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Two or three times a year, set aside four days, away from work, family, and technology, to check in with yourself, gain perspective, daydream, and evaluate your life.
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Art Rios (Let's Talk: ...About Making Your Life Exciting, Easier, And Exceptional)
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One is often so busy doing life that it is easy to avoid evaluating whether you are putting your energy in the direction you value most.
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Deborah Day
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Evaluate your life in its totality! We all waste so much time doing meaningless bullshit. We burn hours on social media and watching television, which by the end of the year would add up to entire days and weeks if you tabulated time like you do your taxes. You should, because if you knew the truth you’d deactivate your Facebook account STAT, and cut your cable. When
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David Goggins (Can't Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds)
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When you finally get down to making a choice from your narrowed-down list of alternatives, and you’ve cognitively evaluated the issues, and emotionally and meditatively contemplated the alternatives, it may be time to grok it. To grok a choice, you don’t think about it—you become it. Let’s say you’ve got three alternatives. Pick any one of them and stop thinking about it. Choose to think for the next one to three days that you are the person who has made the decision to pick Alternative A.
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Bill Burnett (Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life)
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Mental toughness is the ability to focus on and execute solutions, especially in the face of adversity.
Greatness rarely happens on accident. If you want to achieve excellence, you will have to act like you really want it. How? Quite simply: by dedicating time and energy into consistently doing what needs to be done.
Excuses are the antithesis of accountability.
Important decisions aren’t supposed to be easy, but don’t let that stop you from making them.
When it comes to decisions, decide to always decide.
The second we stop growing, we start dying. Stagnation easily morphs into laziness, and once a person stops trying to grow and improve, he or she is nothing more than mediocre.
Develop the no-excuse mentality.
Do not let anything interrupt those tasks that are most critical for growth in the important areas of your life. Find a way, no matter what, to prioritize your daily process goals, even when you have a viable excuse to justify not doing it.
“If you don’t evaluate yourself, how in the heck are you ever going to know what you are doing well and what you need to improve?
Those who are most successful evaluate themselves daily. Daily evaluation is the key to daily success, and daily success is the key to success in life.
If you want to achieve greatness, push yourself to the limits of your potential by continuously looking for improvements.
Within 60 seconds, replace all problem-focused thought with solution-focused thinking.
When people focus on problems, their problems actually grow and reproduce. When you train your mind to focus on solutions, guess what expands?
Talking about your problems will lead to more problems, not to solutions. If you want solutions, start thinking and talking about your solutions.
Believe that every problem, no matter how large, has at the very least a +1 solution, you will find it easier to stay on the solution side of the chalkboard.
When you set your mind to do something, find a way to get it done…no matter what!
If you come up short on your discipline, keep fighting, kicking, and scratching to improve. Find the nearest mirror and look yourself in the eye while you tell yourself, “There is no excuse, and this will not happen again.” Get outside help if needed, but never, ever give up on being disciplined.
Greatness will not magically appear in your life without significant accountability, focus, and optimism on your part. Are you ready to commit fully to turning your potential into a leadership performance that will propel you to greatness.
Mental toughness is understanding that the only true obstacles in life are self-imposed. You always have the choice to stay down or rise above. In truth, the only real obstacles to your ultimate success will come from within yourself and fall into one of the following three categories: apathy, laziness and fear.
Laziness breeds more laziness. When you start the day by sleeping past the alarm or cutting corners in the morning, you’re more likely to continue that slothful attitude later in the day.
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Jason Selk (Executive Toughness: The Mental-Training Program to Increase Your Leadership Performance)
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I love u
But you don’t understand me
You see I’m a real poet
My life is my poetry
my lovemaking is my legacy
My thoughts are not for sale
they’re about nothing
and beautiful and for free
i wish you could get that
and love that about me
because things that can’t be bought can’t be evaluated
and that makes them beyond human reach.
Untouchable
Safe
Otherworldly
Unable to be deciphered or metabolized
something metaphysical
Like a view of the sea
on a summer day on the most perfect winding road
taken in from your car seat window
A thing perfect and ready to become a part of the texture of
the fabric of Something more ethereal
like Mount Olympus
where Zeus and Athena and the rest of the immortals play
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Lana Del Rey (Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass)
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[There is] a widespread approach to ideas which Objectivism repudiates altogether: agnosticism. I mean this term in a sense which applies to the question of God, but to many other issues also, such as extra-sensory perception or the claim that the stars influence man’s destiny. In regard to all such claims, the agnostic is the type who says, “I can’t prove these claims are true, but you can’t prove they are false, so the only proper conclusion is: I don’t know; no one knows; no one can know one way or the other.”
