Examination Motivational Quotes

The most difficult examinations are the ones that require us to take a hard look at ourselves and confront the things we don’t like.

Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult....Examine your words well, and you will find that even when you have no motive to be false, it is a very hard thing to say the exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings -- much harder than to say something fine about them which is not the exact truth.

I hope when people ask what you're going to do with your English degree and/or creative writing degree you'll say: 'Continue my bookish examination of the contradictions and complexities of human motivation and desire;' or maybe just: 'Carry it with me, as I do everything that matters.' And then smile very serenely until they say, 'Oh.

If you examine your motive for doing anything, you'll soon discover that your reason is that you believe it will make you happy.

The more one sees of human fate and the more one examines its secret springs of action, the more one is impressed by the strength of unconscious motives and by the limitations of free choice

When you act like a nice guy, everyone examines your motives with a microscope. When you act like a conscienceless louse, they generally take you at face value.

If tempted by something that feels “altruistic,” examine your motives and root out that self-deception. Then, if you still want to do it, wallow in it!

she was still uncomfortable about her own motives and afraid to examine them too deeply,

If I had examined my motivations on this one, I probably wouldn’t have liked what I found, so I didn’t.

I’m not much older now than I was then, but in a lot of ways, obviously, I’m a different person. So it is easy for me to recognize that I made some good decisions and some bad ones. But it’s telling that, with this, I knew it was a bad idea even then but I still couldn’t control myself. Knowing something is a bad idea does not always decrease the odds that you will do it. If I had examined my motivations on this one, I probably wouldn’t have liked what I found, so I didn’t.

If you look at their intentions, examine their motives, and scrutinize what brings them contentment – how can people hide who they are? How can they hide who they really are?

For a writer, it seems a help rather than a hindrance to be at least a little crazy. Who but a crazy person would carve out a very private, quiet place in the world, only to pour his/her innermost thoughts and emotions onto a page for the entire world to examine? Even in fiction, we give a map to our most secret feelings. Why do writers do it? Perhaps because we'd be crazier still if we didn't.

I hope you will be surprised and knowing at once. I hope you'll always have love. I hope you'll always have a good sense of humour. I hope when people ask what you're going to do with your English and/or creative writing degree you'll say: Continue my bookish examination of the contradictions and complexities of human motivation and desire; or maybe just: Carry it with me, as I do everything that matters.

All beliefs are worth examining. The key is to notice your beliefs, and test them – not necessarily discard them.

Health like character, can't be judged from appearances. Proper examination is needed in both cases.

To begin with, this case should never have come to trial. The state has not produced one iota of medical evidence that the crime Tom Robinson is charged with ever took place... It has relied instead upon the testimony of two witnesses, whose evidence has not only been called into serious question on cross-examination, but has been flatly contradicted by the defendant. Now, there is circumstantial evidence to indicate that Mayella Ewel was beaten - savagely, by someone who led exclusively with his left. And Tom Robinson now sits before you having taken the oath with the only good hand he possesses... his RIGHT. I have nothing but pity in my heart for the chief witness for the State. She is the victim of cruel poverty and ignorance. But my pity does not extend so far as to her putting a man's life at stake, which she has done in an effort to get rid of her own guilt. Now I say "guilt," gentlemen, because it was guilt that motivated her. She's committed no crime - she has merely broken a rigid and time-honored code of our society, a code so severe that whoever breaks it is hounded from our midst as unfit to live with. She must destroy the evidence of her offense. But what was the evidence of her offense? Tom Robinson, a human being. She must put Tom Robinson away from her. Tom Robinson was to her a daily reminder of what she did. Now, what did she do? She tempted a *****. She was white, and she tempted a *****. She did something that, in our society, is unspeakable. She kissed a black man. Not an old uncle, but a strong, young ***** man. No code mattered to her before she broke it, but it came crashing down on her afterwards. The witnesses for the State, with the exception of the sheriff of Maycomb County have presented themselves to you gentlemen, to this court in the cynical confidence that their testimony would not be doubted, confident that you gentlemen would go along with them on the assumption... the evil assumption that all Negroes lie, all Negroes are basically immoral beings, all ***** men are not to be trusted around our women. An assumption that one associates with minds of their caliber, and which is, in itself, gentlemen, a lie, which I do not need to point out to you. And so, a quiet, humble, respectable *****, who has had the unmitigated TEMERITY to feel sorry for a white woman, has had to put his word against TWO white people's! The defendant is not guilty - but somebody in this courtroom is. Now, gentlemen, in this country, our courts are the great levelers. In our courts, all men are created equal. I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and of our jury system - that's no ideal to me. That is a living, working reality! Now I am confident that you gentlemen will review, without passion, the evidence that you have heard, come to a decision and restore this man to his family. In the name of GOD, do your duty. In the name of God, believe... Tom Robinson

If you are going to judge others it is wisest to do so individually not collectively and on your own direct experience of them personally. But first - and throughout - examine yourself closely. Blurred vision can often occur due to the lens, perspective and perceptions of the viewer projected onto the object that it sees. Be wary of taking to the judges seat. Above all meet at treat yourself and everyone else mindfully, compassionately with humanity.

That a work of the imagination has to be “really” about some problem is, again, an heir of Socialist Realism. To write a story for the sake of storytelling is frivolous, not to say reactionary. The demand that stories must be “about” something is from Communist thinking and, further back, from religious thinking, with its desire for self-improvement books as simple-minded as the messages on samplers. The phrase “political correctness” was born as Communism was collapsing. I do not think this was chance. I am not suggesting that the torch of Communism has been handed on to the political correctors. I am suggesting that habits of mind have been absorbed, often without knowing it. There is obviously something very attractive about telling other people what to do: I am putting it in this nursery way rather than in more intellectual language because I see it as nursery behavior. Art — the arts generally — are always unpredictable, maverick, and tend to be, at their best, uncomfortable. Literature, in particular, has always inspired the House committees, the Zhdanovs, the fits of moralizing, but, at worst, persecution. It troubles me that political correctness does not seem to know what its exemplars and predecessors are; it troubles me more that it may know and does not care. Does political correctness have a good side? Yes, it does, for it makes us re-examine attitudes, and that is always useful. The trouble is that, with all popular movements, the lunatic fringe so quickly ceases to be a fringe; the tail begins to wag the dog. For every woman or man who is quietly and sensibly using the idea to examine our assumptions, there are 20 rabble-rousers whose real motive is desire for power over others, no less rabble-rousers because they see themselves as anti-racists or feminists or whatever.

Nobody can advise and help you, nobody. There is only one single means. Go inside yourself. Discover the motive that bids you write; examine whether it sends its roots down to the deepest places of your heart, confess to yourself whether you would have to die if writing were denied you. This before all: ask yourself in the quietest hour

In examinations, the foolish ask questions the wise cannot answer. -Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900)

Still, the conscientious detective is obliged to examine the question of motive in a new light, to place it within the matrix of our present unusual circumstance.

Take a step back. Life gets distorted when you examine things from too close up.

Your motivations--get that promotion, throw the best parties, run for public office--aren't impersonal abstractions but powerfully reflect who you are and what you focus on. An individual's goals figure prominently in the theories of personality first developed by the Harvard psychologist Henry Murray. According to his successor David McClelland, what Friedrich Nietzsche called "the will to power," which he considered the major driving force behind human behavior, is one of the three basic motivations, along with achievement and affiliation, that differentiate us as individuals. A simple experiment show show these broad emotional motivations can affect what you pay attention to or ignore on very basic levels. When they examine images of faces that express different kinds of emotion, power-oriented subjects are drawn to nonconfrontational visages, such as "surprise faces," rather than to those that suggest dominance, as "anger faces" do. In contrast, people spurred by affiliation gravitate toward friendly or joyful faces.

Nobody can advise and help you, nobody. There is only one single means. Go inside yourself. Discover the motive that bids you write; examine whether it sends its roots down to the deepest places of your heart, confess to yourself whether you would have to die if writing were denied you.

When carefully examined… I recognize that the Greatest things that have ever occurred in my Life could not have happened if not built upon ruins of the most difficult things that had occurred in my life. And in this recognition I find myself fully Grateful for the totality of my existence.

Though reason must guide us in laying down standards and laws regarding animals, and in examining the arguments of those who reject such standards, it is usually best in any moral inquiry to start with the original motivation, which in the case of animals we may without embarrassment call love. Human beings love animals as only the higher love the lower, the knowing love the innocent, and the strong love the vulnerable. When we wince at the suffering of animals, that feeling speaks well of us even when we ignore it, and those who dismiss love for our fellow creatures as mere sentimentality overlook a good and important part of our humanity.

Just as Saint Augustine recognized that sin begins as an intention, we profilers saw that violent sexual crimes originate in fantasy. Our next challenge was to understand why certain individuals allowed their fantasies to lead them to cross the normal bounds of acceptable behavior. To do that, we had to examine their motivations.

The first step in trying to get along with other people is to realize that each is doing what he wants to do. Examine his actions, uncover the motives for his acts, find out why he wants to do as he does. And, as we’ll see further along, this will give you the opportunity to earn his respect and cooperation to an extent that others can never obtain.

I hope when people ask what you’re going to do with your English and/or creative writing degree you’ll say: Continue my bookish examination of the contradictions and complexities of human motivation and desire; or maybe just: Carry it with me, as I do everything that matters.

