparations are made for the harms of history, where stolen land is given back. Where the environment is cared for and respected, and all species are cared for and respected. Where conflicts are dealt with in gentleness. Where people take care of each other and feel empowered to be their truest selves. Where anger is allowed and joy is allowed and fun is allowed and quietness is allowed and loudness is allowed and being wrong is allowed and everything, everything, everything is rooted in love. And maybe that’s an unattainable utopia.But I’ve found a few smaller versions of this world—in the ground rules Liv and I set on the bus en route to meeting my family; in the grace Cara showed me when I came out to her; in the patience with which Zu mentored me. I’m not naïve enough to think we’ll reach this utopia in my lifetime or possibly ever, but I’m also not faithless enough to think that the direction in which I strive doesn’t matter, that these smaller versions of the world aren’t leading us there.
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Lamya H. (Hijab Butch Blues)
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That’s what it means to be poor. They’re on the margins. They’re not getting the benefit of what human beings know how to do for each other. So we have to invent a way of getting it to them.
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Melinda French Gates (The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World)
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the intention of God is that we should each become the kind of person whom he can set free in his universe, empowered to do what we want to do. Just as we desire and intend this, so far as possible, for our children and others we love, so God desires and intends it for his children. But character, the inner directedness of the self, must develop to the point where that is possible.
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Dallas Willard (The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life In God)
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I believe that there is but ONE THINKER in the universe; that my thinking is His thinking, and that every man's thinking is an extension, through God, of every other man's thinking. I therefore think that the greater the exaltation and ecstasy of my thinking, the greater the standards of all man's thinking will be. Each man is thus empowered to uplift all men as each drop of water uplifts the entire ocean.
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Walter Russell (The Man Who Tapped the Secrets of the Universe)
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While we have absolutely no control over the actions of others, we do have total and complete control over how we react. What if we decided to make each no we received and every rejection we encountered something that empowers us? Instead of avoiding rejection, what if we made the decision to seek rejection? Instead of avoiding no or perhaps simply tolerating it, what if we went out of our way to actually go for no!
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Richard Fenton (Go for No! Yes is the Destination, No is How You Get There)
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Commander’s intent empowers each person on a team to initiate and improvise as they’re executing the plan. It stops you from being the bottleneck, and it enables the team to keep each other accountable to the goal without your presence.
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Shane Parrish (Clear Thinking: Turning Ordinary Moments into Extraordinary Results)
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That’s what it means to be poor. They’re on the margins. They’re not getting the benefit of what human beings know how to do for each other. So we have to invent a way of getting it to them. This is what it means to fight the effects of poverty.
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Melinda French Gates (The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World)
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So while police intervention can importantly separate violent adults from their victims or each other after violence has begun, this job of “stopping violence” has shifted from stopping the causes of violence to reacting punitively to the expressions of those unaddressed causes. What was even more distracting and confusing was that the job of punishing the expressions of patriarchy, racism, and poverty was assigned to the police, who also cause violence. This responsibility, in some cases, produced additional acts of violence on the part of the government, like “stop and frisk,” and racial profiling that committed violence in the name of claiming to fight violence. These laws also produced more access for the state into the homes and families of the poor, and more incarceration of Black and other poor men. Instead of empowering women and the poor, the fate of the traumatized was increasingly in the hands of the power of the police acting as a group to represent oppressive systems. Now,
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Sarah Schulman (Conflict Is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair)
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Nobody is a whole team . . . We need each other. You need someone and someone needs you. Isolated islands we’re not. To make this thing called life work, we gotta lean and support. And relate and respond. And give and take. And confess and forgive. And reach out and embrace and rely . . . Since none of us is a whole, independent, self-sufficient, super-capable, all-powerful hotshot, let’s quit acting like we are. Life’s lonely enough without our playing that silly role. The game is over. Let’s link up.
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John C. Maxwell (The 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork: Embrace Them and Empower Your Team)
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One of the longest-running public health studies dates from the 1970s, when half of the families in a number of villages in Bangladesh were given contraceptives and the other half were not. Twenty years later, the mothers who took contraceptives were healthier. Their children were better nourished. Their families had more wealth. The women had higher wages. Their sons and daughters had more schooling.
The reasons are simple: When the women were able to time and space their pregnancies, they were more likely to advance their education, earn an income, raise healthy children, and have the time and money to give each child the food, care, and education needed to thrive. When children reach their potential, they don’t end up poor. This is how families and countries get out of poverty. In fact, no country in the last fifty years has emerged from poverty without expanding access to contraceptives.
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Melinda French Gates (The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World)
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When one partner leaves the care of the children to the other, or one partner leaves the role of earning income to the other, they are cutting themselves off from their power—or cutting themselves off from their children. Perhaps the biggest cost is that the two are cutting themselves off from each other.
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Melinda French Gates (The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World)
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Unfortunately, “Empath” is often used in ways that are more confusing than helpful. Such as? Defining it as “Someone who feels other people’s feelings,” or claiming that an empath is somebody who requires psychological boundary work.
In The Empowered Empath I sought to remedy confusions like these. You learned accurate names for 15 very different empath gifts. You were coached to discover what is lovely about each one that you possess.
To help you gain skills, these gifts were defined fully, not just the pretty parts. You were alerted to distinctive problems that can accompany each of those empath gifts, at least until solid skills are gained.
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Rose Rosetree (The Master Empath: Turning On Your Empath Gifts At Will - In Love, Business and Friendship (Includes Training in Skilled Empath Merge) (Empath Empowerment® Book))
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Instead of acknowledging the role of contraceptives in reducing abortion, some opponents of contraception conflate it with abortion. The simple appeal of letting women choose whether or when to have children is so threatening that opponents strain to make it about something else. And trying to make the contraceptive debate about abortion is very effective in sabotaging the conversation. The abortion debate is so hot that people on different sides of the issue often won’t talk to each other about women’s health. You can’t have a conversation if people won’t talk to you. The Catholic Church’s powerful opposition to contraceptives has also affected the conversation on family planning.
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Melinda French Gates (The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World)
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The chief care of the legislators [in the colonies of New England] was the maintenance of orderly conduct and good morals in the community: thus they constantly invaded the domain of conscience, and there was scarcely a sin which was no subject to magisterial censure. The reader is aware of the rigor with which these laws punished rape and adultery; intercourse between unmarried persons was likewise severely repressed. The judge was empowered to inflict either a pecuniary penalty, a whipping, or marriage, on the misdemeanants; and if the records of the old courts of New Haven may be believed, prosecutions of this kind were not unfrequent. We find a sentence, bearing date the 1st of May, 1660, inflicting a fine and reprimand on a young woman who was accused of using improper language, and of allowing herself to be kissed. The Code of 1650 abounds in preventive measures. It punishes idleness and drunkenness with severity. Innkeepers were forbidden to furnish more than certain quantities of liquor to each customer; and simple lying, whenever it may be injurious, is checked by a fine or a flogging. In other places, the legislator, entirely forgetting the great principles of religious toleration which he had himself demanded in Europe, makes attendance on divine service compulsory, and goes so far as to visit with severe punishment, and even with death, Christians who choose to worship God according to a ritual differing from his own. Sometimes, indeed, the zeal for regulation induces him to descend to the most frivolous particulars: thus a law is to be found in the same code which prohibits the use of tobacco. It must not be forgotten that these fantastical and vexatious laws were not imposed by authority, but that they were freely voted by all the persons interested in them, and that the manners of the community were even more austere and puritanical than the laws....
These errors are no doubt discreditable to human reason; they attest the inferiority of our nature, which is incapable of laying firm hold upon what is true and just, and is often reduced to the alternative of two excesses. In strict connection with this penal legislation, which bears such striking marks of a narrow, sectarian spirit, and of those religious passions which had been warmed by persecution and were still fermenting among the people, a body of political laws is to be found, which, though written two hundred years ago, is still in advance of the liberties of our own age.
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Alexis de Tocqueville (Democracy in America)
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Mutual masturbation can be a terrific precursor to intercourse, or it can be a main event all on its own. I’m a big proponent of mutual masturbation for couples looking to reestablish intimacy in their relationship. Masturbating each other or in front of each other can build anticipation, tease each other, and serve as foreplay. There’s so much room to explore.
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Elle Chase (Curvy Girl Sex: 101 Body-Positive Positions to Empower Your Sex Life)
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I believe women’s groups are essential for each of us individually but also for society generally—because progress depends on inclusion, and inclusion begins with women. I’m not saying we should include women and girls as opposed to men and boys, but along with them and on behalf of them. This is not about bringing women in and leaving others out. It’s about bringing women in as a way to bring everyone in.
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Melinda French Gates (The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World)
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It's not as though we're down here on Earth and the rest of the universe is out there. To begin with, we're genetically connected to each other and to all other life-forms on Earth. We're mutual participants in the biosphere. We're also chemically connected to all the other life-forms we have yet to discover. They, too, would use the same elements we find in our periodic table. They do not and cannot have some other periodic table. So we're genetically connected to each other; we're molecularly connected to other objects in the universe; and we're atomically connected to all matter in the cosmos.