The agnostic viewpoint poses as fair, impartial, and balanced. See how many fallacies you can find in it. Here are a few obvious ones: First, the agnostic allows the arbitrary into the realm of human cognition. He treats arbitrary claims as ideas proper to consider, discuss, evaluate—and then he regretfully says, “I don’t know,” instead of dismissing the arbitrary out of hand. Second, the onus-of-proof issue: the agnostic demands proof of a negative in a context where there is no evidence for the positive. “It’s up to you,” he says, “to prove that the fourth moon of Jupiter did not cause your sex life and that it was not a result of your previous incarnation as the Pharaoh of Egypt.” Third, the agnostic says, “Maybe these things will one day be proved.” In other words, he asserts possibilities or hypotheses with no jot of evidential basis.
The agnostic miscalculates. He thinks he is avoiding any position that will antagonize anybody. In fact, he is taking a position which is much more irrational than that of a man who takes a definite but mistaken stand on a given issue, because the agnostic treats arbitrary claims as meriting cognitive consideration and epistemological respect. He treats the arbitrary as on a par with the rational and evidentially supported. So he is the ultimate epistemological egalitarian: he equates the groundless and the proved. As such, he is an epistemological destroyer. The agnostic thinks that he is not taking any stand at all and therefore that he is safe, secure, invulnerable to attack. The fact is that his view is one of the falsest—and most cowardly—stands there can be.
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Leonard Peikoff (Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand)
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It’s not for the weak or faint of heart. It will take a toll on you. Your body will hurt. Your soul will ache. Your family life will suffer. No one will understand what you do or why you do it, but you do it. You will work nights. You will work weekends. Holidays. You will bathe the elderly, the weak. You will clean their body, their bodily fluids. You will have to know every medication, what it does, when to stop it, when to give it, and how to get it into people. You will have to know how to interpret blood tests, when the doctor must know. You will have thirty seconds to start an IV, how to hook up an EKG machine. You will need to know how to interpret tracing or when you should give or take away oxygen. You will experience joy, grief, and sorrow in a day, sometimes within the same hour. You are the glue between the patient, the family, the doctor. It’s you who will keep everyone happy, as comfortable as possible. Code blue. Trauma evaluation. Labor. Delivery. Surgery. Babies. Postpartum. Psychology. These and more will all need to be learned. And when you think you know everything, you don’t. You’re just starting. I was asked to write this essay on why
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Tijan (Logan Kade (Fallen Crest Series))
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To speak of a communication failure implies a breakdown of some sort. Yet this does not accurately portray what occurs. In truth, communication difficulties arise not from breakdown but from the characteristics of the system itself. Despite promising beginnings in our intimate relationships, we tend over time to evolve a system of communication that suppresses rather than reveals information. Life is complicated, and confirming or disconfirming the well-being of a relationship takes effort. Once we are comfortably coupled, the intense, energy-consuming monitoring of courtship days is replaced by a simpler, more efficient method. Unable to witness our partners’ every activity or verify every nuance of meaning, we evolve a communication system based on trust. We gradually cease our attentive probing, relying instead on familiar cues and signals to stand as testament to the strength of the bond: the words “I love you,” holidays with the family, good sex, special times with shared friends, the routine exchange, “How was your day?” We take these signals as representative of the relationship and turn our monitoring energies elsewhere.
...
Not only do the initiator’s negative signals tend to become incorporated into the existing routine, but, paradoxically, the initiator actively contributes to the impression that life goes on as usual. Even as they express their unhappiness, initiators work at emphasizing and maintaining the routine aspects of life with the other person, simultaneously giving signals that all is well. Unwilling to leave the relationship yet, they need to privately explore and evaluate the situation. The initiator thus contrives an appearance of participation,7 creating a protective cover that allows them to “return” if their alternative resources do not work out.
Our ability to do this—to perform a role we are no longer enthusiastically committed to—is one of our acquired talents. In all our encounters, we present ourselves to others in much the same way as actors do, tailoring our performance to the role we are assigned in a particular setting.8 Thus, communication is always distorted. We only give up fragments of what really occurs within us during that specific moment of communication.9 Such fragments are always selected and arranged so that there is seldom a faithful presentation of our inner reality. It is transformed, reduced, redirected, recomposed.10 Once we get the role perfected, we are able to play it whether we are in the mood to go on stage or not, simply by reproducing the signals.