The conventional view of a person's self-command structure is definitely bureaucratic, on the model of a corporation or an army, where superior agents simply pass commands down to inferior ones. However, closer examination of corporations and armies has shown that despite the establishment of hierarchical command structures, they remain marketplaces where officers must motivate rather than simply ordering behaviors.

If the world you are seeing is not the world you want, therefore, it’s time to examine your values. It’s time to rid yourself of your current presuppositions. It’s time to let go. It might even be time to sacrifice what you love best, so that you can become who you might become, instead of staying who you are.

As I developed as a CEO, I found two key techniques to be useful in minimizing politics. 1. Hire people with the right kind of ambition. The cases that I described above might involve people who are ambitious but not necessarily inherently political. All cases are not like this. The surest way to turn your company into the political equivalent of the U.S. Senate is to hire people with the wrong kind of ambition. As defined by Andy Grove, the right kind of ambition is ambition for the company’s success with the executive’s own success only coming as a by-product of the company’s victory. The wrong kind of ambition is ambition for the executive’s personal success regardless of the company’s outcome. 2. Build strict processes for potentially political issues and do not deviate. Certain activities attract political behavior. These activities include:   Performance evaluation and compensation   Organizational design and territory   Promotions Let’s examine each case and how you might build and execute a process that insulates the company from bad behavior and politically motivated outcomes.

Persistent problems, however unpleasant they may seem, contain the unprocessed and unexamined thoughts and feelings that, if left alone, keep you from your greatness. That’s why the pain, emptiness, and longing you feel can be your greatest gift—it can motivate you to examine parts of yourself that have been overlooked, forgotten, or hidden. It’s the irritant of sand in the oyster, which is the impetus for the pearl. In walking the conscious life path, you reveal your deepest Reality, layer by layer. You come home.

Persistent problems, however unpleasant they may seem, contain the unpro¬cessed and unexamined thoughts and feelings that, if left alone, keep you from your greatness. That’s why the pain, emptiness, and longing you feel can be your greatest gift—it can motivate you to examine parts of yourself that have been overlooked, forgotten, or hidden. It’s the irritant of sand in the oyster, which is the impetus for the pearl. In walking the conscious life path, you reveal your deepest Reality, layer by layer. You come home.

People tend to spend so much time focusing on what they feel they can't do, rather examining the true potential of what they can.

Upon examination of a people’s history, beware the story teller’s motives.

Prepare YOURSELF for today, as if the examination is tomorrow

When you come to examine into the actuating motives for any line of human endeavor you will find that vanity figures about ninety per cent directly or indirectly, in the assay.

I see Freud as energized by three motivations: pleasure in classifying, lust for problem solving, passion for system building.

What do you resist examining up close? How can you ground yourself so you feel safe enough to try?

Examine your motives to make sure you’re not showing off when you do your good deeds, only to be admired by others; otherwise, you will lose the reward of your heavenly Father.

Far be it from me to examine the motives of such a consistent patron of the applied arts. After all, the very rich aren’t like you and me.

Ultimately, the thrill created by being told ‘You’re so clever’ gave way to an increase in anxiety and a drop in self-esteem, motivation and performance.

We must transcend this recent model of a society where endless productivity is the ultimate good, and examine the scientific understanding of the raw motivations of human beings.

She examine it to him, simply as he appreciated to have any component read, slowly and fantastically, and two or three times over, with motives of every part as she proceeded

To get to know yourself better, examine what you really want from life and become true to yourself, Be clear and honest and work hard to make it.

Epicurus founded a school of philosophy which placed great emphasis on the importance of pleasure. "Pleasure is the beginning and the goal of a happy life," he asserted, confirming what many had long thought, but philosophers had rarely accepted. Vulgar opinion at once imagined that the pleasure Epicurus had in mind involved a lot of money, sex, drink and debauchery (associations that survive in our use of the word 'Epicurean'). But true Epicureanism was more subtle. Epicurus led a very simple life, because after rational analysis, he had come to some striking conclusions about what actually made life pleasurable - and fortunately for those lacking a large income, it seemed that the essential ingredients of pleasure, however elusive, were not very expensive. The first ingredient was friendship. 'Of all the things that wisdom provides to help one live one's entire life in happiness, the greatest by far is the possession of friendship,' he wrote. So he bought a house near Athens where he lived in the company of congenial souls. The desire for riches should perhaps not always be understood as a simple hunger for a luxurious life, a more important motive might be the wish to be appreciated and treated nicely. We may seek a fortune for no greater reason than to secure the respect and attention of people who would otherwise look straight through us. Epicurus, discerning our underlying need, recognised that a handful of true friends could deliver the love and respect that even a fortune may not. Epicurus and his friends located a second secret of happiness: freedom. In order not to have to work for people they didn't like and answer to potentially humiliating whims, they removed themselves from employment in the commercial world of Athens ('We must free ourselves from the prison of everyday affairs and politics'), and began what could best have been described as a commune, accepting a simpler way of life in exchange for independence. They would have less money, but would never again have to follow the commands of odious superiors. The third ingredient of happiness was, in Epicurus's view, to lead an examined life. Epicurus was concerned that he and his friends learn to analyse their anxieties about money, illness, death and the supernatural. There are few better remedies for anxiety than thought. In writing a problem down or airing it in conversation we let its essential aspects emerge. And by knowing its character, we remove, if not the problem itself, then its secondary, aggravating characteristics: confusion, displacement, surprise. Wealth is of course unlikely ever to make anyone miserable. But the crux of Epicurus's argument is that if we have money without friends, freedom and an analysed life, we will never be truly happy. And if we have them, but are missing the fortune, we will never be unhappy.

When we examine , not the language of propaganda, but the witness of the combatants themselves, religion does not occupy the first place. Their motivations are more often secular, they mention their sympathy for a population reduced to poverty, the victims of the whim of ruling classes that live in luxury and corruption- rulers able to maintain themselves in power thanks only to the support of the American government ( as in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt). They speak of the members of their families or their local communities who have suffered or died by the fault of these governments ( and thus of their protectors); and they want to avenge them. The thirst for vengeance did not wait for Islam to appear in the world, and the appeal to the law of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is universal.

Next, we must examine our impulses to act—that is, our motivations. Are we doing things for the right reasons? Or do we act because we haven’t stopped to think? Or do we believe that we have to do something?

There is no doubt, that in this world, there are all sorts of people who look nice, but are empty inside; who do not feel either moral or spiritual aspirations in addition to the physical gifts with which nature blessed them ... But Corneliu Codreanu, his magnificient physique corresponds to an exceptional inner wholeness. Exclamations of admiration from men left him indifferent. Praise angered him. He had only a fighter's greatness and the ambition of great reformers... The characteristic of his soul was goodness. If you want to penetrate the initial motive which prompted Corneliu Codreanu to throw in a fight so hard and almost desperate, the best answer is that he did it out of compassion for suffering people. His heart bled with thousands of injuries to see the misery in which peasants and workers struggled. His love for the people - unlimited! He was sensitive to any suffering the working masses endured. He had a cult for the humble, and showed an infinite attention to their aspirations and their hopes. The smallest window, the most trivial complaint, were examined with the same seriousness with which he addressed grave political problems.

At least chemists can turn to analysis; sufferers from an unknown disease can call in a doctor. And criminal cases are more or less clarified by the examining magistrate. But the disconcerting actions of our fellow-men rarely reveal their motives.

Examine your words well, and you will find that even when you have no motive to be false, it is a very hard thing to say the exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings—much harder than to say something fine about them which is NOT the exact truth.

We understand the characters of people who do not interest us; how can we ever grasp that of a person who is an intimate part of our existence, whom after a little we no longer distinguish in any way from ourselves, whose motives provide us with an inexhaustible supply of anxious hypotheses which we perpetually reconstruct. Springing from somewhere beyond our understanding, our curiosity as to the woman whom we love overleaps the bounds of that woman’s character, which we might if we chose but probably will not choose to stop and examine.

Most such criticism and confrontation, usually made impulsively in anger or annoyance, does more to increase the amount of confusion in the world than the amount of enlightenment. For the truly loving person the act of criticism or confrontation does not come easily; to such a person it is evident that the act has great potential for arrogance. To confront one’s beloved is to assume a position of moral or intellectual superiority over the loved one, at least so far as the issue at hand is concerned. Yet genuine love recognizes and respects the unique individuality and separate identity of the other person. (I will say more about this later.) The truly loving person, valuing the uniqueness and differentness of his or her beloved, will be reluctant indeed to assume, “I am right, you are wrong; I know better than you what is good for you.” But the reality of life is such that at times one person does know better than the other what is good for the other, and in actuality is in a position of superior knowledge or wisdom in regard to the matter at hand. Under these circumstances the wiser of the two does in fact have an obligation to confront the other with the problem. The loving person, therefore, is frequently in a dilemma, caught between a loving respect for the beloved’s own path in life and a responsibility to exercise loving leadership when the beloved appears to need such leadership. The dilemma can be resolved only by painstaking self-scrutiny, in which the lover examines stringently the worth of his or her “wisdom” and the motives behind this need to assume leadership. “Do I really see things clearly or am I operating on murky assumptions? Do I really understand my beloved? Could it not be that the path my beloved is taking is wise and that my perception of it as unwise is the result of limited vision on my part? Am I being self-serving in believing that my beloved needs redirection?” These are questions that those who truly love must continually ask themselves. This self-scrutiny, as objective as possible, is the essence of humility or meekness. In the words of an anonymous fourteenth-century British monk and spiritual teacher, “Meekness in itself is nothing else than a true knowing and feeling of

In one of his puckish moods Saul talked the president of a university into letting him anonymously take an examination being administered to candidates for a doctorate in community organization. "Three of the questions were on the philosophy of and motivations of Saul Alinsky," writes Saul. "I answered two of them incorrectly.