For me, that is a profound thought. It is even spiritual. Science , enabled by engineering, empowered by NASA, tells us not only that we are in the universe but that the universe is in us. And for me, that sense of belonging elevates , not denigrates, the ego.
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Neil deGrasse Tyson (Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier)
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Mindfulness is the art of being present in whatever you are doing, whatever you are thinking. It involves holding up each thought, examining its value and utility and discarding it if it is debilitating or wasteful. Hold up each thought just the way you would see a dew drop hanging on to a blade of grass – if the thought is empowering or inspiring, let it be; if it is making you feel suffocated or frustrated, shake it off, let it go. Mindfulness is like any other art – over time, with practice, it can be learnt.
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AVIS Viswanathan
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why I wrote this book: to share the stories of people who have given focus and urgency to my life. I want us to see the ways we can help each other flourish. The engines are igniting; the earth is shaking; we are rising. More than at any time in the past, we have the knowledge and energy and moral insight to crack the patterns of history. We need the help of every advocate now. Women and men. No one should be left out. Everyone should be brought in. Our call is to lift women up—and when we come together in this cause, we are the lift.
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Melinda French Gates (The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World)
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When people become better at seeing themselves in the lives of others, feeling others’ suffering and easing their pain, then life in that community gets better. In many cases, we have more empathy for each other today than the people did who set the practices and traditions we now live with. So the purpose of conversations about accepted practices is to take out the old bias and add in empathy. Empathy is not the only force needed to ease suffering; we need science as well. But empathy helps end our bias about who deserves the benefits of science.
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Melinda French Gates (The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World)
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and money — some for so long that they never return to the road that leads to their dreams. Though they may have the ability to reach the end, they lose the determination to continue their journey. Your choice in companions can mean the difference between a life veering further from the path and a partnership that steers each other back to the center. The love of another person can strengthen, guide, and empower even those who have been lost in the mires of self-doubt. When chosen wisely, love can navigate even the most complicated of life's maps.
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Illuminatiam (Illuminations: Wisdom From This Planet's Greatest Minds)
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Black women who define ourselves and our goals beyond the sphere of a sexual relationship can bring to any endeavor the realized focus of completed and therefore empowered individuals. Black women and Black men who recognize that the development of their particular strengths and interests does not diminish the other do not need to diffuse their energies fighting for control over each other. We can focus our attentions against the real economic, political, and social forces at the heart of this society which are ripping us and our children and our worlds apart.
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Audre Lorde (Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches)
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The strange and beautiful truth about the adjacent possible is that its boundaries grow as you explore them. Each new combination opens up the possibility of other new combinations. Think of it as a house that magically expands with each door you open. You begin in a room with four doors, each leading to a new room that you haven’t visited yet. Once you open one of those doors and stroll into that room, three new doors appear, each leading to a brand-new room that you couldn’t have reached from your original starting point. Keep opening new doors and eventually you’ll have built a palace.
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George Couros (The Innovator’s Mindset: Empower Learning, Unleash Talent, and Lead a Culture of Creativity)
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Normally the hemispheres complement each other as thoughts move back and forth between the two. The left brain is more analytical and logical. It is where verbal skills are found, while the right brain is more holistic and artistic. But the left brain is the dominant one and makes the final decisions. Commands pass from the left brain to the right brain via the corpus callosum. But if that connection is cut, it means that the right brain is now free from the dictatorship of the left brain. Perhaps the right brain can have a will of its own, contradicting the wishes of the dominant left brain.
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Michio Kaku (The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind)
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I should know; perfectionism has always been a weakness of mine. Brene' Bown captures the motive in the mindset of the perfectionist in her book Daring Greatly: "If I look perfect and do everything perfectly, I can avoid or minimize the painful feelings of shame, judgment, and blame." This is the game, and I'm the player. Perfectionism for me comes from the feelings that I don't know enough. I'm not smart enough. Not hardworking enough. Perfectionism spikes for me if I'm going into a meeting with people who disagree with me, or if I'm giving a talk to experts to know more about the topic I do … when I start to feel inadequate and my perfectionism hits, one of the things I do is start gathering facts. I'm not talking about basic prep; I'm talking about obsessive fact-gathering driven by the vision that there shouldn't be anything I don't know. If I tell myself I shouldn't overprepare, then another voice tells me I'm being lazy. Boom. Ultimately, for me, perfectionism means hiding who I am. It's dressing myself up so the people I want to impress don't come away thinking I'm not as smart or interesting as I thought. It comes from a desperate need to not disappoint others. So I over-prepare. And one of the curious things I've discovered is that what I'm over-prepared, I don't listen as well; I go ahead and say whatever I prepared, whether it responds to the moment or not. I miss the opportunity to improvise or respond well to a surprise. I'm not really there. I'm not my authentic self…
If you know how much I am not perfect. I am messy and sloppy in so many places in my life. But I try to clean myself up and bring my best self to work so I can help others bring their best selves to work. I guess what I need to role model a little more is the ability to be open about the mess. Maybe I should just show that to other people. That's what I said in the moment. When I reflected later I realized that my best self is not my polished self. Maybe my best self is when I'm open enough to say more about my doubts or anxieties, admit my mistakes, confess when I'm feeling down. The people can feel more comfortable with their own mess and that's needs your culture to live in that. That was certainly the employees' point. I want to create a workplace where everyone can bring the most human, most authentic selves where we all expect and respect each other's quirks and flaws and all the energy wasted in the pursuit of perfection is saved and channeled into the creativity we need for the work that is a cultural release impossible burdens and lift everyone up.
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Melinda French Gates (The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World)
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Catapulting change requires meticulous leadership that is mindful of all those elements that are seemingly trivial to most but produce positive outcomes that hit us as hard as tsunamis. It’s the sort of leadership that empowers and engages people to move deep with themselves, and yet it mobilizes them with others in a manner that is coordinated, collaborative, and cohesive. These are fostered because leaders have the innate ability to make you feel that you are working “with” them not “for” them in such a way that motivates you to spring off the mattress each morning to make meaningful contributions because you feel valued, respected, empowered, and connected to an overarching goal.
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Albert Collu (Catapulting Change: Mindful Leadership To Launch Organizations and People)
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Obviously, in those situations, we lose the sale. But we’re not trying to maximize each and every transaction. Instead, we’re trying to build a lifelong relationship with each customer, one phone call at a time. A lot of people may think it’s strange that an Internet company is so focused on the telephone, when only about 5 percent of our sales happen through the telephone. In fact, most of our phone calls don’t even result in sales. But what we’ve found is that on average, every customer contacts us at least once sometime during his or her lifetime, and we just need to make sure that we use that opportunity to create a lasting memory. The majority of phone calls don’t result in an immediate order. Sometimes a customer may be calling because it’s her first time returning an item, and she just wants a little help stepping through the process. Other times, a customer may call because there’s a wedding coming up this weekend and he wants a little fashion advice. And sometimes, we get customers who call simply because they’re a little lonely and want someone to talk to. I’m reminded of a time when I was in Santa Monica, California, a few years ago at a Skechers sales conference. After a long night of bar-hopping, a small group of us headed up to someone’s hotel room to order some food. My friend from Skechers tried to order a pepperoni pizza from the room-service menu, but was disappointed to learn that the hotel we were staying at did not deliver hot food after 11:00 PM. We had missed the deadline by several hours. In our inebriated state, a few of us cajoled her into calling Zappos to try to order a pizza. She took us up on our dare, turned on the speakerphone, and explained to the (very) patient Zappos rep that she was staying in a Santa Monica hotel and really craving a pepperoni pizza, that room service was no longer delivering hot food, and that she wanted to know if there was anything Zappos could do to help. The Zappos rep was initially a bit confused by the request, but she quickly recovered and put us on hold. She returned two minutes later, listing the five closest places in the Santa Monica area that were still open and delivering pizzas at that time. Now, truth be told, I was a little hesitant to include this story because I don’t actually want everyone who reads this book to start calling Zappos and ordering pizza. But I just think it’s a fun story to illustrate the power of not having scripts in your call center and empowering your employees to do what’s right for your brand, no matter how unusual or bizarre the situation. As for my friend from Skechers? After that phone call, she’s now a customer for life. Top 10 Ways to Instill Customer Service into Your Company 1. Make customer service a priority for the whole company, not just a department. A customer service attitude needs to come from the top. 2. Make WOW a verb that is part of your company’s everyday vocabulary. 3. Empower and trust your customer service reps. Trust that they want to provide great service… because they actually do. Escalations to a supervisor should be rare. 4. Realize that it’s okay to fire customers who are insatiable or abuse your employees. 5. Don’t measure call times, don’t force employees to upsell, and don’t use scripts. 6. Don’t hide your 1-800 number. It’s a message not just to your customers, but to your employees as well. 7. View each call as an investment in building a customer service brand, not as an expense you’re seeking to minimize. 8. Have the entire company celebrate great service. Tell stories of WOW experiences to everyone in the company. 9. Find and hire people who are already passionate about customer service. 10. Give great service to everyone: customers, employees, and vendors.