What is true of all our encounters is, of course, true of intimate relationships. The nature of the intimate bond is especially hard to confirm or disconfirm.11 The signals produced by each partner, while acting out the partner role, tend to be interpreted by the other as the relationship.12 Because the costs of constantly checking out what the other person is feeling and doing are high, each partner is in a position to be duped and misled by the other.13 Thus, the initiator is able to keep up appearances that all is well by falsifying, tailoring, and manipulating signals to that effect. The normal routine can be used to attest to the presence of something that is not there. For example, initiators can continue the habit of saying, “I love you,” though the passion is gone. They can say, “I love you” and cover the fact that they feel disappointment or anger, or that they feel nothing at all. Or, they can say, “I love you” and mean, “I like you,” or, “We have been through a lot together,” or even “Today was a good day.
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Diane Vaughan (Uncoupling: Turning Points in Intimate Relationships)
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No one likes to be told there’s something wrong with them, especially something like their genes, which they can’t change.”
“You think there’s really something wrong with you?”
“I guess so. It’s like a disease, right? They can see it in our genes. That’s not really up for debate, is it?”
“I’m not saying your genes aren’t different,” I say. “I’m just saying that doesn’t mean one set is damaged and one set isn’t. The genes for blue eyes and brown eyes are different too, but are blue eyes ‘damaged’? It’s like they just arbitrarily decided that one kind of DNA was bad and the other was good.”
“Based on the evidence that GD behavior was worse,” Christina points out.
“Which could be caused by a lot of things,” I retort.
“I don’t know why I’m arguing with you when I’d really like for you to be right,” Christina says, laughing. “But don’t you think a bunch of smart people like these Bureau scientists could figure out the cause of bad behavior?”
“Sure,” I say. “But I think that no matter how smart, people usually see what they’re already looking for, that’s all.”
“Maybe you’re biased too,” she says. “Because you have friends--and a boyfriend--with this genetic issue.”
“Maybe.” I know I’m fumbling for an explanation, one I may not really believe, but I say it anyway: “I guess I don’t see a reason to believe in genetic damage. Will it make me treat other people better? No. The opposite, maybe.”
And besides, I see what it’s doing to Tobias, how it’s making him doubt himself, and I don’t understand how anything good can possibly come from it.
“You don’t believe things because they make your life better, you believe them because they’re true,” she points out.
“But--” I speak slowly as I mull that over--“isn’t looking at the result of a belief a good way of evaluating if it’s true?”
“Sounds like a Stiff way of thinking.” She pauses. “I guess my way is very Candor, though. God, we really can’t escape factions no matter where we go, can we?”
I shrug. “Maybe it’s not so important to escape them.”
Tobias walks into the dormitory, looking pale and exhausted, like he always does these days. His hair is pushed up on one side from lying on his pillow, and he’s still wearing what he wore yesterday. He’s been sleeping in his clothes since we came to the Bureau.
Christina gets up. “Okay, I’m going to go. And leave you two...to all this space. Alone.” She gestures at all the empty beds, and then winks conspicuously at me as she walks out of the dormitory.
Tobias smiles a little.
”
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Veronica Roth (Allegiant (Divergent, #3))
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What do you think about it?” I say.
“I don’t know. I guess it makes me angry.” She frowns. “No one likes to be told there’s something wrong with them, especially something like their genes, which they can’t change.”
“You think there’s really something wrong with you?”
“I guess so. It’s like a disease, right? They can see it in our genes. That’s not really up for debate, is it?”
“I’m not saying your genes aren’t different,” I say. “I’m just saying that doesn’t mean one set is damaged and one set isn’t. The genes for blue eyes and brown eyes are different too, but are blue eyes ‘damaged’? It’s like they just arbitrarily decided that one kind of DNA was bad and the other was good.”
“Based on the evidence that GD behavior was worse,” Christina points out.
“Which could be caused by a lot of things,” I retort.
“I don’t know why I’m arguing with you when I’d really like for you to be right,” Christina says, laughing. “But don’t you think a bunch of smart people like these Bureau scientists could figure out the cause of bad behavior?”
“Sure,” I say. “But I think that no matter how smart, people usually see what they’re already looking for, that’s all.”
“Maybe you’re biased too,” she says. “Because you have friends--and a boyfriend--with this genetic issue.”