School is about gaining knowledge. Relationships are about gaining knowledge. Talents and abilities are about gaining knowledge. The world in its universe is about gaining knowledge. Your very existence in time is about gaining knowledge. If the days are passing by and you are not gaining knowledge, seriously stop and examine why not.

I was chiefly disgusted with modern history. For having strictly examined all the persons of greatest name in the courts of princes, for a hundred years past, I found how the world had been misled by prostitute writers, to ascribe the greatest exploits in war, to cowards; the wisest counsel, to fools; sincerity, to flatterers; Roman virtue, to betrayers of their country; piety, to atheists; chastity, to sodomites; truth, to informers: how many innocent and excellent persons had been condemned to death or banishment by the practising of great ministers upon the corruption of judges, and the malice of factions: how many villains had been exalted to the highest places of trust, power, dignity, and profit: how great a share in the motions and events of courts, councils, and senates might be challenged by bawds, whores, pimps, parasites, and buffoons. How low an opinion I had of human wisdom and integrity, when I was truly informed of the springs and motives of great enterprises and revolutions in the world, and of the contemptible accidents to which they owed their success.

Then Christianity isn’t really opposed to science,” offered Anne cautiously. “No, it isn’t opposed to science at all,” concluded Melchizedek. “On the contrary, it motivates the examination of everything that God has created. But it also urges us to be morally prepared for the power that arises with that knowledge. And that’s a lesson human beings are far from grasping.

There is a vast difference between being a Christian and being a disciple. The difference is commitment. Motivation and discipline will not ultimately occur through listening to sermons, sitting in a class, participating in a fellowship group, attending a study group in the workplace or being a member of a small group, but rather in the context of highly accountable, relationally transparent, truth-centered, small discipleship units. There are twin prerequisites for following Christ - cost and commitment, neither of which can occur in the anonymity of the masses. Disciples cannot be mass produced. We cannot drop people into a program and see disciples emerge at the end of the production line. It takes time to make disciples. It takes individual personal attention. Discipleship training is not about information transfer, from head to head, but imitation, life to life. You can ultimately learn and develop only by doing. The effectiveness of one's ministry is to be measured by how well it flourishes after one's departure. Discipling is an intentional relationship in which we walk alongside other disciples in order to encourage, equip, and challenge one another in love to grow toward maturity in Christ. This includes equipping the disciple to teach others as well. If there are no explicit, mutually agreed upon commitments, then the group leader is left without any basis to hold people accountable. Without a covenant, all leaders possess is their subjective understanding of what is entailed in the relationship. Every believer or inquirer must be given the opportunity to be invited into a relationship of intimate trust that provides the opportunity to explore and apply God's Word within a setting of relational motivation, and finally, make a sober commitment to a covenant of accountability. Reviewing the covenant is part of the initial invitation to the journey together. It is a sobering moment to examine whether one has the time, the energy and the commitment to do what is necessary to engage in a discipleship relationship. Invest in a relationship with two others for give or take a year. Then multiply. Each person invites two others for the next leg of the journey and does it all again. Same content, different relationships. The invitation to discipleship should be preceded by a period of prayerful discernment. It is vital to have a settled conviction that the Lord is drawing us to those to whom we are issuing this invitation. . If you are going to invest a year or more of your time with two others with the intent of multiplying, whom you invite is of paramount importance. You want to raise the question implicitly: Are you ready to consider serious change in any area of your life? From the outset you are raising the bar and calling a person to step up to it. Do not seek or allow an immediate response to the invitation to join a triad. You want the person to consider the time commitment in light of the larger configuration of life's responsibilities and to make the adjustments in schedule, if necessary, to make this relationship work. Intentionally growing people takes time. Do you want to measure your ministry by the number of sermons preached, worship services designed, homes visited, hospital calls made, counseling sessions held, or the number of self-initiating, reproducing, fully devoted followers of Jesus? When we get to the shore's edge and know that there is a boat there waiting to take us to the other side to be with Jesus, all that will truly matter is the names of family, friends and others who are self initiating, reproducing, fully devoted followers of Jesus because we made it the priority of our lives to walk with them toward maturity in Christ. There is no better eternal investment or legacy to leave behind.

A lot of time and energy went into dismantling the dynamic between Arthur and Ben, identifying the leader of the pack. Understanding their motives would bring closure to the community, and the information could prevent a recurrence at another school. The country’s most renowned psychologists examined the evidence collected in the aftermath of the attack on Bradley—Ben’s and Arthur’s journals, their academic records, interviews with neighbors and friends of the family—and every single one arrived at the same conclusion: Arthur called it.

The dilemma can be resolved only by painstaking self-scrutiny, in which the lover examines stringently the worth of his or her “wisdom” and the motives behind this need to assume leadership. “Do I really see things clearly or am I operating on murky assumptions? Do I really understand my beloved? Could it not be that the path my beloved is taking is wise and that my perception of it as unwise is the result of limited vision on my part? Am I being self-serving in believing that my beloved needs redirection?” These are questions that those who truly love must continually ask themselves.

Still, self-giving is not always so simple in practice. People sometimes give generously of themselves, without experiencing the happiness promised by the Gospel. Instead they encounter sorrow, fatigue, and frustration. Their own needs are forgotten; they themselves are ignored. We have all heard a generous person explode with anger and exclaim. “I’m fed up with waiting on everyone else, with having to do all the dirty work, with being taken for granted and never so much as hearing ‘thank you’!” Self-giving can end like that when it is not freely chosen or when it is chosen out of some motive other than disinterested love—fear of saying no and not being accepted, emotional dependence, a perfectionist streak rooted in pride, a sense of indebtedness, the notion that to save others we need to please them, or else the desire to teach others a lesson by shaming them. There is even such a thing as calculated generosity that resembles a kind of unconscious bargaining: I will give myself to you, provided you give me the emotional gratification or the ego boost that I crave. It is important to examine our motives and rid ourselves of such imperfect ones, so that our self-giving can become truly free and disinterested.

Have you been infected with the toxin of denial? Here are the top five signs to help you find out: If you think you are above certain things happening to you, you are in denial. Pride goes before destruction, and haughtiness before a fall. PROVERBS 16:18 If you think you have the power to plan your own future, you are in denial. We can make our own plans, but the LORD gives the right answer. PROVERBS 16:1 If you think you are the only one who can get it right, you are in denial. People may be pure in their own eyes, but the LORD examines their motives. PROVERBS 16:2 If you think you are never wrong and it’s always someone else’s fault, you are in denial. Pride ends in humiliation, while humility brings honor. PROVERBS 29:23 If you have a rebuttal to anyone and everything, you are in denial. Too much talk leads to sin.

Any person who wishes to make a difference in the life of the addict should first conduct a compassionate self-inquiry. They need to examine their own anxieties, agendas, and motives. “Purity and impurity belong to oneself,” the Buddha taught. “No one else can purify another.” Before any intervention in the life of another, we need to ask ourselves: How am I doing in my own life? I may not have the addiction I’m trying to exorcise in my friend or son or coworker, but how am I faring with my own compulsions? As I try to liberate this other, how free am I—do I, for example, have an insistent need to change him for the better? I want to awaken this person to their genuine possibilities, but am I on the path to fulfilling my own? These questions will help to keep us from projecting our unconscious anxieties and concerns onto the other—a burden the addict will instinctively reject. Nobody wants to perceive himself as someone’s salvage project. If

Knowing one’s emotions. Self-awareness—recognizing a feeling as it happens—is the keystone of emotional intelligence. As we will see in Chapter 4, the ability to monitor feelings from moment to moment is crucial to psychological insight and self-understanding. An inability to notice our true feelings leaves us at their mercy. People with greater certainty about their feelings are better pilots of their lives, having a surer sense of how they really feel about personal decisions from whom to marry to what job to take. 2. Managing emotions. Handling feelings so they are appropriate is an ability that builds on self-awareness. Chapter 5 will examine the capacity to soothe oneself, to shake off rampant anxiety, gloom, or irritability—and the consequences of failure at this basic emotional skill. People who are poor in this ability are constantly battling feelings of distress, while those who excel in it can bounce back far more quickly from life’s setbacks and upsets. 3. Motivating oneself. As Chapter 6 will show, marshaling emotions in the service of a goal is essential for paying attention, for self-motivation and mastery, and for creativity. Emotional self-control—delaying gratification and stifling impulsiveness—underlies accomplishment of every sort. And being able to get into the “flow” state enables outstanding performance of all kinds. People who have this skill tend to be more highly productive and effective in whatever they undertake. 4. Recognizing emotions in others. Empathy, another ability that builds on emotional self-awareness, is the fundamental “people skill.” Chapter 7 will investigate the roots of empathy, the social cost of being emotionally tone-deaf, and the reason empathy kindles altruism. People who are empathic are more attuned to the subtle social signals that indicate what others need or want. This makes them better at callings such as the caring professions, teaching, sales, and management. 5. Handling relationships. The art of relationships is, in large part, skill in managing emotions in others. Chapter 8 looks at social competence and incompetence, and the specific skills involved. These are the abilities that undergird popularity, leadership, and interpersonal effectiveness. People who excel in these skills do well at anything that relies on interacting smoothly with others; they are social stars.