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Tony Hsieh (Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose)
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Everything we do and say will either underline or undermine our discipleship process.
As long as there is one unsaved person on my campus or in my city, then my church is not big enough.
One of the underlying principles of our discipleship strategy is that every believer can and should make disciples.
When a discipleship process fails, many times the fatal flaw is that the definition of discipleship is either unclear, unbiblical, or not commonly shared by the leadership team.
Write down what you love to do most, and then go do it with unbelievers. Whatever you love to do, turn it into an outreach.
You have to formulate a system that is appropriate for your cultural setting. Writing your own program for making disciples takes time, prayer, and some trial and error—just as it did with us. Learn and incorporate ideas from other churches around the world, but only after modification to make sure the strategies make sense in our culture and community.
Culture is changing so quickly that staying relevant requires our constant attention. If we allow ourselves to be distracted by focusing on the mechanics of our own efforts rather than our culture, we will become irrelevant almost overnight.
The easiest and most common way to fail at discipleship is to import a model or copy a method that worked somewhere else without first understanding the values that create a healthy discipleship culture. Principles and process are much more important than material, models, and methods.
The church is an organization that exists for its nonmembers.
Christianity does not promise a storm-free life. However, if we build our lives on biblical foundations, the storms of life will not destroy us. We cannot have lives that are storm-free, but we can become storm-proof.
Just as we have to figure out the most effective way to engage our community for Christ, we also have to figure out the most effective way to establish spiritual foundations in each unique context.
There is really only one biblical foundation we can build our lives on, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ.
Pastors, teachers, and church staff believe their primary role is to serve as mentors. Their task is to equip every believer for the work of the ministry. It is not to do all the ministry, but to equip all the people to do it. Their top priority is to equip disciples to do ministry and to make disciples.
Do you spend more time ministering to people or preparing people to minister? No matter what your church responsibilities are, you can prepare others for the same ministry.
Insecurity in leadership is a deadly thing that will destroy any organization. It drives pastors and presidents to defensive positions, protecting their authority or exercising it simply to show who is the boss.
Disciple-making is a process that systematically moves people toward Christ and spiritual maturity; it is not a bunch of randomly disconnected church activities.
In the context of church leadership, one of the greatest and most important applications of faith is to trust the Holy Spirit to work in and through those you are leading. Without confidence that the Holy Spirit is in control, there is no empowering, no shared leadership, and, as a consequence, no multiplication.
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Steve Murrell (WikiChurch: Making Discipleship Engaging, Empowering, and Viral)
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Much has been made of the fact that Salander refuses to be a victim. To that extent, she reflects the consensus view of Swedish feminism: women are almost inevitably victimized, but must refuse to succumb; the feminist tenet is that women must organize to empower each other and to reject victimization. However, the point in Stieg Larsson's novels is that Lisbeth Salander refuses not only to be a victim, but also to seek fulfillment in a collective stand or seek redress through institutionalized means. When wronged, she will avenge herself. She has no interest in being nurturing, and rejects the notion that this is a role natural to women. She has no interest in analysing or "working on" her relationships and rejects the notion that this is how women are supposed to be. She distrusts the authorities, refuses to complain and instead acts on her own to gain and guard her rights. She rejects the consensus doctrine and trusts only in her own judgment and morality. She rejects the notion that women should dress and act to please men and instead dresses and acts to please herself. She rejects both the heterosexual norm and the idea of lesbian exclusivity, and seeks erotic fulfillment with those individuals she is attracted to, regardless of gender. She is, in short, the nightmare of all doctrines, all consensus thinkers, all moralists and all politicians; the individual complete unto herself, with neither need of nor respect for authority, traditions, public opinion, established morality or accepted behaviour.
... And in that sense, and as she is also resourceful, strong, intelligent and willing to act, she is a heroine.
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Jonas Sundberg (On Stieg Larsson)
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The so much boasted constitution of England. That it was noble for the dark and slavish times in which it was erected, is granted. When the world was over run with tyranny the least remove therefrom was a glorious rescue. But that it is imperfect, subject to convulsions, and incapable of producing what it seems to promise, is easily demonstrated.
Absolute governments (tho’ the disgrace of human nature) have this advantage with them, that they are simple; if the people suffer, they know the head from which their suffering springs, know likewise the remedy, and are not bewildered by a variety of causes and cures. But the constitution of England is so exceedingly complex, that the nation may suffer for years together without being able to discover in which part the fault lies, some will say in one and some in another, and every political physician will advise a different medicine.
I know it is difficult to get over local or long standing prejudices, yet if we will suffer ourselves to examine the component parts of the English constitution, we shall find them to be the base remains of two ancient tyrannies, compounded with some new republican materials.
First.—The remains of monarchical tyranny in the person of the king.
Secondly.—The remains of aristocratical tyranny in the persons of the peers.
Thirdly.—The new republican materials, in the persons of the commons, on whose virtue depends the freedom of England.
The two first, by being hereditary, are independent of the people; wherefore in a constitutional sense they contribute nothing towards the freedom of the state.
To say that the constitution of England is a union of three powers reciprocally checking each other, is farcical, either the words have no meaning, or they are flat contradictions.
To say that the commons is a check upon the king, presupposes two things:
First.—That the king is not to be trusted without being looked after, or in other words, that a thirst for absolute power is the natural disease of monarchy.
Secondly.—That the commons, by being appointed for that purpose, are either wiser or more worthy of confidence than the crown.
But as the same constitution which gives the commons a power to check the king by withholding the supplies, gives afterwards the king a power to check the commons, by empowering him to reject their other bills; it again supposes that the king is wiser than those whom it has already supposed to be wiser than him. A mere absurdity!
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Thomas Paine (Common Sense)
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How did the women's movement succeed in bringing peace while the men's warring factions could not? Leymah's story says it all: when the women were wounded, they were able to absorb their pain without passing it on, but when the men were wounded they needed to make someone pay. That's what fed the cycle of war. I'm not saying that women alone have the power of peacemaking and men alone are the cause of war. Absolutely not. I am saying that in this case, . . . when the women found their voice, the men found their power to make peace. Each found the traditional attributes of the other inside themselves. The men were able to do something the women had done -- agree not to retaliate -- and the women were able to do something the men had done, which is to assert their views about how society should be run. Bringing these two qualities together is what brought peace.
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Melinda French Gates (The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World)
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Normally the hemispheres complement each other as thoughts move back and forth between the two. The left brain is more analytical and logical. It is where verbal skills are found, while the right brain is more holistic and artistic. But the left brain is the dominant one and makes the final decisions. Commands pass from the left brain to the right brain via the corpus callosum. But if that connection is cut, it means that the right brain is now free from the dictatorship of the left brain. Perhaps the right brain can have a will of its own, contradicting the wishes of the dominant left brain. In short, there could be two wills acting within one skull, sometimes struggling for control of the body. This creates the bizarre situation where the left hand (controlled by the right brain) starts to behave independently of your wishes, as if it were an alien appendage.
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Michio Kaku (The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind)
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The gospel is a promise and God’s promises aren’t bound by time. Promises defy time. They bring the future into the present. Promises are a certain way of looking forward. When I promised myself to my wife, I didn’t just bind myself to her in the present. I gave her my future. Without waiting for that future to arrive, without waiting to see what sorrows or joys would come, I promised. Dressed in white, we knelt at an altar in the temple and joined hands. We were terribly young. The mirrors, set face to face, reflected endless futures at which we couldn’t guess. Still, I loved her. I gave her all those futures as a gift. And we kissed. Now, promised to each other and sealed by a holy ordinance, we live as though those futures had already come. Now, in a very real way, our futures are already given as gifts in the present. And, now, we’re empowered by those promises to love each other in the present.
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Adam S. Miller (An Early Resurrection: Life in Christ before You Die)
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I’m really enjoying my solitude after feeling trapped by my family, friends and boyfriend.
Just then I feel like making a resolution. A new year began six months ago but I feel like the time for change is now. No more whining about my pathetic life. I am going to change my life this very minute. Feeling as empowered as I felt when I read The Secret, I turn to reenter the hall.
I know what I’ll do! Instead of listing all the things I’m going to do from this moment on, I’m going to list all the things I’m never going to do! I’ve always been unconventional (too unconventional if you ask my parents but I’ll save that account for later). I mentally begin to make my list of nevers.
-I am never going to marry for money like Natasha just did.
-I am never going to doubt my abilities again.