“Maybe.” I know I’m fumbling for an explanation, one I may not really believe, but I say it anyway: “I guess I don’t see a reason to believe in genetic damage. Will it make me treat other people better? No. The opposite, maybe.”
And besides, I see what it’s doing to Tobias, how it’s making him doubt himself, and I don’t understand how anything good can possibly come from it.
“You don’t believe things because they make your life better, you believe them because they’re true,” she points out.
“But--” I speak slowly as I mull that over--“isn’t looking at the result of a belief a good way of evaluating if it’s true?”
“Sounds like a Stiff way of thinking.” She pauses. “I guess my way is very Candor, though. God, we really can’t escape factions no matter where we go, can we?”
I shrug. “Maybe it’s not so important to escape them.”
Tobias walks into the dormitory, looking pale and exhausted, like he always does these days. His hair is pushed up on one side from lying on his pillow, and he’s still wearing what he wore yesterday. He’s been sleeping in his clothes since we came to the Bureau.
Christina gets up. “Okay, I’m going to go. And leave you two...to all this space. Alone.” She gestures at all the empty beds, and then winks conspicuously at me as she walks out of the dormitory.
Tobias smiles a little.
”
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Veronica Roth (Allegiant (Divergent, #3))
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You are never too busy to make time for what you love. It’s just a matter of prioritizing—evaluating how you spend your days and dedicating time for what you value. If something is really important to you, you will find a way to fit it into your life.
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Jessica N. Turner (The Fringe Hours: Making Time for You)
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What’s the takeaway?” a neighbor of mine is always asking his kids whenever they run into something harder than they are. Good question.
I have no idea. The only thing your life teaches you is how to live your life. And that’s only if you’re very lucky. And you listen very hard. Life teaches elliptically, epigrammatically, retrospectively. If life was a professor, you’d flunk him on his evaluations. Just tell me the goddam answer, you want to say.
It’s a race between your foolishness and your allotted days. Good luck.
That’s my takeaway.
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Mark Slouka
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for the common emotional traps mentioned earlier, we offer the following tools for escape: Recency bias. Never assume today’s results predict tomorrow’s. It’s a changing world. Overconfidence. No one can consistently predict short-term movements in the market. This means you and/or the person investing your money. Loss aversion. Be a risk manager instead of a risk avoider. Believing you are avoiding risk can be a costly illusion. Paralysis by analysis. Every day you don’t invest is a day less you’ll have the power of compounding working for you. Put together an intelligent investment plan and get started. If you need help, seek out a good financial planner to assist you. The endowment effect. Just because you own it, or are a part of it, doesn’t automatically mean it’s worth more. Get an objective evaluation. Invest no more than 10 percent of your portfolio in your employer’s stock. Mental accounting. Remember that all money spends the same, regardless of where it comes from. Money already spent is a sunk cost and should play no part in making future decisions. Anchoring. Holding out until you get your price to sell an investment is playing a fool’s game. So is blindly assuming that your financial person is doing a great job without getting an objective reading of what’s really going on. Get a second opinion. Financial negligence. Take the time to learn the basics of sound investing. It’s really pretty simple stuff. Knowing it can make the difference between having a life of poverty or one of prosperity.
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Taylor Larimore (The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing)
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There are multiple ways to implement CBT in your daily life outside of an in-depth subconscious reprogram. Recall that the purpose of CBT is to uproot beliefs that no longer serve you in a positive way. Therefore, to implement CBT daily, look for techniques that allow you to reflect on yourself and your experiences more objectively. Here are some examples: • Journaling. Writing things down not only ensures that memories are accurately recorded for future reflection, but also helps us to evaluate emotions that we experienced in certain situations. From there, we can look for patterns experienced in different areas of life and core wounds that may need to be addressed. • Meditation. Meditation is a wonderful tool that can be an aid to objectively reflect upon ourselves. It helps clear out biases and brings us back to the present. It is incredibly powerful and significantly improves our ability to find contradictory proof throughout the day. • Open Communication. Discuss what you felt throughout the day with your friends, partners, or family. By doing this, you have a sounding board to help you assess the validity of the stories you tell yourself. For example, if you interpreted a friend’s reaction in one way, your partner may be able to give you a new way to look at the situation. Talking through challenges with someone who can be open and unbiased often helps to remove the untrue stories we are telling ourselves. There are a variety of ways to implement certain aspects of CBT in our daily lives, but it is essential to step back and do a deep dive when you feel strongly triggered about something. Generally, the more meaning assigned to a situation and the more pain caused by it, the deeper the trigger and the more important it is to address. By following these steps, fundamental change can be seen in all areas of your life.