FINDING YOUR MOTIVATIONAL PATTERN Step I. Divide your life into thirds. (If you are 42, you’ll come up with three age groups: 1–14, 15–28, 29–42.) Then let your thoughts begin to drift. Recall some of your past accomplishments: the things you did well, enjoyed doing, and felt good about regardless of what anyone else thought. These experiences must be something you did, not something you watched others doing. It can be anything from learning to tie your shoes to reupholstering a chair, from finding a job to writing a poem, from planning a party for four or a banquet for four hundred. The important thing here is that you felt good about the activity, enjoyed doing it, and did it well.   Step II. Create a chart. Try to come up with at least three achievements for each of your three age groups. Step III. Examine the experiences listed and look for a pattern. What skills, interests, rewards, and kinds of relationships are repeated in all the stories? This is called your motivational pattern. It is what “turns you on,” gets you going, and keeps you stimulated. If you put these ingredients together, you can see what is missing in your life or what you need to have in your next job. For example, if helping people motivates you and your day is spent behind a computer, you can see why you’re miserable.

The opposite of fear is faith' is an adage I heard often when I quit drinking. The thinking is that fear is paralyzing or even regressive, causing you to retreat in defense, while faith inspires forward progress. So why, I always wondered, does fear feature so prominently in our discussions and practice of faith? We talk about fear of God as a good thing - and being God-fearing as a desirable state. I know I'm not the first to say this, and smarter people have given it more thorough examination and more eloquent expression, but that just makes no sense to me. It's counterintuitive and, I think, confuses fear with respect. As a way of motivating people, cultivating fear is easier than investing the time and effort necessary to engender respect. Respect requires greater knowledge, and in my experience, the more you know, the less you fear. In the year or so between my Parkinson's diagnosis and my quitting drinking, I had considered getting sober but feared life without the perceived buffer of alcohol. What I came to realize after a few months of disciplined sobriety was that my fear had nothing to do with alcohol or a lack thereof. It had to do with a lack of self-understanding. As I gained more intimate knowledge of myself, why I did the things I did, what my resentments were, and how I could address them, my fear began to subside.

The Three Lives We all lead three lives: our public life, our private life, and our deep inner life. Our public life takes place in a community setting, where we interact with others. Our private life is away from the public—we may be alone, with a friend, or with family members. But our deep inner life is our most significant life. It is where our heart is. It’s where we have the capacity to explore our own motives, to examine our own thoughts and desires, and to analyze our problems and our needs. We can go into this deep private life—we could call it a secret life—even when we are in a public or a private setting. Our secret life is where we are able to tap into the power of the four human endowments: self-awareness, conscience, imagination, and independent will. When you are dealing with the development of a personal mission statement, you need to go into the deep inner or secret life, which influences the other two. It is the part of you where you decide the most fundamental issues of your life. As the psalmist put it: “Search your own heart with all diligence, for out of it flows the issues of your life.” It truly is a secret life. No one knows the thoughts and intents of your heart. You alone have that awareness, and you can step in on your own deep inner life; you can examine, explore, and change it. Many people, unless they are in pain because of something they care about that is not being fulfilled, will not go into their deep inner life at all. In a sense, they’re not living. They’re just being lived, publicly and privately.

We may wish to control or influence the behavior of others in conflict, and we want, therefore, to know how the variables that are subject to our control can affect their behavior. If we confine our study to the theory of strategy, we seriously restrict ourselves by the assumption of rational behavior — not just of intelligent behavior, but of behavior motivated by a conscious calculation of advantages, a calculation that in turn is based on an explicit and internally consistent value system. We thus limit the applicability of any results we reach. If our interest is the study of actual behavior, the results we reach under this constraint may prove to be either a good approximation of reality or a caricature. Any abstraction runs a risk of this sort, and we have to be prepared to use judgment with any results we reach. The advantage of cultivating the area of “strategy” for theoretical development is not that, of all possible approaches, it is the one that evidently stays closest to the truth, but that the assumption of rational behavior is a productive one. It gives a grip on the subject that is peculiarly conducive to the development of theory. It permits us to identify our own analytical processes with those of the hypothetical participants in a conflict; and by demanding certain kinds of consistency in the behavior of our hypothetical participants, we can examine alternative courses of behavior according to whether or not they meet those standards of consistency. The premise of “rational behavior” is a potent one for the production of theory. Whether the resulting theory provides good or poor insight into actual behavior is, I repeat, a matter for subsequent judgment.

Roughly 25 percent of humanity is Muslim. For every Jew, there are roughly one hundred twenty-five Muslims. Judaism is about 2500 years older than Islam, and yet it has not been able to attract nearly as many followers. If we construe religions as memeplexes (a collection of interconnected memes), to borrow Richard Dawkin's term, the Islamic memeplex has been extraordinarily more successful than its Jewish counterpart (from an epidemiological perspective, that is). Why is that? To answer this important question, we must look at the contents of the two respective memeplexes to examine why one is more "infectious" than the other. Let us explore the rules for converting into the two religions and apostatizing out of them. In Judaism, the religious process for conversion is onerous, requiring several years of commitment and an absence of ulterior motive. (For example, converting to Judaism because you are marrying a Jewish person is considered an ulterior motive). Not surprisingly, given the barriers to entry, relatively few people convert to Judaism. On the other hand, to convert to Islam simply requires that one proclaim openly the sentence, the shahada (the testimony): "There is no true god but Allah, and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah." It does not require a sophisticated epidemiological model to predict which memeplex will spread more rapidly. Let us now suppose that one wishes to leave the religion. While the Old Testament does mention the death penalty for apostasy, it has seldom been applied throughout Jewish history, whereas to this day apostasy from Islam does lead to the death penalty in several Islamic countries. But perhaps the most important difference is that Judaism does not promote or encourage proselytizing, whereas it is a central religious obligation in Islam. According to Islam, the world is divided into dar al-hard (the house of war) and dar al-Islam (the house of Islam). Peace will arrive when the entire world is united under the flag of Allah. Hence, it is imperative to Islamize the nations within dar al-harb. There is only one Jewish country in the world, Israel, and it has a sizeable non-Jewish minority. But there are fifty-seven member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

Look back at history. Look at any great system of ethics, from the Orient up. Didn't they all preach the sacrifice of personal joy? Under all the complications of verbiage, haven't they all had a single leitmotif: sacrifice, renunciation, self-denial? Haven't you been able to catch their theme song — 'Give up, give up, give up, give up'? Look at the moral atmosphere of today. Everything enjoyable, from cigarettes to sex to ambition to the profit motive, is considered depraved or sinful. Just prove that a thing makes men happy — and you've damned it. That's how far we've come. We've tied happiness to guilt. And we've got mankind by the throat. Throw your first-born into a sacrificial furnace — lie on a bed of nails — go into the desert to mortify the flesh — don't dance — don't go to the movies on Sunday — don't try to get rich — don't smoke — don't drink. It's all the same line. The great line. Fools think that taboos of this nature are just nonsense. Something left over, old-fashioned. But there's always a purpose in nonsense. Don't bother to examine a folly — ask yourself only what it accomplishes. Every system of ethics that preached sacrifice grew into a world power and ruled millions of men. Of course, you must dress it up. You must tell people that they'll achieve a superior kind of happiness by giving up everything that makes them happy. You don't have to be too clear about it. Use big vague words. 'Universal Harmony' — 'Eternal Spirit' — 'Divine Purpose' — 'Nirvana' — 'Paradise' — 'Racial Supremacy' — 'The Dictatorship of the Proletariat.' Internal corruption, Peter. That's the oldest one of all. The farce has been going on for centuries and men still fall for it. Yet the test should be so simple: just listen to any prophet and if you hear him speak of sacrifice — run. Run faster than from a plague. It stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there's someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master. But if ever you hear a man telling you that you must be happy, that it's your natural right, that your first duty is to yourself — that will be the man who's not after your soul. That will be the man who has nothing to gain from you. But let him come and you'll scream your empty heads off, howling that he's a selfish monster. So the racket is safe for many, many centuries.

See? I long to be your spiritual guide. I really do, and I will. Love is my motive, rather than any elevated belief in my own knowledge, contemplative work, experience, or maturity. And may God correct what I get wrong. For he knows everything, and I only know in part.1 Now to satisfy your proud intellect, I will praise the work of contemplation. You should know that if those engaged in this work had the linguistic talent to express exactly what they’re experiencing, then every scholar of Christianity would be amazed by their wisdom. It’s true! In comparison, all theological erudition would look like total nonsense. No wonder, then, that my clumsy human speech can’t describe the immense value of this work to you, and God forbid that the limitations of our finite language should desecrate and distort it. No, this must not and will not happen. God forbid that I would ever want that! For our analysis of contemplation and the exercise itself are two entirely different things. What we say of it is not it, but merely a description. So, since we can’t define it, let’s describe it. This will baffle all intellectual conceit, especially yours, which is the sole reason I’m writing this letter. I want to start off by asking you a question. What is the essence of human spiritual perfection, and what are its qualities? I’ll answer this for you. On earth, spiritual perfection is only possible through the union between God and the human soul in consummate love. This perfection is pure and so sublime that it surpasses our human understanding, and that’s why it can’t be directly grasped or observed. But wherever we see its consequences, we know that the essence of contemplation abounds there. So, if I tell you that this spiritual discipline is better than all others, then I must first prove it by describing what mature love looks like. This spiritual exercise grows virtues. Look within yourself as you contemplate and also examine the nature of every virtue. You’ll find that all virtues are found in and nurtured by contemplation with no distortion or degeneration of their purposes. I’m not going to single out any particular virtue here for discussion. I don’t need to because you can find them described in other things I’ve written.2 I’ll only comment here that contemplative prayer, when done right, is the respectful love and ripe fruit that I discuss in your little Letter on Prayer. It’s the cloud of unknowing, the hidden love-longing offered by a pure spirit. It’s the Ark of the Covenant.3 It’s the mystical theology of Dionysius, the wisdom and treasure of his “bright darkness” and “unknown knowing.” It takes you into silence, far from thoughts and words. It makes your prayer very short. In it, you learn how to reject and forget the world.