-I am never going to… as I try to decide exactly what to resolve I spot an older lady wearing a bright red velvet churidar kurta. Yuck! I immediately know what my next resolution will be; I will never wear velvet. Even if it does become the most fashionable fabric ever (a highly unlikely phenomenon)
I am quite enjoying my resolution making and am deciding what to resolve next when I notice Az and Raghav holding hands and smiling at each other. In that moment I know what my biggest resolve should be.
-I will never have feelings for my best friend’s boyfriend. Or for any friend’s boyfriend, for that matter. That’s four resolutions down. Six more to go? Why not? It is 2012, after all. If the world really does end this year, at least I’ll go down knowing I completed ten resolutions. I don’t need to look too far to find my next resolution. Standing a few centimetres away, looking extremely uncomfortable as Rags and Az get more oblivious of his existence, is Deepak.
-I will never stay in a relationship with someone I don’t love, I vow. Looking for inspiration for my next five resolutions, I try to observe everyone in the room. What catches my eye next is my cousin Mishka giggling uncontrollably while failing miserably at walking in a straight line. Why do people get completely trashed in public? It’s just so embarrassing and totally not worth it when you’re nursing a hangover the next day. I recoil as memories of a not so long ago night come rushing back to me. I still don’t know exactly what happened that night but the fragments that I do remember go something like this; dropping my Blackberry in the loo, picking it up and wiping it with my new Mango dress, falling flat on my face in the middle of the club twice, breaking my Nine West heels, kissing an ugly stranger (Az insists he was a drug dealer but I think she just says that to freak me out) at the bar and throwing up on the Bandra-Worli sea link from Az’s car.
-I will never put myself in an embarrassing situation like that again. Ever.
I usually vow to never drink so much when I’m lying in bed with a hangover the next day (just like 99% of the world) but this time I’m going to stick to my resolution.
What should my next resolution be?
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Anjali Kirpalani (Never Say Never)
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Power has always been a temptation, and I want to argue that majority rule in America carries with it an empire temptation for many Christian citizens. Those of us who know our American history might be tempted to say, “That’s precisely the opposite of what our democracy, or representative democracy, stands for.” True enough, at one level, because giving everyone a voice vastly surpasses anything less. But take any heated political issue, from abortion to same-sex marriage to national health care to free-market enterprise to nuclear build-up for security, and you may glimpse what I’m trying to say. The political left takes one posture on issues while the political right draws swords from another posture. If we step back we see that each side seeks to impose its view on the minority. This is ruling over the other. Now to a few questions. Is this imposition of power over others consistent with following Christ? Do we ever wonder if the right to vote is the right to coerce and impose, the right to use the power of the majority against the minority?17 Is the power of the majority that different from the power of King Charles when the pilgrims and Puritans left England to establish the “city on a hill”? We would all agree that empowering the people improved the conditions, but I want to ask another question: Does it make the political process of voting the source of seeking for power over others? What is the best Christian response to the drive for power? I call this quest for power through the political process the “eschatology of politics”—that is, the belief that if we usher in the right political candidates and the right laws, then kingdom conditions will arrive. Every two years America goes through convulsions as one candidate after another promises (all but) the kingdom if he or she is elected. Every two years Americans go through the same convulsions as they lather up for the election because they believe if they get their candidate, not only will they win, but (all but) the kingdom will come. This is idolatry and yet another example of Constantinianism
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Scot McKnight (Kingdom Conspiracy: Returning to the Radical Mission of the Local Church)
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The initiative cannot come only from the man’s side. If it could, it would have already. A man who is dominant is probably not going to say, “Hey, let’s be equal, take some of my power.” But a man might respond to the changing views of other men, or to a woman who asserts her power. Change comes when men see the benefits of women’s power—not just what women can do that men cannot, but a quality of relationship that comes in an equal partnership that cannot come in a hierarchical relationship: a sense of bonding, of belonging, of community, solidarity, and wholeness born of a promise that I will help you when your burdens are high, and you will help me when your burdens are low. These forces create the most rewarding feelings in life—an experience of love and union that is not possible or available to partners who struggle alone. It can turn a hierarchical relationship into an equal one, and it comes from women asserting themselves. That is why we women have to lift each other up—not to replace men at the top of the hierarchy, but to become partners with men in ending hierarchy.
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Melinda French Gates (The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World)
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Many potential readers will skip the shopping cart or cash-out clerk because they have seen so many disasters reported in the news that they’ve acquired a panic mentality when they think of them. “Disasters scare me to death!” they cry. “I don’t want to read about them!”
But really, how can a picture hurt you?
Better that each serve as a Hallmark card that greets your fitful fevers with reason and uncurtains your valor. Then, so gospeled, you may see that defeating a disaster is as innocently easy as deciding to go out to dinner. Remove the dread that bars your doors of perception, and you will enjoy a banquet of treats that will make the difference between suffering and safety. You will enter a brave new world that will erase your panic, and release you from the grip of terror, and relieve you of the deadening effects of indifference —and you will find that switch of initiative that will energize your intelligence, empower your imagination, and rouse your sense of vigilance in ways that will tilt the odds of danger from being forever against you to being always in your favor. Indeed, just thinking about a disaster is one of the best things you can do —because it allows you to imagine how you would respond in a way that is free of pain and destruction.
Another reason why disasters seem so scary is that many victims tend to see them as a whole rather than divide them into much smaller and more manageable problems. A disaster can seem overwhelming when confronted with everything at once —but if you dice it into its tiny parts and knock them off one at a time, the whole thing can seem as easy as eating a lavish dinner one bite at a time.
In a disaster you must also plan for disruption as well as destruction. Death and damage may make the news, but in almost every disaster far more lives are disrupted than destroyed. Witness the tornado that struck Joplin, Missouri, in May 2011 and killed 158 people. The path of death and destruction was less than a mile wide and only 22 miles long —but within thirty miles 160,000 citizens whose property didn’t suffer a dime of damage were profoundly disrupted by the carnage, loss of power and water, suspension of civic services, and inability to buy food, gas, and other necessities. You may rightfully believe your chances of dying in a disaster in your lifetime may be nearly nil, but the chances of your life being disrupted by a disaster in the next decade is nearly a sure thing.
Not only should you prepare for disasters, you should learn to premeditate them. Prepare concerns the body; premeditate concerns the mind. Everywhere you go, think what could happen and how you might/could/would/should respond. Use your imagination. Fill your brain with these visualizations —run mind-movies in your head —develop a repertoire —until when you walk into a building/room/situation you’ll automatically know what to do. If a disaster does ambush you —sure you’re apt to panic, but in seconds your memory will load the proper video into your mobile disk drive and you’ll feel like you’re watching a scary movie for the second time and you’ll know what to expect and how to react. That’s why this book is important: its manner of vivifying disasters kickstarts and streamlines your acquiring these premeditations, which lays the foundation for satisfying your needs when a disaster catches you by surprise.
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Robert Brown Butler (Architecture Laid Bare!: In Shades of Green)
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The concept of “I,” as a single, unified whole making all decisions continuously, is an illusion created by our own subconscious minds.
Mentally we feel that our mind is a single entity, continuously and smoothly processing information, totally in charge of our decisions. But the picture emerging from brain scans is quite different from the perception we have of our own mind.
MIT professor Marvin Minsky, one of the founding fathers of artificial intelligence, told me that the mind is more like a “society of minds,” with different submodules, each trying to compete with the others.
When I interviewed Steven Pinker, a psychologist at Harvard University, I asked him how consciousness emerges out of this mess. He said that consciousness was like a storm raging in our brain. He elaborated on this when he wrote that “the intuitive feeling we have that there’s an executive ‘I’ that sits in a control room of our brain, scanning the screens of the senses and pushing the buttons of our muscles, is an illusion. Consciousness turns out to consist of a maelstrom of events distributed across the brain. These events compete for attention, and as one process outshouts the others, the brain rationalizes the outcome after the fact and concocts the impression that a single self was in charge all along.