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Thais Gibson (Attachment Theory: A Guide to Strengthening the Relationships in Your Life)
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I also tried to explain that I don’t allow “crap” into my life. I simply will not put up with it—whether that “crap” is toxic relationships, negative behavior, or not addressing issues directly when they need to be. If you have low-energy–value crap around you (e.g., day-old newspapers), you are dwelling in a place convoluted with an additional layer of nonsense. Try to evaluate the energetic value of the items that surround you because that directly affects the situations and relationships you bring in to your life. Low-energy items magnetize a low-energy life. The end goal is to keep the crap away and the sacred close.
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Laura Benko (The Holistic Home: Feng Shui for Mind, Body, Spirit, Space)
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A Monthly Review Template: Reflect for Clarity and Control While the Weekly Review is grounded and practical, I recommend doing a Monthly Review that is a bit more reflective and holistic. It’s a chance to evaluate the big picture and consider more fundamental changes to your goals, priorities, and systems that you might not have the chance to think about in the busyness of the day-to-day. Here’s mine: Review and update my goals. Review and update my project list. Review my areas of responsibility. Review someday/maybe tasks. Reprioritize tasks.
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Tiago Forte (Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential)
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✽ Throughout the day, practise bringing your attention back to the present moment, rather than allowing it to wander off into daydreams, rumination about the past, or worry about the future. ✽ If you have to think about something else, that’s okay, but try to keep one eye on the present moment, by noticing how you’re using your body and mind – try to be aware of each second that passes. ✽ If it helps, imagine that you’re seeing the world for the first time, or that this is your last day of life, and concentrate your attention on how you actually think and act, from moment to moment. ✽ Remind yourself that the past and future are ‘indifferent’ to you, and that the supreme good, and eudaimonia, can only exist within you, right now, in the present moment. Start by making the effort to spend more of your day being aware of the ‘here and now’, particularly your own thoughts and actions. Evaluate this process, though. What are the ‘pros and cons’ of doing this? How could you make more of the advantages and deal with or prevent any perceived disadvantages?
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Donald J. Robertson (Stoicism and the Art of Happiness: Ancient Tips for Modern Challenges (Teach Yourself))
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Their system was easy to follow and seductive, with four basic tenets. One, separate the person—the emotion—from the problem; two, don’t get wrapped up in the other side’s position (what they’re asking for) but instead focus on their interests (why they’re asking for it) so that you can find what they really want; three, work cooperatively to generate win-win options; and, four, establish mutually agreed-upon standards for evaluating those possible solutions. It was a brilliant, rational, and profound synthesis of the most advanced game theory and legal thinking of the day. For years after that book came out, everybody—including the FBI and the NYPD—focused on a problem-solving approach to bargaining interactions. It just seemed so modern and smart.
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Chris Voss (Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It)
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Setting intentions is a powerful way to direct your channeling experience and discover the relevance and meaning of channeled material for you. Intention setting is the process of focusing your undivided attention and your will toward a particular objective, aim, or plan. Intention setting is like telling the Universe what you would like your life to align with and letting the Universe figure out exactly how and when that will happen. One example of intention is, “My intention is to clear any obstacles blocking me from channeling.” An intention is different from a goal. A goal could be, “I will do my channeling practice every day for five minutes.” It is specific and measurable. You often have direct control over making it happen. Intentions, on the other hand, don’t have expectations or evaluations attached to them. You are just declaring the outcome that you envision. You aren’t defining exactly how your outcome will happen. Another example of intention is, “My intention is to feel more joy in my workday.” You can use intentions for any aspect of your life. They are essential for learning and developing your channeling abilities. One way you can use intention is to decide whether the information you receive from channeling is relevant for you. This is important because not all channeled material may be useful to you. I and others have found that some channeled material is nonsensical, redundant, or irrelevant. Some communicators can seem to have their own agendas and desires not related to the channeler or audience. Some even appear to be deceptive. Some provide unreliable information and do not take responsibility for the implications of the material (Hastings 1991, 169). Some people believe that any channeled material is true and relevant to them just because it is channeled. This is not true. I am not sharing this to scare you. However, it is essential to use your judgment and intuition to decide if the material is right for you. In essence, you can’t take channeled material at its face value. You must choose when and how to use channeled material in your life. This is true regardless of what you think the source is, the type of information that comes through, or how it arrives. Discernment is key. Intention setting can help you decide what material is relevant and meaningful for your life.