The 7 Habits are an Inside-Out Approach, you see. We have to win the Private Victory (Habits 1, 2, and 3) before we can win the Public Victory (Habits 4, 5, and 6). If, for example, you have a bad relationship with your boss, instead of trying to Think Win-Win with her, you first need to examine yourself and identify what you may be doing wrong. Maybe you have bad motives or a hidden agenda. Anytime I have a relationship problem, my experience is that four out of five times, it’s me, not them, and the key to fixing the problem is getting myself right first. It’s inside out. Private Victories always precede Public Victories.

Skipping Rhyme for Graduates I’ve got the motive. I’ve got the stamina. I’m going to kill The external examiner. Let crows and vultures Pick at the carcass After I’ve murdered The stingiest of markers. Bring out the bin-bags. Bring out the spades. Bring down the evil sod Who brings down the grades. Give me an alibi. Give me a gun. Wanted a first But I got a two-one. Just missed a first By a fragment of a fraction. Justice is called for, Justice and action. What a bloody miser! What a bloody crook! Won’t mark another paper. Won’t write another book. Won’t see his bloody name In another bloody journal. Bye-bye, examiner. Bye-bye, external.

To understand the motivations of people motivated by barbaric religious beliefs, we need only examine our not- too- distant past. This must include the ideas of manifest destiny, American exceptionalism, and “America First,” as well as our religious justifications for imperialism, genocide, unjust wars, slavery, and the religious and pseudoscientific beliefs that justified the black codes and Jim Crow.

To blame words or images for the actions of people is simplistic. It retards any real examination into what motivates violent crimes, such as rape. Radical feminists are handing a "pornography made me do it" excuse to rapists. Nothing should be allowed to mitigate the personal responsibility of every man who physically abuses a woman.

She is relieved that everything has happened so suddenly; she hasn't had the time to examine her own motives, otherwise her love story would have turned into an anthropological treatise about the survival strategies employed by Catholics in predominantly Islamic societies.

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study conducted by the recruiting firm Korn Ferry found that many people, while perhaps not obsessive, want to be challenged. The researchers examined why professionals leave their jobs and found a variety of reasons, with the most common being boredom. One-third of the respondents said they wanted to do something that would more fully challenge them.34 They would take the risk of moving to another job in hopes of doing work that would better utilize their skills and allow them to grow as professionals. This was more important than other motivators, including the desire to make more money. For them, being bored is worse than being underpaid

Perfectionism is a classic sign of ego orientation. Can you instead commit to doing the messy, sometimes unpredictable work and focus less on how your performance looks to others? Finally, when it comes to procrastination, examine carefully and ask if delaying a task is actually protecting your ego somehow. Many people unconsciously resist the end of a task because they fear being judged, and found wanting. If this is you, try to set those fears aside for the moment and remind yourself that little steps are valuable, that with effort you can improve little by little,

The prospect has basic emotional needs that your product will solve, regardless of how sophisticated or simple your product offering is. Examine those emotional needs.

Our natural response to reading or hearing about the darker qualities in human nature is to exclude ourselves. It is always the other person who is narcissistic, irrational, envious, grandiose, aggressive, or passive-aggressive. We almost always see ourselves as having the best intentions. If we go astray, it is the fault of circumstances or people forcing us to react negatively. The Laws will make you stop once and for all this Self-deluding process. We are all cut from the same cloth, and we all share the same tendencies. The sooner you realize this, the greater your power will be in overcoming these potential negative traits within you. You will examine your own motives, look at your own shadow, and become aware of your own passive-aggressive tendencies. This will make it that much easier to spot such traits in others.

The challenge of separating fact from fiction in retelling the Oatman saga has not been easy. Debunking the rumors that swirled around her in life and death is a fairly simple matter of fact checking; distinguishing between what she truly experienced in captivity and how Stratton presented it in Captivity of the Oatman Girls, the biography he ghostwrote for her, is more challenging. But by analyzing Stratton’s motivations in telling her story, his knowledge of and attitude toward Indians and his theological and colonial vision of the West, and by examining the passages in Captivity of the Oatman Girls that are provably false, a clear pattern of manipulation emerges, and it is possible to disentangle—to a degree—his story from hers.

Three of the leading opponents of behavioral genetics collaborated on a book that set out to deconstruct the new science and reverse the biological tide. The book was Not in Our Genes, and the authors were three of the most vigilant critics of the genetic view: Richard Lewontin, a population geneticist at Harvard; the indefatigable Leon Kamin, who was then at Princeton’s psychology department; and Steven Rose, a neurobiologist at England’s Open University. Although the book had slight impact, it is worth examining as a compendium of the arguments and methods of the opponents of behavioral genetics, arguments that these critics, and their shrinking band of allies, continue to make despite repeated refutations. Throughout the text the authors, with admirable candor, proclaim their Marxist perspective and their “commitment to … a more socially just—a socialist—society.” Few pages go by without references to “dialectics,” “bourgeois society,” and “capitalist values.” The authors’ apparently feel their clean breast about their politics permitted wholesale assumptions about those of their opponents. We are leftists is their implicit claim; but you on the other side of the scientific fence are reactionaries. Liberals, they appeared to be saying, can have only one scientific view, theirs; any other must be right-wing and antiliberal. “Biological determinist ideas,” they say, “are part of the attempt to preserve the inequalities of our society and to shape human nature in its own image.” It must surely have come as unpleasant news to Sandra Scarr, Jerome Kagan, and other liberal psychologists to learn that they were striving to preserve society’s inequalities. In addition, the authors’ nasty assumptions of their opponents’ motives must have been an eye-opener to the hundreds of microbiologists, lab technicians, DNA scanners, rat-runners, statistical analysts, and all the others engaged in behavioral genetics research who learned from the book that they were going to work each day “to preserve the interests of the dominant class, gender, and race.” But the falsity of the authors’ premise goes well beyond slandering a few individuals. Throughout the text, the writers deny the possibility that scientists could exist who place their curiosity about the world ahead of their political agendas. Lewontin, Kamin, and Rose deny as well the possibility of any man or woman, including themselves, separating science from politics. (“Science is not and cannot be above ‘mere’ politics.”) They leave no room for the scientist who is so intrigued by new information, in this case gene-behavior discoveries, that he or she is oblivious to alleged political consequences. For the authors, all scientists who seek out biological influences on behavior, from Darwin to Robert Plomin, are willing servants of the status quo, if not promoters of a return to feudalism.

Some Acid Tests to Be Made in Separating Facts from Mere Information or Inference Scrutinise with great care everything you read in books, regardless of who wrote them, and never accept the conclusions of any writer as being conclusive without asking the following questions and satisfying yourself as to the correctness of the answers: 1. Is the writer a recognised authority on the subject on which he writes? 2. Did the writer have an ulterior or selfish motive other than that of imparting accurate information? 3. Is the writer a paid propagandist whose profession is that of organising public opinion for a price? If he is, weigh his conclusions with unusual care. 4. Has the writer a profit interest or other personal interest in the subject on which he writes? If so, make allowance for this in the acceptance of his conclusions. 5. Is the writer a person of sound judgement, and not a fanatic on the subject on which he writes? Fanatics are inclined to exaggerate, even when stating facts, and to colour facts so they may convey misleading impressions. 6. Are there reasonably accessible sources from which the writer’s statements may be checked and verified? If so, consult them before accepting his conclusions. 7. Ascertain, also, the writer’s reputation for truth and veracity. Some writers are careless concerning the truth. Half-truths are frequently the most dangerous truths. 8. Be careful about accepting as facts the statements of overzealous persons who have the habit of allowing their imaginations to run wild. Such people are known as ‘radicals’ and their conclusions may be misleading if relied upon. 9. Learn to be cautious and to use your own judgement, no matter who is trying to influence you. If a statement does not harmonise with your own reasoning power (and you should train your reason to function clearly), if it is out of harmony with your own experience, hold it up for further examination before accepting it as fact. Falsehood has a queer way of bringing with it some warning note, perhaps in the tone of one’s voice, or in the expression on one’s face, if it comes through the spoken word. Train yourself to recognise this warning and to be guided by it. 10. In seeking facts from others, do not disclose to them what facts you expect to find, as many people have the bad habit of trying to please, even if they have to exaggerate or falsify in order to do so. 11. Science is the art of organising

Many nineteenth-century writers and thinkers, it seems, were impelled by a profound need to walk or climb, the fulfillment of which was closely connected to their intellectual formation and sense of self. Yet the significance of this phenomenon remains insufficiently recognized in historical scholarship ... In the case of ... public figures for whom walking was of resonant personal importance, this oversight may reflect an assumption that what might seem to be merely recreational activities can tell us little enough about the larger stories, themes, motivations and concerns associated with the lives of such figures. But if so, it is a mistaken assumption ... walking was an activity of existential significance, of influence on their thought and ideas, social experience, politics and sense of identity. Further examination of this significance is overdue.