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Michio Kaku (The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind)
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The Manifestation Manifesto Meditation” "Right now, I find a quiet and comfortable space where I can easily concentrate on these words as I gently read them aloud. "With the sound of my voice I soothe my nervous system … calm my entire body and relax my thoughts. I speak slowly … with a gentle but resonant tone. And as I do, I start to relax now. "I keep my eyes open and let them blink naturally when they want to … and they might start to feel slightly heavy and droopy … as they would feel when I read a book before going to sleep. “I use my imagination so that with every word I become more relaxed and drowsier. (Imagine feeling drowsy.). I keep my eyes open just enough to take in the following words. "I turn my attention to my breathing, and use this opportunity to relax my mind and body more deeply. "As I count my exhalations backwards from five to one, I let each number represent a gradually deeper level of relaxation and heightened focus. (Draw a breath before reading each number, and count as you exhale.) "Five … I double my relaxation and increase my concentration. "Four … With every number and every breath, I relax. "Three … I count slowly as I meditate deeper … deeper still. "Two … I use my imagination to double this meditative state. "One … My body is relaxed as my mind remains focused. (Pause for five seconds and breathe normally.) "At this level of meditation, people experience different things. Some notice interesting body sensations … such as a warmth or tingling in their fingers. I might also have that experience. (Pause five seconds.) "Some people feel a floating sensation … with a dreamy quality. I may experience that. (Pause five seconds.) "Whatever sensations I experience are exactly right for me at this moment. Whether I feel something unusual now or at some other time, I let that process happen on its own as I focus on the following manifesto. “I allow my subconscious to absorb the manifesto as I read each affirmation with purpose and conviction. (Pause for five seconds.) “The power to manifest is fully mine, here and now. “I acknowledge and embrace my power to manifest. “All human beings have this power, yet I choose to use it consciously and purposefully. “From the unlimited energy of the Universe, I attract all that I need to experience joy and abundance. “I recognize and consider the consequences of all that I manifest. I take full responsibility. “With awareness and intention, I apply my power for my highest good and for the welfare of others. “All of my manifestations reflect my inner state of being. Therefore, I ever seek to grow in wisdom and to become a better person. “With relaxed confidence, I employ the powers of Thought, Emotion and Vital Energy to manifest my desires. “I let go of beliefs and ideas that suppress or encumber me and I cultivate those which empower me. “I accept what I manifest with appreciation and satisfaction. I am thankful. “I go forth with great enthusiasm with the realization that I manifest my life and circumstances. “I am ready to take charge of my manifestations from this moment onward.” “Day by day, I grow in awareness of my power to manifest my desires with speed and accuracy.” RECOMMENDED READING * Mastering Manifestation: A Practical System for Rapidly Creating Your Dream Reality - Adam James * Banned Manifestation Secrets - Richard Dotts * Manifesting: The Secret behind the Law of Attraction - Alexander Janzer * The Secret Science Behind Miracles - Max Freedom Long * The Kybalion - Three Initiates
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Forbes Robbins Blair (The Manifestation Manifesto: Amazing Techniques and Strategies to Attract the Life You Want - No Visualization Required (Amazing Manifestation Strategies Book 1))
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Convergent intelligence focuses on one line of thought, ignoring the more complex “divergent” form of intelligence, which involves measuring differing factors. For example, during World War II, the U.S. Army Air Forces asked scientists to devise a psychological exam that would measure a pilot’s intelligence and ability to handle difficult, unexpected situations. One question was: If you are shot down deep in enemy territory and must somehow make it back to friendly lines, what do you do? The results contradicted conventional thinking. Most psychologists expected that the air force study would show that pilots with high IQs would score highly on this test as well. Actually, the reverse was true. The pilots who scored highest were the ones with higher levels of divergent thinking, who could see through many different lines of thought. Pilots who excelled at this, for example, were able to think up a variety of unorthodox and imaginative methods to escape after they were captured behind enemy lines. The difference between convergent and divergent thinking is also reflected in studies on split-brain patients, which clearly show that each hemisphere of the brain is principally hardwired for one or the other. Dr. Ulrich Kraft of Fulda, Germany, writes, “The left hemisphere is responsible for convergent thinking and the right hemisphere for divergent thinking. The left side examines details and processes them logically and analytically but lacks a sense of overriding, abstract connections. The right side is more imaginative and intuitive and tends to work holistically, integrating pieces of an informational puzzle into a whole.” In this book, I take the position that human consciousness involves the ability to create a model of the world and then simulate the model into the future, in order to attain a goal.
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Michio Kaku (The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind)
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Ell's Double Down ---
"The haze across the room conceals the faces of the patrons and gives the setting a secretive draping. Her heart is pounding and although she has done this for months now, she still becomes nervous starting out. She glances across the table, the man facing her is attractive he is dressed in a fine suit his eyes a warm brown, his stare deliberate. When he looks at her she can tell, it’s a look you don’t give a kid sister, his look is heated. She can hardly breathe when she looks into his eyes it is disarming, she can’t have this. She looks above him to her friend Sophie; she is unsure of herself and silently communicates her discomfort to her friend. Sophie gives her a smile then leans down whispering into the man’s ear his attention is suddenly diverted giving Ell the opportunity to settle in. She exhales feeling better now that the man is distracted. Later she will help Sophie untangle herself from him but now she has to focus on the business at hand. She takes a deep breath, flashing a dazzling smile at the rest of the men gathered around the table and antes up.
The truth is gambling makes her feel empowered the rush was like none other. Each hand dealt promised her a solution to her problems. Logically that alone could be the cause for her increased heart rate and butterflies but Ell knew better. She liked the mind games played as each of them attempted to psyche out opponents seated around the table. Ell herself suffered through painful lessons until she honed her own skills. Eventually Sophie taught her the most valuable ploy --using her womanly wiles as her weapon. Ell initially felt foolish but the first time she glanced through mascaraed lashes and saw the effect she turned to her friend for additional suggestions. This combined with her ability to gauge the cards each player held or what now laid in the muck. However to be honest, she simply loved soundly beating the table full of men.
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Caroline Walken
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In Mississippi, where I lived from 1967 to 1974, people who challenged the system anticipated menace, battery, even murder, every day. In this context, I sometimes felt ashamed that my contributions at the time were not more radical. I taught in two local black colleges, I wrote about the Movement, and I created tiny history booklets which were used to teach the teachers of children enrolled in Head Start. And, of course, I was interracially married, which was illegal. It was perhaps in Mississippi during those years that I understood how the daily news of disaster can become, for the spirit, a numbing assault, and that one's own activism, however modest, fighting against this tide of death, provides at least the possibility of generating a different kind of "news." A "news" that empowers rather that defeats.
There is always a moment in any kind of struggle when one feels in full bloom. Vivid. Alive. One might be blown to bits in such a moment and still be at peace. Martin Luther King, Jr., at the mountaintop. Gandhi dying with the name of God on his lips. Sojourner Truth baring her breasts at a women's rights convention in 1851. Harriet Tubman exposing her revolver to some of the slaves she had freed, who, fearing an unknown freedom, looks longingly backward to their captivity, thereby endangering the freedom of all. To be such a person or to witness anyone at this moment of transcendent presence is to know that what is human is linked, by a daring compassion, to what is divine. During my years of being close to people engaged in changing the world I have seen fear turn into courage. Sorrow into joy. Funerals into celebrations. Because whatever the consequences, people, standing side by side, have expressed who they really are, and that ultimately they believe in the love of the world and each other enough *to be that* - which is the foundation of activism.
It has become a common feeling, I believe, as we have watched our heroes falling over the years, that our own small stone of activism, which might not seem to measure up to the rugged boulders of heroism we have so admired, is a paltry offering toward the building of an edifice of hope. Many who believe this choose to withhold their offerings out of shame.
This is the tragedy of our world.
For we can do nothing substantial toward changing our course on the planet, a destructive one, without rousing ourselves, individual by individual, and bringing our small, imperfect stones to the pile.
In this regard, I have a story to tell.
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Alice Walker (Anything We Love Can Be Saved)
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Dr. Sperry, after detailed studies of split-brain patients, finally concluded that there could be two distinct minds operating in a single brain. He wrote that each hemisphere is “indeed a conscious system in its own right, perceiving, thinking, remembering, reasoning, willing, and emoting, all at a characteristically human level, and … both the left and right hemisphere may be conscious simultaneously in different, even in mutually conflicting, mental experiences that run along in parallel.” When I interviewed Dr. Michael Gazzaniga of the University of California, Santa Barbara, an authority on split-brain patients, I asked him how experiments can be done to test this theory. There are a variety of ways to communicate separately to each hemisphere without the knowledge of the other hemisphere. One can, for example, have the subject wear special glasses on which questions can be shown to each eye separately, so that directing questions to each hemisphere is easy. The hard part is trying to get an answer from each hemisphere. Since the right brain cannot speak (the speech centers are located only in the left brain), it is difficult to get answers from the right brain. Dr. Gazzaniga told me that to find out what the right brain was thinking, he created an experiment in which the (mute) right brain could “talk” by using Scrabble letters. He began by asking the patient’s left brain what he would do after graduation. The patient replied that he wanted to become a draftsman. But things got interesting when the (mute) right brain was asked the same question. The right brain spelled out the words: “automobile racer.” Unknown to the dominant left brain, the right brain secretly had a completely different agenda for the future. The right brain literally had a mind of its own. Rita Carter writes, “The possible implications of this are mind-boggling. It suggests that we might all be carrying around in our skulls a mute prisoner with a personality, ambition, and self-awareness quite different from the day-to-day entity we believe ourselves to be.” Perhaps there is truth to the oft-heard statement that “inside him, there is someone yearning to be free.” This means that the two hemispheres may even have different beliefs. For example, the neurologist V. S. Ramanchandran describes one split-brain patient who, when asked if he was a believer or not, said he was an atheist, but his right brain declared he was a believer. Apparently, it is possible to have two opposing religious beliefs residing in the same brain. Ramachandran continues: “If that person dies, what happens? Does one hemisphere go to heaven and the other go to hell? I don’t know the answer to that.