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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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Evaluate your life in its totality! We all waste so much time doing meaningless bullshit. We burn hours on social media and watching television, which by the end of the year would add up to entire days and weeks if you tabulated time like you do your taxes.
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David Goggins (Can't Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds)
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These are the factors required for expert practice, paraphrased here from Ericsson’s work: • Sustained and intensive practice of a skill for several hours a day • Practice with the specific intention of improving, not just repeating • Practice that is sustained in this manner for a matter of years—in most cases as many as ten years • Practice that includes a particular mechanism by which the results of practice can be evaluated and improved upon in future sessions • The intentional development of sophisticated feedback loops—teachers and colleagues commenting on progress; other pairs of expert eyes on the work • Appropriate care paid to the essential ingredient of “recovery time” so that there is energy to engage in the same intense practice again the next day • A considerable amount of time spent within the so-called “domain of the task.” For Corot, for example, this meant hanging out with other painters—talking about his art, talking about trends in art, getting support for the lifestyle of the artist.
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Stephen Cope (The Great Work of Your Life: A Guide for the Journey to Your True Calling)
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My commitment to you today is not based on momentary feelings, but on a full consideration of all that you bring to this relationship, and all that I need. Although there may be times when we hurt, or even hate, each other, I won’t evaluate our relationship on a day-by-day basis. I’m with you for the long haul. I’ll work to keep my occasional disillusionment or dissatisfaction in perspective, and to accept what I consider your imperfections. You are enough for me.20 I’ll try to be patient. I don’t expect our recovery process to be spontaneous or easy. I join hands with you in working to create a shared sense of our future together, one kept alive with optimism and joy. I am so sorry for hurting you. I love you and welcome you back into my life.
”
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Janis A. Spring (After the Affair, Third Edition: Healing the Pain and Rebuilding Trust When a Partner Has Been Unfaithful)
“
Fadiman theorizes that this is because of the way LSD operates on the brain. The drug provides a remarkable clarity of focus. It inspires transformation not globally but in the object of your intention. If, for example, you take the drug in a psychotherapeutic set and setting, you will focus on personal issues and may gain insights relevant to your emotional life. If you take the drug anticipating a spiritual experience and in a spiritually encouraging environment, you may have a transcendent mystical experience that causes you to re-evaluate your place in the universe. If, however, you focus on a specific intellectual problem, it is there that your insights will reside. This
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Ayelet Waldman (A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage, and My Life)
“
Exercise: Win-Win Problem Solving with a Positive Problem A great place to start bringing win-win into your life is with a positive problem, such as where to go on your next vacation or what to do on the weekend. Here’s how to do it: Decide on a positive decision you need to make that you want everyone’s input on. Invite your children into a conversation with you, and have a big piece of paper ready. State the problem simply (“We have both days open next weekend and we’d like to decide what to do”). Identify your needs (for example, “I’m going to need to take care of my body with some exercise”). Ask each person what he or she will be needing (“What do you think you will be needing next weekend?”). Write everything down. Be sure to translate their solutions into underlying needs. Ask the question, “What will that do for you/me/us?” to suss out the underlying needs. Brainstorm ideas, writing every single idea down. Do not evaluate yet! When all the ideas are out there, use the , , ? system to move quickly through the list of ideas. Practice staying grounded, listening reflectively, and using your I-messages as needed. Decide upon the plan that meets everyone’s needs. Write out your plan, so that your child can see her ideas on paper. Finally, don’t forget to check in! After your weekend is over, come back to your notes and have a conversation about how it went. Did everyone get his or her needs met? This step shows that you take your child’s input seriously and that her needs matter to you—making her more likely to cooperate voluntarily in the future, when the situation may be more emotionally heated.
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Hunter Clarke-Fields (Raising Good Humans: A Mindful Guide to Breaking the Cycle of Reactive Parenting and Raising Kind, Confident Kids)
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The needful sacrifice. These serious, excellent, upright, deeply sensitive people who are still Christians from the very heart: they owe it to themselves to try for once the experiment of living for some length of time without Christianity, they owe it to their faith in this way for once to sojourn 'in the wilderness' if only to win for themselves the right to a voice on the question whether Christianity is necessary. For the present they cleave to their native soil and thence revile the world beyond it: indeed, they are provoked and grow angry if anyone gives them to understand that what lies beyond their native soil is the whole wide world! that Christianity is, after all, only a little corner! No, your evidence will be of no weight until you have lived for years on end without Christianity, with an honest, fervent zeal to endure life in the antithesis of Christianity: until you have wandered far, far away from it. Only if you are driven back, not by homesickness but by judgment on the basis of a rigorous comparison, will your homecoming possess any significance! The men of the future will one day deal in this way with all evaluations of the past; one has voluntarily to live through them once again, and likewise their antithesis if one is at last to possess the right to pass them through the sieve.