Take any action allow’d to be vicious: Wilful murder, for instance. Examine it in all lights, and see if you can find that matter of fact, or real existence, which you call vice. In which-ever way you take it, you find only certain passions, motives, volitions and thoughts. There is no other matter of fact in the case. The vice entirely escapes you, as long as you consider the object. You never can find it, till you turn your reflexion into your own breast, and find a sentiment of disapprobation, which arises in you, towards this action. Here is a matter of fact; but ’tis the object of feeling, not of reason. It lies in yourself, not in the object. So that when you pronounce any action or character to be vicious, you mean nothing, but that from the constitution of your nature you have a feeling or sentiment of blame from the contemplation of it. Vice and virtue, therefore, may be compar’d to sounds, colours, heat and cold, which, according to modern philosophy, are not qualities in objects, but perceptions in the mind

Lack of candor, we find upon examination, is not only the cause of many of our greatest problems, but also the impediment to solving most of our problems.

The intention to harm or exclude may guide some technical design decisions. Yet even when they do, these motivations often stand in tension with aims framed more benevolently. Even police robots who can use lethal force while protecting officers from harm are clothed in the rhetoric of public safety.35 This is why we must separate “intentionality” from its strictly negative connotation in the context of racist practices, and examine how aiming to “do good” can very well coexist with forms of malice and neglect.36 In fact a do-gooding ethos often serves as a moral cover for harmful decisions. Still, the view that ill intent is always a feature of racism is common: “No one at Google giggled while intentionally programming its software to mislabel black people.”37 Here McWhorter is referring to photo-tagging software that classified dark-skinned users as “gorillas.” Having discovered no bogeyman behind the screen, he dismisses the idea of “racist technology” because that implies “designers and the people who hire them are therefore ‘racists.’” But this expectation of individual intent to harm as evidence of racism is one that scholars of race have long rejected.38

We grow immensely through examination of our emotions and provide ourselves with opportunities for nuanced experiences.

In either case, we now have a good reason to believe that the difference we observed in the experiment was probably not due to chance. This is referred to in technical jargon with a confusing double negative: “rejection of the null hypothesis.” To determine exactly what caused the difference we observed requires much more research, but at the initial stage when we just want to know if there are any differences at all, this outcome provides ample motivation to keep on investigating. In particular, even if an experiment produces extremely high odds against chance, this doesn’t mean that the effect we’re interested in is proven. All the annoying cautions and qualifications commonly used in scientific lingo—it might be this, it could possibly be that, the purported results may perhaps be such and such—sound like a curious lack of enthusiasm, or an unwillingness to take a firm stand. But the prudence is intentional. It prevents existing knowledge from coagulating into unshakable dogma, which is the forte of religious faith. Also, just because a statistical test ends up with huge odds against chance doesn’t necessarily mean that the effect we were measuring is what we imagined it to be. To gain that sort of confidence it takes many independent scientists repeatedly examining the same effect in different ways, and for the results to be consistent on average.

In examining the postwar backlash against New Deal internationalism, the opposition between race and class—that is, the question of whether backlashers were motivated by racial hatred or by desire to defend the economic hierarchy—doesn't hold up. Those who feared internationalism as a stalking horse for greater equality made little distinction between the threat of desegregation and the threat of social rights.

The general point illustrated by this example is that the distinction between moral and prudential motivations, judgments, or arguments can often be useful, but it is neither sharp nor absolute. In the rest of this chapter we will examine moral arguments for praising simple living, and in the following chapter we will consider prudential reasons for doing so. The distinction between moral and prudential reasons for praising simple living here serves as an initial classification made for expository purposes. Most arguments clearly fall on one side or the other. But it is to be expected that, on analysis, they will be found to spill over onto the other ground.2 Most of the moral arguments in support of simple living connect it to individual virtue. The basic idea underlying the arguments discussed here is that living in a certain way helps people cultivate certain desirable qualities (virtues) and makes it less likely that they will develop undesirable qualities (vices). This emphasis on lifestyle and character is characteristic of the philosophical tradition known as virtue ethics. Instead of seeing morality as a set of general rules that it is right to obey and wrong to break—a view that until recently dominated much modern moral philosophy—virtue ethics emphasizes the way that moral behavior flows naturally from a virtuous disposition just as, to use one of Jesus’s metaphors, a sound tree reliably bears good fruit. It thus naturally pays attention to the everyday practices and habits that shape and reflect a person’s moral character.

There sits the meditator parked on a little cushion. Is she out donating blood? No. Is she busy working with disaster victims? No. But let us examine her motivation. Why is she doing this? The meditator’s intention is to purge her own mind of anger, prejudice, and ill will, and she is actively engaged in the process of getting rid of greed, tension, and insensitivity. Those are the very items that obstruct her compassion for others. Until they are gone, any good works that she does are likely to be just an extension of her own ego, and of no real help in the long run. Harm in the name of help is one of the oldest games.

So the working out, however laborious, of an original technique is worth the time expended, the loneliness entailed. With that well in mind, let us consider those times when advice should be taken. You have a genuine problem. The first step, then, should be to write it out, or to formulate it verbally with exactness, so that you can see just what it is that is troubling you. If you simply let the problem wash around in your mind, it will seem greater, and much vaguer, than it will appear on close examination. Then find your expert, whether friend or stranger, but make every effort to find one whose views seem to be congenial to you, since that usually implies similar or congenial mental processes. To do so earlier will mean that you are wasting both your time and his by making him the audience of part of your self-examination. If you are successful in getting an interview, make that as short and concise as possible while still covering all your points. Then follow the advice you are given until you see definite results. If you are tempted to say “Oh, that won’t work for me,” then you should suspect your own motives. Such a rejection implies that you already had a course of action in mind, and were more than half-hoping that you would be advised to follow it. Watching an example of the wrong attitude towards advice and instruction here may be more illuminating than any positive example.

The dynamics of friendships and family are immensely interesting when closely examined.

Motivational interviewing starts with an attitude of humility and curiosity. We don’t know what might motivate someone else to change, but we’re genuinely eager to find out. The goal isn’t to tell people what to do; it’s to help them break out of overconfidence cycles and see new possibilities. Our role is to hold up a mirror so they can see themselves more clearly, and then empower them to examine their beliefs and behaviors. That can activate a rethinking cycle, in which people approach their own views more scientifically. They develop more humility about their knowledge, doubt in their convictions, and curiosity about alternative points of view.

Motivational interviewing starts with an attitude of humility and curiosity. We don’t know what might motivate someone else to change, but we’re genuinely eager to find out. The goal isn’t to tell people what to do; it’s to help them break out of overconfidence cycles and see new possibilities. Our role is to hold up a mirror so they can see themselves more clearly, and then empower them to examine their beliefs and behaviors.

With a determined sense of responsibility, I pledge these statements: I will follow my True North, I will commit to what is important, I will be ambitious and motivated in all that I do, I will value my time, I will make all my decisions by examining the upside and downside, I will delay gratification, I will grit it out, I will shift my frame of reference, I will live each day honoring my journey to live the Spartan Way.

Essay: Scientific Advances are Ruining Science Fiction I write science fiction thrillers for a living, set five to ten years in the future, an exercise that allows me to indulge my love of science, futurism, and philosophy, and to examine in fine granularity the impact of approaching revolutions in technology. But here is the problem: I’d love to write pure science fiction, set hundreds of years in the future. Why don’t I? I guess the short answer is that to do so, I’d have to turn a blind eye to everything I believe will be true hundreds of years from now. Because the truth is that books about the future of humanity, such as Kurzweil’s The Singularity is Near, have ruined me. As a kid, I read nothing but science fiction. This was a genre that existed to examine individuals and societies through the lens of technological and scientific change. The best of this genre always focused on human beings as much as technology, something John W. Campbell insisted upon when he ushered in what is widely known as the Golden Age of Science Fiction. But for the most part, writers in past generations could feel confident that men and women would always be men and women, at least for many thousands of years to come. We might develop technology that would give us incredible abilities. Go back and forth through time, travel to other dimensions, or travel through the galaxy in great starships. But no matter what, in the end, we would still be Grade A, premium cut, humans. Loving, lusting, and laughing. Scheming and coveting. Crying, shouting, and hating. We would remain ambitious, ruthless, and greedy, but also selfless and heroic. Our intellects and motivations in this far future would not be all that different from what they are now, and if we lost a phaser battle with a Klingon, the Grim Reaper would still be waiting for us.

When we examine, not the language of the propaganda, but the witness of the combatants themselves, religion does not occupy the first place. Their motivations are more often secular: they mention their sympathy for a population reduced to poverty, the victims of the whim of ruling classes that live in luxury and corruption- rulers able to maintain themselves in power thanks only to the support of the American government ( as in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt). They speak of the members of their families or their local communities who have suffered or died by the fault of these governments ( and thus of their protectors); and they want to avenge them. The thirst for vengeance did not wait for Islam to appear in the world, and the appeal to the law of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is universal.

Commons People takes a look at the day-to-day lives of our MPs, examining what motivates them, who inspires them, what they do to relax, what keeps them awake at night, and their hopes and aspirations for the future. It allows the reader to get into the minds of our elected representatives, reveals what�s in their hearts and explores their concerns. It is also the perfect read for politics students and those wishing to become involved in politics at any level.