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Michio Kaku (The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind)
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What is a friend? A friend is one of the nicest things you can have – and one of the best things you can be. – Douglas Pagels, from These Are the Gifts I’d Like to Give to You (published 1999)
Have steppingstones to look forward to, milestones to look back upon, and -- in between -- do everything it takes to have an abundance of connect-the-dot days that lead to happiness. – Douglas Pagels, from 30 Beautiful Things That Are True About You
May you remember that though the roads we take can sometimes be difficult, those are often the ones that lead to the most beautiful views. – Douglas Pagels, from A Special Christmas Blessing Just for You
Love of family and love of friends is where everything beautiful begins. – Douglas Pagels, from A Special Christmas Blessing Just for You
I want you to be reminded from time to time that you are a wonderful gift, and one of the nicest things in this entire world... is your presence in it. – Douglas Pagels, from A Special Christmas Blessing Just for You
Do your part for the planet. Do all those things you know you “should” do. Our grandchildren will either have words of praise for our efforts and our foresight, or words that condemn us for forgetting that they will live here long after we are gone. Don’t overlook the obvious: This is not a dress rehearsal. This is the real thing. Our presence has an impact, but our precautions do, too. – Douglas Pagels, from Words That Shine Like Stars
The wisest people on earth are those who have a hard time recalling their worries and an easy time remembering their blessings. – Douglas Pagels, from These Are the Gifts I’d Like to Give to You
Expressing your creativity is done more by the way you are living than by any other gesture. – Douglas Pagels, from These Are the Gifts I’d Like to Give to You
If your pursuit of wealth causes you to sacrifice any aspect of your health, your priorities are heading you in the wrong direction. Don’t hesitate to make a “you” turn. – Douglas Pagels, from These Are the Gifts I’d Like to Give to You
The more you’re bothered by something that’s wrong, the more you’re empowered to change things and make them right. The more we follow that philosophy as individuals, the easier it will be to brighten our horizons outward from there, taking in our communities, our cultures, our countries, and the common ground we stand on. The crucible of peace and goodwill is far too empty, and each of us must, in some way, help to fill it. – Douglas Pagels, from These Are the Gifts I’d Like to Give to You
We can always do more and be more than we think we can. Let’s think less and imagine more. – Douglas Pagels, from These Are the Gifts I’d Like to Give to You
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Douglas Pagels
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Of course, not everyone agreed with Professor Glaude’s assessment. Joel C. Gregory, a white professor of preaching at Baylor University’s George W. Truett Theological Seminary and coauthor of What We Love about the Black Church,8 took issue with Glaude’s pronouncement of the Black Church’s death. Gregory, a self-described veteran of preaching in “more than two hundred African-American congregations, conferences, and conventions in more than twenty states each year,” found himself at a loss for an explanation of Glaude’s statements. Gregory offered six signs of vitality in the African-American church, including: thriving preaching, vitality in worship, continuing concern for social justice, active community service, high regard for education, and efforts at empowerment. Gregory contends that these signs of life can be found in African-American congregations in every historically black denomination and in varying regions across the country. He writes: Where is the obituary? I do not know any organization in America today that has the vitality of the black church. Lodges are dying, civic clubs are filled with octogenarians, volunteer organizations are languishing, and even the academy has to prove the worth of a degree. The government is divided, the schoolroom has become a war zone, mainline denominations are staggering, and evangelical megachurch juggernauts show signs of lagging. Above all this entropy stands one institution that is more vital than ever: the praising, preaching, and empowering black church.9 The back-and-forth between those pronouncing death and those highlighting life reveals the difficulty of defining “the Black Church.” In fact, we must admit that speaking of “the Black Church” remains a quixotic quest. “The Black Church” really exists as multiple black churches across denominational, theological, and regional lines. To some extent, we can define the Black Church by referring to the historically black denominations—National Baptist, Progressive Baptist, African Methodist Episcopal (AME), African Methodist Episcopal Zion (AMEZ), Church of God in Christ (COGIC), and so on. But increasingly we must recognize that one part of “the Black Church” exists as predominantly black congregations belonging to majority white denominations like the Southern Baptist Convention or even African-American members of predominantly white churches. Still, other quarters of “the Black Church” belong to nondenominational affinity groups like the many congregations involved in Word of Faith and “prosperity gospel” networks sponsored by leaders like Creflo A. Dollar Jr. and T. D. Jakes. Clearly “the Black Church” is not one thing. Black churches come in as many flavors as any other ethnic communion. Indeed, many African-Americans have experiences with many parts of the varied Black Church world.
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Thabiti M. Anyabwile (Reviving the Black Church)
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When applied to the prefrontal lobes, TMS has been shown to enhance the speed and agility of cognitive processing. The TMS bursts are like a localized jolt of caffeine, but nobody knows for sure how the magnets actually do their work.” These experiments hint, but by no means prove, that silencing a part of the left frontotemporal region could initiate some enhanced skills. These skills are a far cry from savant abilities, and we should also be careful to point out that other groups have looked into these experiments, and the results have been inconclusive. More experimental work must be done, so it is still too early to render a final judgment one way or the other. TMS probes are the easiest and most convenient instrument to use for this purpose, since they can selectively silence various parts of the brain at will without relying on brain damage and traumatic accidents. But it should also be noted that TMS probes are still crude, silencing millions of neurons at a time. Magnetic fields, unlike electrical probes, are not precise but spread out over several centimeters. We know that the left anterior temporal and orbitofrontal cortices are damaged in savants and likely responsible, at least in some part, for their unique abilities, but perhaps the specific area that must be dampened is an even smaller subregion. So each jolt of TMS might inadvertently deactivate some of the areas that need to remain intact in order to produce savantlike skills. In the future, with TMS probes we might be able to narrow down the region of the brain involved with eliciting savant skills. Once this region is identified, the next step would be to use highly accurate electrical probes, like those used in deep brain stimulation, to dampen these areas even more precisely. Then, with the push of a button, it might be possible to use these probes to silence this tiny portion of the brain in order to bring out savantlike skills. FORGETTING TO FORGET AND PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY Although savant skills may be initiated by some sort of injury to the left brain (leading to right brain compensation), this still does not explain precisely how the right brain can perform these miraculous feats of memory. By what neural mechanism does photographic memory emerge? The answer to this question may determine whether we can become savants. Until recently, it was thought that photographic memory was due to the special ability of certain brains to remember. If so, then it might be difficult for the average person to learn these memory skills, since only exceptional brains are capable of them. But in 2012, a new study showed that precisely the opposite may be true. The key to photographic memory may not be the ability of remarkable brains to learn; on the contrary, it may be their inability to forget. If this is true, then perhaps photographic memory is not such a mysterious thing after all.
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Michio Kaku (The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind)
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To give you a sense of the sheer volume of unprocessed information that comes up the spinal cord into the thalamus, let’s consider just one aspect: vision, since many of our memories are encoded this way. There are roughly 130 million cells in the eye’s retina, called cones and rods; they process and record 100 million bits of information from the landscape at any time. This vast amount of data is then collected and sent down the optic nerve, which transports 9 million bits of information per second, and on to the thalamus. From there, the information reaches the occipital lobe, at the very back of the brain. This visual cortex, in turn, begins the arduous process of analyzing this mountain of data. The visual cortex consists of several patches at the back of the brain, each of which is designed for a specific task. They are labeled V1 to V8. Remarkably, the area called V1 is like a screen; it actually creates a pattern on the back of your brain very similar in shape and form to the original image. This image bears a striking resemblance to the original, except that the very center of your eye, the fovea, occupies a much larger area in V1 (since the fovea has the highest concentration of neurons). The image cast on V1 is therefore not a perfect replica of the landscape but is distorted, with the central region of the image taking up most of the space. Besides V1, other areas of the occipital lobe process different aspects of the image, including: • Stereo vision. These neurons compare the images coming in from each eye. This is done in area V2. • Distance. These neurons calculate the distance to an object, using shadows and other information from both eyes. This is done in area V3. • Colors are processed in area V4. • Motion. Different circuits can pick out different classes of motion, including straight-line, spiral, and expanding motion. This is done in area V5. More than thirty different neural circuits involved with vision have been identified, but there are probably many more. From the occipital lobe, the information is sent to the prefrontal cortex, where you finally “see” the image and form your short-term memory. The information is then sent to the hippocampus, which processes it and stores it for up to twenty-four hours. The memory is then chopped up and scattered among the various cortices. The point here is that vision, which we think happens effortlessly, requires billions of neurons firing in sequence, transmitting millions of bits of information per second. And remember that we have signals from five sense organs, plus emotions associated with each image. All this information is processed by the hippocampus to create a simple memory of an image. At present, no machine can match the sophistication of this process, so replicating it presents an enormous challenge for scientists who want to create an artificial hippocampus for the human brain.