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Friedrich Nietzsche (Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality)
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Hold a picture of yourself long and steadily enough in your mind’s eye and you will be drawn toward it,” said Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick. “Picture yourself vividly as defeated and that alone will make victory impossible. Picture yourself vividly as winning and that alone will contribute immeasurably to success. Great living starts with a picture, held in your imagination, of what you would like to do or be.” Your present self-image was built upon your own imagination pictures of yourself in the past which grew out of interpretations and evaluations which you placed upon experience. Now you are to use the same method to build an adequate self-image that you previously used to build an inadequate one. Set aside a period of 30 minutes each day where you can be alone and undisturbed. Relax and make yourself as comfortable as possible. Now close your eyes and exercise your imagination. Many people find they get better results if they imagine themselves sitting before a large motion picture screen—and imagine that they are seeing a motion picture of themselves. The important thing is to make these pictures as vivid and as detailed as possible. You want your mental pictures to approximate actual experience as much as possible. The way to do this is pay attention to small details, sights, sounds, objects, in your imagined environment. One of my patients was using this exercise to overcome her fear of the dentist. She was unsuccessful, until she began
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Maxwell Maltz (Psycho-Cybernetics Deluxe Edition: The Original Text of the Classic Guide to a New Life)
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Some people have a perpetual problem. They always have a sad song. If you allow them, they’ll use you as a trash can to dump all their garbage in. You spend an hour with them and you feel like you’ve run a marathon. They’re energy suckers. You leave them feeling drained and worn out.
You cannot continue to deal with them day after day if you expect to reach your highest potential. You won’t lift off. You won’t thrust forward into the good things God has in store if you’re weighted down, letting people dump their loads on you. They’ll make you discouraged and drain your energy.
It’s hard enough just to keep yourself cheered up. You’re not responsible for their happiness. Sure, there are times when we need to sow a seed and have a listening ear and take time to love people back into wholeness. But that should be for a season and not an ongoing drama. You shouldn’t spend every day listening to friends complain about their spouses or their neighbors.
If you do, your life will be like an episode of Guiding Light, Jersey Shore, and The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills all put together. You have enough drama in your life without listening to everyone else’s drama. You can’t allow someone to put that negativity in you day after day if you expect to soar.
You need to evaluate the people you’re spending time with. Are they lifters and encouragers? Do they make you feel better? Do you leave their company feeling inspired and happier, or are they dragging you down, making you feel drained, and sapping your energy?
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Joel Osteen (You Can You Will: 8 Undeniable Qualities of a Winner)
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Jesus said in John 6:27, “Don’t work for the food that perishes but for the food that lasts for eternal life.” Yet many of us continue to labor to the point of exhaustion for that which does not satisfy. Are you so focused on your work that you are neglecting relationships? Have accomplishments, money, or position become an idol to you? Are you sacrificing health and spiritual growth for success? Are you seeking God and His kingdom first, or do promotions, pay raises, and accolades top your list? Ask God to help you honestly evaluate your work ethic today.
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Walk Thru the Bible (Journey Day by Day: Living Life Well)
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If internet and social media can be down for five days and during those five days , you don’t have people to talk to . You need to assess and evaluate your life. No matter how addicted you are on social media, you need to bond with physical people around you. There is no connection that beats human contact. Don’t lose what differentiate us from robots. Allow yourself to feel. Never shutdown your emotions or feelings.