Don't fear His silence. Use it to examine your heart and motives. Listen expectantly for the silence to be broken by the glory of His manifested presence once again in your life.

Jihadists are following their agenda, doing what they believe Allah has told them to do – kill unbelievers (kafir) and conquer the world, including every nation, for Allah. Much of what motivates Jihadists may be found in examining Muslim prophecies of the Last Day. It is likely, few of us knew that Muslim even had “prophecies”, or that they also believed in a “Last Day,” but they certainly do.

Rather than using pain as a motivator to accurately examine our lives, assume responsibility for our choices, and use our personal power for change, we often glorify the experience of suffering itself. Suffering is always unproductive when we're caught in the Victim Trap. For

Examine your motives, test your heart!” (1 Cor. 11:27).

Drinks DUI expert group to help guide However, the best men s and women s drunken food you like it petty crimes, other traffic violations on the wrong goal that seems to be the direction. If you see that the light sentences and fines to get website traffic is violated, the citizen towards crime. When under the influence of a great interest behind the violation was due to more significant impact. Prison term effects were stuck down the back of people who are well, these licenses is likely that you want to deal with nutrition break and automated attacks can be, that s why. Yes it is expensive insurance, and other options in the outcome of the order of DUI, in everyday life, it affects people and the need to process, I love you. An experienced legal drunk driving charges, and it was presented to a lawyer immediately after the contract has announced that although his own. You are trying to remember the legal rights towards the maximum is very cool, you must be straight. The alternative thinking in any direction, does not encourage conservation officials as a record on suspicion of drunken driving after turning self, yourself simplest explanation, it may be possible to do so until is. His car really only answer whether the director should start by asking, encourages statement. A judgment is impaired, you probably have a file, you can use your account to say that the elements can get. When he finished, completely, their legal rights, and in a quiet warehouse to check their own direction and I will speak, and the optimal route is being used against itself. Most use a positive direction, you might think it accuses because your self, and also to examine the consequences of drinking have been able to rule out the presence of blood. Of course, as long as you do not accept the claims are by drinking in the area, they are deprived of a lawyer. Additional measures will not fix it claims that his lawyer, the Czech-out you can. Therefore, it is also within the laws of their country to be aware of your car. Owned independent certification system will be canceled. It can record their own and as an alternative to the paper license, driving license, was arrested for drunken driving, the licensee, are confiscated in accordance with the direction. License, for how long, but canceling function is based on the severity of their crime. But even apart from some a license, you completely lose its supply is proposed well motivated are not sure. Your sins, so not only is it important for your car can pass only confiscated. DUI price of any of the reception towards obtaining a driving license, DMV hearing is removed again, but the case was registered, although this aspect of themselves independently as a condition of. The court file, however, take care of yourself, as well as independent experts was chosen to listen to their constitution.

The participants were twenty-six men engaged in a variety of professional occupations: sixteen engineers, one engineer-physicist, two mathematicians, two architects, one psychologist, one furniture designer, one commercial artist, one sales manager, and one personnel manager. At the time of the study, there were few women in senior scientific positions, and none was found who wished to participate. Nineteen of the subjects had no previous experience with psychedelics. They were selected on the basis of the following criteria: The participant’s occupation required problemsolving ability. The participant was psychologically stable, as determined by a psychiatric interview examination. The participant was motivated to discover, verify, and apply solutions within his current employment. Six groups of four and one group of three met in the evening several days before the session.a The sequence of events to be followed was explained in detail. In this initial meeting, we sought to allay any apprehension and establish rapport and trust among the participants and the staff.

Jesus will upset every apple cart, every temple table, every surface response, every false motivation and every private longing we ignore in our hearts. The ways of Jesus will make us examine every area of our lives.

Eagerly examine the Scriptures daily for spiritual growth.

You’ll Meet an Old Lady One Day You are going to meet an old lady someday. Down the road 10, 20, 30 years—she’s waiting for you. You will catch up to her. What kind of old lady are you going to meet? She may be a seasoned, soft, and gracious lady. A lady who has gown old gracefully, surrounded by a host of friends—friends who call her blessed because of what her life has meant to them. Or she may be a bitter, disillusioned, dried-up, cynical old buzzard without a good word for anyone or anything—soured, friendless, and alone. The kind of old lady you will meet will depend entirely upon you. She will be exactly what you make of her, nothing more, nothing less. It’s up to you. You will have no one else to credit or blame. Every day, in every way, you are becoming more and more like that old lady. You are getting to look more like her, think more like her, and talk more like her. You are becoming her. If you live only in terms of what you are getting out of life, the old lady gets smaller, drier, harder, crabbier, more self-centered. Open your life to others. Think in terms of what you can give and your contribution to life, and the old lady grows larger, softer, kinder, greater. These little things, seemingly so unimportant now—attitudes, goals, ambitions, desires—are adding up inside where you cannot see them, crystallizing in your heart and mind. The point is, these things don’t always show up immediately. But they will—sooner than you think. Someday they will harden into that old lady; nothing will be able to soften or change them then. The time to take care of that old lady is right now. Today. Examine your motives, attitudes, goals. Check up on her. Work her over now while she is still pliable, still in a formative condition. Then you will be much more likely to meet a lovely, gracious old lady at the proper time.2

Humans are not innately good (just as they are not innately evil), but they come equipped with motives that can orient them away from violence and toward cooperation and altruism. Empathy (particularly in the sense of sympathetic concern) prompts us to feel the pain of others and to align their interests with our own. Self-control allows us to anticipate the consequences of acting on our impulses and to inhibit them accordingly. The moral sense sanctifies a set of norms and taboos that govern the interactions among people in a culture, sometimes in ways that decrease violence, though often (when the norms are tribal, authoritarian, or puritanical) in ways that increase it. And the faculty of reason allows us to extricate ourselves from our parochial vantage points, to reflect on the ways in which we live our lives, to deduce ways in which we could be better off, and to guide the application of the other better angels of our nature. In one section I will also examine the possibility that in recent history Homo sapiens has literally evolved to become less violent in the biologist’s technical sense of a change in our genome. But the focus of the book is on transformations that are strictly environmental: changes in historical circumstances that engage a fixed human nature in different ways.

Don't let things that you cannot do discourage you and hold you back from things that you can do. It would be irrational to think that one can do everything; in this line of logic, self-analysis is crucial, meaning every person must analyze his/her true capacity, examine the current skills, and determine any essential future requirements.

Never discount another man's faith just because it is dressed in another language foreign to your own. Language can be used as a serious weapon in shining and sharing Truth, but can also be used to hide or distort it. For example, do not shun Hinduism because you do not understand it by its exterior, without first opening the Gita and patiently examining its interior. Honorable virtues prized by God are found in the majority of the world's religions. Never listen to another man's opinion of any faith without first truly examining it yourself from every angle, and questioning any possible motives behind those giving their opinion. A kind man would never put down another man's mother just for not liking her dress. So what makes you feel justified in tearing down another man's faith simply because he prefers referring to God using a different title? Or prefers worshiping him in a different mansion? Or prefers taking a different path to reach the same destination? Or for electing to wear a traditional uniform to perform his services or reflect his faith? Never reflect hatred in your speech, or act in superiority over another man, because it only shows to others that it is YOU who really does not understand God and his message. Any man who promotes hatred or violence towards another man is NOT Sikh, Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Jewish or any other God-loving faith on earth. God is LOVE and LIGHT, not hatred and ignorance. Any unbiased religious scholar will tell you that LOVE is God's message in all of the world's religions -- except Satanism.

The Lockean logic of custom suggests strongly that open-source hackers observe the customs they do in order to defend some kind of expected return from their effort. The return must be more significant than the effort of homesteading projects, the cost of maintaining version histories that document “chain of title”, and the time cost of making public notifications and waiting before taking adverse possession of an orphaned project. Furthermore, the “yield” from open source must be something more than simply the use of the software, something else that would be compromised or diluted by forking. If use were the only issue, there would be no taboo against forking, and open-source ownership would not resemble land tenure at all. In fact, this alternate world (where use is the only yield, and forking is unproblematic) is the one implied by existing open-source licenses. We can eliminate some candidate kinds of yield right away. Because you can’t coerce effectively over a network connection, seeking power is right out. Likewise, the open-source culture doesn’t have anything much resembling money or an internal scarcity economy, so hackers cannot be pursuing anything very closely analogous to material wealth (e.g. the accumulation of scarcity tokens). There is one way that open-source activity can help people become wealthier, however — a way that provides a valuable clue to what actually motivates it. Occasionally, the reputation one gains in the hacker culture can spill over into the real world in economically significant ways. It can get you a better job offer, or a consulting contract, or a book deal. This kind of side effect, however, is at best rare and marginal for most hackers; far too much so to make it convincing as a sole explanation, even if we ignore the repeated protestations by hackers that they’re doing what they do not for money but out of idealism or love. However, the way such economic side effects are mediated is worth examination.

The first step in getting unstuck and moving forward is to examine what is holding you back from taking action. The power is yours to set your intention and take the action needed to create the life you desire. You are in control of your initiative—be proactive.

Chapter 7 takes a psychological truism, “we tend to believe what we think others believe” and turns it around: We tend to think others believe what we believe. This chapter examines a set of cognitive, social, and motivational processes that prompt us to overestimate the extent to which others share our beliefs, further bolstering our credulity.