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Michio Kaku (The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind)
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During the chaos of the Hundred Years’ War, when northern France was decimated by English troops and the French monarchy was in retreat, a young girl from Orléans claimed to have divine instructions to lead the French army to victory. With nothing to lose, Charles VII allowed her to command some of his troops. To everyone’s shock and wonder, she scored a series of triumphs over the English. News rapidly spread about this remarkable young girl. With each victory, her reputation began to grow, until she became a folk heroine, rallying the French around her. French troops, once on the verge of total collapse, scored decisive victories that paved the way for the coronation of the new king. However, she was betrayed and captured by the English. They realized what a threat she posed to them, since she was a potent symbol for the French and claimed guidance directly from God Himself, so they subjected her to a show trial. After an elaborate interrogation, she was found guilty of heresy and burned at the stake at the age of nineteen in 1431. In the centuries that followed, hundreds of attempts have been made to understand this remarkable teenager. Was she a prophet, a saint, or a madwoman? More recently, scientists have tried to use modern psychiatry and neuroscience to explain the lives of historical figures such as Joan of Arc. Few question her sincerity about claims of divine inspiration. But many scientists have written that she might have suffered from schizophrenia, since she heard voices. Others have disputed this fact, since the surviving records of her trial reveal a person of rational thought and speech. The English laid several theological traps for her. They asked, for example, if she was in God’s grace. If she answered yes, then she would be a heretic, since no one can know for certain if they are in God’s grace. If she said no, then she was confessing her guilt, and that she was a fraud. Either way, she would lose. In a response that stunned the audience, she answered, “If I am not, may God put me there; and if I am, may God so keep me.” The court notary, in the records, wrote, “Those who were interrogating her were stupefied.” In fact, the transcripts of her interrogation are so remarkable that George Bernard Shaw put literal translations of the court record in his play Saint Joan. More recently, another theory has emerged about this exceptional woman: perhaps she actually suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy. People who have this condition sometimes experience seizures, but some of them also experience a curious side effect that may shed some light on the structure of human beliefs. These patients suffer from “hyperreligiosity,” and can’t help thinking that there is a spirit or presence behind everything. Random events are never random, but have some deep religious significance. Some psychologists have speculated that a number of history’s prophets suffered from these temporal lobe epileptic lesions, since they were convinced they talked to God.
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Michio Kaku (The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind)
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THE VISION EXERCISE Create your future from your future, not your past. WERNER ERHARD Erhard Founder of EST training and the Landmark Forum The following exercise is designed to help you clarify your vision. Start by putting on some relaxing music and sitting quietly in a comfortable environment where you won’t be disturbed. Then, close your eyes and ask your subconscious mind to give you images of what your ideal life would look like if you could have it exactly the way you want it, in each of the following categories: 1. First, focus on the financial area of your life. What is your ideal annual income and monthly cash flow? How much money do you have in savings and investments? What is your total net worth? Next . . . what does your home look like? Where is it located? Does it have a view? What kind of yard and landscaping does it have? Is there a pool or a stable for horses? What does the furniture look like? Are there paintings hanging in the rooms? Walk through your perfect house, filling in all of the details. At this point, don’t worry about how you’ll get that house. Don’t sabotage yourself by saying, “I can’t live in Malibu because I don’t make enough money.” Once you give your mind’s eye the picture, your mind will solve the “not enough money” challenge. Next, visualize what kind of car you are driving and any other important possessions your finances have provided. 2. Next, visualize your ideal job or career. Where are you working? What are you doing? With whom are you working? What kind of clients or customers do you have? What is your compensation like? Is it your own business? 3. Then, focus on your free time, your recreation time. What are you doing with your family and friends in the free time you’ve created for yourself? What hobbies are you pursuing? What kinds of vacations do you take? What do you do for fun? 4. Next, what is your ideal vision of your body and your physical health? Are you free of all disease? Are you pain free? How long do you live? Are you open, relaxed, in an ecstatic state of bliss all day long? Are you full of vitality? Are you flexible as well as strong? Do you exercise, eat good food, and drink lots of water? How much do you weigh? 5. Then, move on to your ideal vision of your relationships with your family and friends. What is your relationship with your spouse and family like? Who are your friends? What do those friendships feel like? Are those relationships loving, supportive, empowering? What kinds of things do you do together? 6. What about the personal arena of your life? Do you see yourself going back to school, getting training, attending personal growth workshops, seeking therapy for a past hurt, or growing spiritually? Do you meditate or go on spiritual retreats with your church? Do you want to learn to play an instrument or write your autobiography? Do you want to run a marathon or take an art class? Do you want to travel to other countries? 7. Finally, focus on the community you’ve chosen to live in. What does it look like when it is operating perfectly? What kinds of community activities take place there? What charitable, philanthropic, or volunteer work? What do you do to help others and make a difference? How often do you participate in these activities? Who are you helping? You can write down your answers as you go, or you can do the whole exercise first and then open your eyes and write them down. In either case, make sure you capture everything in writing as soon as you complete the exercise. Every day, review the vision you have written down. This will keep your conscious and subconscious minds focused on your vision, and as you apply the other principles in this book, you will begin to manifest all the different aspects of your vision.
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Jack Canfield (The Success Principles: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be)
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Victories build on each other. Have you stopped to ask yourself what would make today a win for you? You don’t need to hit all of your goals today. You may only need to accomplish one small goal—and that can be the victory you stand on tomorrow to accomplish your next small goal. Small victories empower us for bigger victories.
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Scott Hamilton (Finish First: Winning Changes Everything)
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Another time, while on patrol with a small four-man team from my SAS squadron, out in the deserts of North Africa, we were waiting for a delayed helicopter pick-up. A 48-hour delay when you are almost out of water, in the roasting desert, can be life-threatening. We were all severely dehydrated and getting weaker fast.
Every hour we would sip another small capful from the one remaining water bottle we each carried. Rationed carefully, methodically. To make matters worse, I had diarrhea, which was causing me to dehydrate even faster.
We finally got the call-up that our extraction would be at dawn the next day, some 20 miles away. We saddled up during the night and started to move across the desert, weighed down by kit and fatigue. I was soon struggling. Every footstep was a monumental effort of will as we shuffled across the mountains.
My sergeant, an incredible bear of a man called Chris Carter (who was tragically killed in Afghanistan; a hero to all who had served with him), could see this. He stopped the patrol, came to me, and insisted I drink the last remaining capful from his own bottle. No fuss, no show, he just made me drink it.
It was the kindness, not the actual water itself, that gave me the strength to keep going when I had nothing left inside me. Kindness inspires us, it motivates us, and creates a strong, tight team: honest, supporting, empowering.
No ego. No bravado or show. Simple goodness.
It is the very heart of a great man, and I have never forgotten that single act that night in the desert.
The thing about kindness is that it costs the giver very little but can mean the world to the receiver.
So don’t underestimate the power you have to change lives and encourage others to be better. It doesn’t take much but it requires us to value kindness as a quality to aspire to above almost everything else.
You want to be a great adventurer and expedition member in life and in the mountains? It is simple: be kind.
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Bear Grylls (A Survival Guide for Life: How to Achieve Your Goals, Thrive in Adversity, and Grow in Character)
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The demand for commercial sex will never go away. Neither will the Internet; they’re stuck with each other. It may no longer even matter anymore whether the sale of sex among consenting adults is wrong or right, immoral or empowering. What’s clear is that no good can come from pretending that the people who participate in prostitution don’t exist. That, after all, is what the killer was counting on.
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Robert P. Kolker (Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery)
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The middle layers of society, where people see each other face to face, offer a middle ground between radical individualism and extreme centralization. Our political life need not consist of a recurring choice between having the federal government invade and occupy the middle layers of society or having isolated individuals break down the institutions that compose those layers. It can and should be an arena for attempting different ways of empowering those middle institutions to help our society confront its problems.
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Yuval Levin (The Fractured Republic: Renewing America's Social Contract in the Age of Individualism)
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It’s something they teach you in the army. The only thing under your direct control is how hard you work. In other words, if you really, really buckle down today, and you get the intelligence, the planning, and the execution each a hundred percent exactly correct, then you are bound to prevail.” “Sounds empowering.” “It’s the army. What they really mean is, if you fail today, it’s completely your own fault.
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Lee Child (Blue Moon (Jack Reacher, #24))
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Our society needs to be empowered with the truth that women contribute to each and every person in one way or the other , as a mother, as a sister, as a daughter, as a wife.She is the first source of wisdom to her child after God. Her strength needs to be fortified and not stifled and education is a powerful tool in this area.