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D.J. Kyos
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The flock of the Lord is in very bad shape. As Jeremiah lamented, the sheep have become lost sheep because their shepherds have led them astray by making them turn aside to the mountains and hills, to things that will keep them excited and keep them moving. They are being led to the things of the Lord, but not to the Lord Himself. Many are now lukewarm because they have so much, so many distractions. Others are lukewarm because they are worn out from all the hype and continuous running to and fro. “You are right about your generation. Even so, the biggest victories can only come with the biggest battles. Your generation has failed, but it does not have to end in failure. Those who repent will be given the grace to change. Then they will be given one of the greatest honors of the ages—they will be allowed to fight in the last battle. All of the prophets and righteous ones have been waiting to see these days. You are living them. “I was surprised by the condition that you, and the few who have made it this far, have come in. But now I see strength. If the others who come have this and can keep it, then you will prevail.” “What is that strength?” I asked. “You are quick to repent. You are not afraid of an accurate evaluation of yourself. You do not try to hide your faults or make excuses for them. That is a foundation that victory can be built upon. Only with this accurate evaluation will you fully embrace the cross as your hope. The power of God is the cross, and those who live the life of the cross will live in power. “To be changed into the image of the Lord, you must see His glory with an unveiled face. Excuses are the biggest veil that keep people from seeing Him as He is, and from seeing themselves as they are. Those with this veil do not change. Even if they see His glory it is distorted through the veil they wear, so they are not changed by it. If you keep this humility it will not take long to get you ready for your purpose.
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Rick Joyner (The Path: Fire on the Mountain, Book 1)
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Accountability With Friends In many areas of life there's a battle between doing the thing that will work very effectively to solve a specific problem in the short term versus doing that which will take longer to become effective but will solve many problems in the long term. For example, building up willpower is extremely slow, but once you have a high capacity for it, you can do a lot of difficult things outside your routine. If you have low or normal willpower, you will rely exclusively on habits to get a lot done. Similarly, it's a good practice to build up the ability to be accountable entirely to yourself, but if you're unable to do that, or for habits that are very long term or very difficult, you can ask a friend to help you be accountable. A good friend of mine, Leo Babauta, who is a master of habits and is excellent at being accountable to himself, asked me to help him stay accountable for his diet because he was trying to eat a perfect diet for a full six months. That's a very difficult challenge, but having someone to stay accountable to makes it slightly easier. Earlier this year I wanted to completely eliminate all non-work web browsing for three months, so I asked a friend to hold me accountable. It worked, and I'm not sure I would have been able to do it without him. When asking a friend to hold you accountable, make it concrete and easy for him. It must be concrete, because you don't want to impose on him to constantly evaluate your progress. Either Leo ate sugar or he didn't. Either I visited a web site or I didn't. You must also report your progress at regular intervals. Leo created a shared spreadsheet where I could see whether he ate properly each day. Last, there must be consequences for failure. The primary purpose of having consequences is that they make the agreement official and definite. People remember bets, but forget offhand claims. My friend bet me $50 I couldn't stay off the web sites for three months. Without the bet, I doubt he would have kept track of it if he had just said, “I don't think you can do it”. Since your friend is doing you a favor, be willing to make a one-sided bet where he has no downside. Reserve accountability for only the most difficult and important of your habits. It increases compliance, but at the cost of coordinating (albeit minimally) with someone else. It's also a missed opportunity to build the habit of self-reliance, so use it only when there's serious concern that you may not stick with the habit without it. Habitualizing
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Tynan (Superhuman by Habit: A Guide to Becoming the Best Possible Version of Yourself, One Tiny Habit at a Time)
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If, for example, you take the drug in a psychotherapeutic set and setting, you will focus on personal issues and may gain insights relevant to your emotional life. If you take the drug anticipating a spiritual experience and in a spiritually encouraging environment, you may have a transcendent mystical experience that causes you to re-evaluate your place in the universe. If, however, you focus on a specific intellectual problem, it is there that your insights will reside.
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Ayelet Waldman (A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage, and My Life)
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Although I do not consider myself a religious person, I recently found that Lent satisfies my spiritual needs and presents an opportunity. It sets aside a forty-day period to test a sustainable idea, or to evaluate a personal attachment to a habit.
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Bea Johnson (Zero Waste Home: The Ultimate Guide to Simplifying Your Life by Reducing Your Waste (A Simple Guide to Sustainable Living))
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Time is the wrong metric to use when we evaluate work. Because it’s not just about how much time you work, it’s about how effectively you use that time.
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Aubrey Marcus (Own the Day, Own Your Life: Optimised practices for waking, working, learning, eating, training, playing, sleeping and sex)
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Evaluate your life in its totality! We all waste so much time doing meaningless bullshit. We burn hours on social media and watching television, which by the end of the year would add up to entire days and weeks if you tabulated time like you do your taxes. You should, because if you knew the truth you’d deactivate your Facebook account STAT, and cut your cable. When you find yourself having frivolous conversations or becoming ensnared in activities that don’t better you in any way, move the fuck on!
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David Goggins (Can't Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds)
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