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Henrietta Newton Martin-Legal Professional & Author
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Did you know when the Bible commands us to love each other that we don’t possess that ability? We only have the ability to love when we rely on the power of the Holy Spirit to fill us. Human love is weak and frail. It comes and goes on a whim and is completely undependable. But God’s love is the most powerful force on earth. With it comes supernatural joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. The Holy Spirit is the oil the engine of our emotions is designed to run on. With a daily, dependent relationship with the Holy Spirit to empower us to love our spouses, we have the capacity for true love and can overcome any obstacle in our paths.
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Jimmy Evans (The Four Laws of Love: Guaranteed Success for Every Married Couple)
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Motivate the Workforce. Have you identified each person’s “hot button” and focused on it? Do you work personal pride and shared purpose into most communications? Are you keeping your powder dry for those urgent moments when you may need it? 8. Embrace the Front Lines. Have you made your intent clear and empowered those around you to act? Do you regularly meet with those in direct contact with customers? Is everybody able to communicate their ideas and concerns to you? 9. Build Leadership in Others. Are all managers expected to build leadership among their subordinates? Does the company culture foster the effective exercise of leadership? Are leadership development opportunities available to most, if not all, managers? 10. Manage Relations. Is the hierarchy reduced to a minimum, and does bad news travel up? Are managers self-aware and empathetic? Are autocratic, egocentric, and irritable behaviors censured? 11.
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Michael Useem (The Leader's Checklist)
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Motivate the Workforce. Have you identified each person’s “hot button” and focused on it? Do you work personal pride and shared purpose into most communications? Are you keeping your powder dry for those urgent moments when you may need it? 8. Embrace the Front Lines. Have you made your intent clear and empowered those around you to act? Do you regularly meet with those in direct contact with customers? Is everybody able to communicate their ideas and concerns to you? 9. Build Leadership in Others. Are all managers expected to build leadership among their subordinates? Does the company culture foster the effective exercise of leadership? Are leadership development opportunities available to most, if not all, managers? 10. Manage Relations. Is the hierarchy reduced to a minimum, and does bad news travel up? Are managers self-aware and empathetic? Are autocratic, egocentric, and irritable behaviors censured? 11. Identify Personal Implications. Do employees appreciate how the firm’s vision and strategy impact them individually? What private sacrifices will be necessary for achieving the common cause? How will the plan affect people’s personal livelihood and quality of work life? 12. Convey Your Character. Have you communicated your commitment to performance with integrity? Do those in the organization know you as a person, and do they appreciate your aspirations and your agendas? Have you been in the same room or at least on the same call with everybody who works with you during the past year? 13. Dampen Overoptimism and Excessive Pessimism. Have you prepared the organization for unlikely but extremely consequential events? Do you celebrate success but also guard against the by-products of excessive confidence? Have you paved the way not only for quarterly results but for long-term performance?
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Michael Useem (The Leader's Checklist)
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Setting Up Your Body, Mind, and Environment Preparing your body, mind, and space is a critical step on your channeling path. Preparation in each of these areas will support your clear channeling. Channeling in a chaotic place with a toxic body and cluttered mind makes channeling more challenging because the instrument you are using is taxed or strained. Empowering Your Body Empowering your body includes being aware of what you put into your body and how you move it. I invite you to become aware of your body’s milieu if you are not already. What do you eat and drink? What products do you put on your body? Is your body tolerating electronic device exposure, such as from the amount of time you use your phone and computer? Are these empowering your body to function optimally? Use your intuition to be impeccable with what you put into your body. Apply the discerning method I described in chapter 9 to learn about each of these things. For example, ask your body what it needs to nourish it most appropriately before eating or drinking. Expect that you will get an answer. Be still and listen. What is your body telling you? You may find that the answers you receive about what your body needs change day by day and over time. Sometimes your body needs more protein. Sometimes your body needs electrolytes and minerals, which channeling can deplete. You may also notice that your body needs more water when you channel more often. Sometimes you need more nature time with movement. Sometimes you may need to be still and silent. You can do this discernment process for anything you put in or on your body and for how you move your body. It might feel strange to do this at first, but you’ll find that it becomes second nature with practice. You might notice that when you channel, you don’t feel so great the next day. You might feel tired, be sore, or have other unusual physical or mental symptoms. Feeling lousy the next day doesn’t mean that channeling hurt you. Usually, these symptoms are channeling revealing “stuff” you can clear. Channeling can act as a detoxifier. If you experience this, you can support your detoxification pathways. Rest. Drink lots of water. Take an Epsom salt bath. Take more minerals and eat nutrient-rich foods. Gentle movement, stretching, or yoga can support your body. Ask your body what it needs. All these steps to empower your body will strengthen your channeling and your life in general.
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Helané Wahbeh (The Science of Channeling: Why You Should Trust Your Intuition and Embrace the Force That Connects Us All)
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Why mobile app hosting is fundamental for your versatile application?
Portable application hosting is fundamental for your site? Also, why it is compulsory to work?
To lay it out plainly, you have constructed a versatile application. What would be the best next step? Fostering an application isn't generally so direct as tossing it in the air; it needs a spot to live, or all the more precisely, a hosting supplier.
It's better assuming it's done on an outside server since your gadget won't deal with the power. An application that crashes each time won't acquire large number of clients, which youthful new businesses need.
Versatile app hosting services is fundamental, with a powerful server is the best arrangement. We'll take a gander at how portable applications create and why composing code isn't the entire story.
How would you foster a portable application?
It's more convoluted than you likely suspect. It comprises of two sections. Utilizing a telephone or tablet, the client can explore the application's front end by clicking buttons and moving sliders. The server-side, nonetheless, should be answerable for showing buttons and sliders.
When you click on the button, a data demand is shipped off the server. Subsequent to handling, you will figure out the outcomes. You ought to have another screen stacked in practically no time, so you will not lose significant clients pausing.
Is it important to have a versatile application?
Versatile application improvement requires something other than composing code. The client's gadget will clearly contain the whole backend if the application resembles a mini-computer with just rudimentary capacities.
Notwithstanding, a backend should exist that offers more complicated capacities, and something should empower solicitations to be satisfied there. In this manner, App Hosting is fundamental. It alludes to introducing an application on the server of a supplier, like Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Google Cloud Platform (GCP). These suppliers put the application on their servers.
There are basically no distinctions between Mobile App Hosting and hosting sites. In like manner, the versatile application hosting server processes a solicitation sent by the client. The client makes a move or sends a solicitation.
So what precisely is Code Push?
It would assist with fixing bugs when they happen toward the front. In AppStore and Google Play, an update requires an audit each time it is made. The interaction requires 30 minutes for Android and could take more time to a day for iOS.
You can robotize this and pass the survey by transferring updates to Code Push. Designers can without much of a stretch update their React Native applications utilizing the App Center.
Applications can demand refreshes utilizing the gave client SDK from the focal vault, which is a focal store for refreshes. Mechanizing refreshes permits us to fix blunders quicker, setting aside us time and cash.
How do these administrations vary?
Cloud hosting is one model. It's something we've utilized ourselves first. Then, at that point, on the grounds that a ton of organizations use it, Whence comes this? Rather than regular hosting, cloud hosting utilizes only one server rather than different servers. A virtual and actual organization of cloud servers has the application or site.
How much is portable application hosting fundamental in the cloud?
Reliability
You would lose your item assuming something happened to the server it was facilitated. Another situation includes many machines that are associated. Information will stay on the organization regardless of whether it vanishes from one server.
Efficiencies
Dissimilar to a normal server, cloud hosting can increment framework assets. This is on the grounds that the server's ability should be expanded assuming the quantity of clients increments abruptly.
Assuming you utilize a devoted server, the cycle is more adaptable.
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SAMi
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Study after study shows that employees leave organizations primarily because of poor relationships with managers, not because of pay, benefits, or other factors. How well you train, coach, empower, and support your people—and whether you show appreciation for the hard work they do each day in the trenches serving customers—makes all the difference not only in retaining your best employees, but also in creating memorable experiences for customers.
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Chip R. Bell (Managing Knock Your Socks Off Service)
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Use the act of breathing to shape air into sounds that take on the context of language that lifts and transports those who hear it, takes them beyond what they think and how they feel and empowers them to think and know even more. We’re all storytellers, really. That’s what we do. That is our power as human beings. Not to tell people how to think and feel and therefore know - but through stories allow them to discover questions within themselves. Turn off your TV and your devices and talk to each other. Share stories. Be joined, transported and transformed.
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Richard Wagamese (Embers: One Ojibway's Meditations)
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attributes of a good relationship: selfless listening calm communication holding space for each other strong trust, no need to control authenticity, no need to perform rest, laughter, and adventure together the love between you is empowering commitments to each other are clear flexible, no need to always be together both have the space to grow and change attributes of a good friend: they feel like home they are honest with you they remind you of your power they support you in your healing they have a revitalizing presence they hold a vision of your success they support you in new adventures they lift you up with joy and laughter they bring out the best version of you
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Yung Pueblo (Clarity & Connection (The Inward Trilogy))