Get acquainted with your own soul. Know why you do this or that, why you feel this or that. Sit quietly when in doubt about any matter, and let the truth rise from the deeps of yourself. Examine your motives always. Do not say, “I ought to do this act for such and such a reason; therefore I do it for that reason.” Such argument is self-deception. If you do a kind act, ask yourself why. Perhaps you can find even in a kind action a hidden motive of self-seeking. If you should find such a motive, do not deny it to yourself. Acknowledge it to yourself, though you need not advertise it on the walls of your dwelling. Such a secret understanding will give you a greater sympathy and comprehension in judging the motives of others. Strive always for the ideal; but do not label every emotion as an ideal emotion if it is not really that. Speak the truth to yourself. Until you can dare to do that you will make little progress in the quest of your own soul.

The woman who is liberated must never cross the line in which we ask men to examine their actions; we are a country built on the ideas, ingenuity, canniness, and downright brutality of man—to question their motives is to question our existence.

...this kind of inquisitorial and, let’s be frank, voyeuristic pursuit, of venial sins as the way of sizing up political life, has reached heights undreamed of. And this can be entertaining—indeed, it may be intended by the media to be so, as it is eye- and ear-catching. It displays a kinship with the inherent sensationalism of consumer culture more generally. It is also, often, if not always, stupendously trivial or only marginally relevant, but is treated in exactly the opposite way. We have grown accustomed to examine all sorts of personal foibles as if they were political MRIs lighting up the interior of the most sequestered political motivations. Credit this hyperpersonalizing of political life with keeping interest alive, even if it’s a kind of morbid interest in the fall of the mighty or the wannabe mighty. Otherwise, for many millions of citizens, cynicism (and only cynicism) prevails. The system seems transparently to have become an arena for gaming the system. Cycles of corruption and insiderism repeat with numbing frequency and in a nonpartisan distribution, verging on kleptocracy.

Need to Be Honest about My Issues Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. (PSALM 139:23 – 24) Thought for the Day: Avoiding reality never changes reality. Mostly I’m a good person with good motives, but not always. Not when I just want life to be a little more about me or about making sure I look good. That’s when my motives get corrupted. The Bible is pretty blunt in naming the real issue here: evil desires. Yikes. I don’t like that term at all. And it seems a bit severe to call my unglued issues evil desires, doesn’t it? But in the depths of my heart I know the truth. Avoiding reality never changes reality. Sigh. I think I should say that again: Avoiding reality never changes reality. And change is what I really want. So upon the table I now place my honesty: I have evil desires. I do. Maybe not the kind that will land me on a 48 Hours Mystery episode, but the kind that pull me away from the woman I want to be. One with a calm spirit and divine nature. I want it to be evident that I know Jesus, love Jesus, and spend time with Jesus each day. So why do other things bubble to the surface when my life gets stressful and my relationships get strained? Things like … Selfishness: I want things my way. Pride: I see things only from my vantage point. Impatience: I rush things without proper consideration. Anger: I let simmering frustrations erupt. Bitterness: I swallow eruptions and let them fester. It’s easier to avoid these realities than to deal with them. I’d much rather tidy my closet than tidy my heart. I’d much rather run to the mall and get a new shirt than run to God and get a new attitude. I’d much rather dig into a brownie than dig into my heart. I’d much rather point the finger at other people’s issues than take a peek at my own. Plus, it’s just a whole lot easier to tidy my closet, run to the store, eat a brownie, and look at other people’s issues. A whole lot easier. I rationalize that I don’t have time to get all psychological and examine my selfishness, pride, impatience, anger, and bitterness. And honestly, I’m tired of knowing I have issues but having no clue how to practically rein them in on a given day. I need something simple. A quick reality check I can remember in the midst of the everyday messies. And I think the following prayer is just the thing: God, even when I choose to ignore what my heart is saying to me, You know my heart. I bring to You this [and here I name whatever feeling or thoughts I have been reluctant to acknowledge]. Forgive me. Soften my heart. Make it pure. Might that quick prayer help you as well? If so, stop what you are doing —just for five minutes — and pray these or similar words. When I’ve prayed for the Lord to interrupt my feelings and soften my heart, it’s amazing how this changes me. Dear Lord, help me to remember to actually bring my emotions and reactions to You. I want my heart reaction to be godly. Thank You for grace and for always forgiving me. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Humble people are respectful and accepting of our imperfect human nature. Many inexplicable components make up the vast sea of humanity. My own psyche contains enigmatic elements. Through conscientious studying other people and examination of my own unfathomable nature, I hope to gain a better understanding of the mystery of existence. There are limitations of human knowledge. We have a rich stable of resources available to us including the opportunity to read great literature, inspirational books, self-help books, scholarly psychology books, and a growing trove of cognitive sciences books devoted to exploring how the human brain works. Despite the illustrious resources that expound upon the desires, motives, and behaviors of the human species, the hardships of life frequently force us to realize we are the principal subject that we must study and understand in order to mend a broken personality. In order revive a deflated psyche and transcend into a better and sunnier version of the self, I need to know myself.

Work can often have the structure of other autotelic experiences: clear goals, immediate feedback, challenges well matched to our abilities. And when it does, we don’t just enjoy it more, we do it better. That’s why it’s so odd that organizations tolerate work environments that deprive large numbers of people of these experiences. Harvard’s Teresa Amabile, whose groundbreaking work I’ve cited earlier in the book, has also done research that examines the day-to-day motivation levels of people on the job. She has found that the single greatest motivator is “making progress in one’s work.” The days that people make progress are the days they feel most motivated and engaged. By creating conditions for people to make progress, shining a light on that progress, recognizing and celebrating progress, organizations can help their own cause and enrich people’s lives.

48. As has been said many times, in everything we do God examines our motive, to see whether we are doing it for His sake or for some other purpose. Thus when we desire to do something good, we should not do it for the sake of popularity: we should have God as our goal, so that, with our gaze always fixed on Him, we may do everything for His sake. Otherwise we shall undergo all the trouble of performing the act and yet lose the reward.

Can the act of narrative writing alter the writer’s mental alignment and will an honest chronicle and extended effort at seeking answers to a vexatious series of pending personal questions eventually place the author on an even keel? What other motive, good or evil, could possibly cause an essayist to write in such a torrid manner? With each line that I write, I beg to stop. The lines just keep tumbling out. Is there no end to this nightmarish experience of examination and reexamination? Is there no relief in sight to this modest attempt to form my storyline into an intelligible quest? Many days of writing go nowhere; blank pages replicate the blandness of life, whereas other days I sense progress towards an indiscernible and undefinable goal. If I write long enough, what will I finally discover gazing back at me?

I'd never been a practical person. I had a way of falling in love with ideas -- romantic notions of places, concepts of things.... I craved contemplation...and much preferred searching out other people's motives to examining my own.

Emotional pain has an upside - it can motivate you to examine certain aspects of your life in a way that doesn't happen when you are comfortable.

So if we think we are doing the right thing, but we are in fact blind to our motives, what are we to do? How can we see what God so clearly sees? We humbly ask for God’s help, and then we do some serious and prayerful self-reflection. Here are a few questions to consider as you examine your motives before you speak. Am I certain that what I want to say is true? If so, then perhaps you should say it. But before you do, consider the remaining questions. Is my goal to have my comment help the person or situation at hand? Or is it to put a little pinch in their heart? Do I feel my words will bring a solution or, if I’m totally honest, might they cause more of a problem? Even if what I plan to say is truthful, is my aim to say something that will make me look better by comparison? Have I earned the right to speak to this particular person? If not, you should probably keep your lips zipped. If I were speaking about this person to someone else, would I say the exact same thing as I would if that person were sitting in front of me? Are these words really necessary? Why? Have I prayed about it, or only thought about it in an effort to plan what I’ve already determined to say? Am I trying to play Holy Spirit and convict someone or guilt them into changing their mind? If the roles were reversed, would I want the other person to say the same thing to me?

All these physical practices were subjected to subsequent meditational observation in which students would examine what had arisen within their minds during the practices and their responses to such stimuli. Progressively there are different types of meditations, which are concerned, with the development of a balanced, quiescent and ultimately realistic experience of mind called smriti, they are concerning the body, feelings, mind, and mental objects. Through such practices as mindfulness, practitioners were brought face to face with a greater experience of the nature and motivations they carried within their bodies and minds.

When you come to examine into the actuating motives for any line of human endeavor you will find that vanity figures about ninety per cent, directly or indirectly, in the assay.

I have argued elsewhere that DWYL is an essentially narcissistic schema, facilitating willful ignorance of working conditions of others by encouraging continuous self-gratification. I have also argued that DWYL exposes its adherents to exploitation, justifying unpaid or underpaid work by throwing workers’ motivations back at them; when passion becomes the socially accepted motivation for working, talk of wages or reasonable scheduling becomes crass. This book examines the many expectations about what work can provide under the DWYL creed, and the sacrifices that workers make in order to meet those expectations.

The Word of God judges the thoughts. The word "judge" means to critique, to be or act as a critic. This is to say that Scripture is able to accurately audit a person's life and size it up for what it is. The Word of God is able to examine the unseen attitudes and motivations, expose the secret ambitions and desires, and then render the divine verdict. Man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks upon the heart. This sharp, two-edged sword is able to penetrate into the hidden crevices of the heart and judge what only God can see. The Word makes known what we alone know about ourselves - and often what we do not yet know of ourselves. Scripture plunges deep into the unseen places of the human spirit and judges the private matters of the heart. Only the razor-sharp Word of God can do this.

We must look squarely into our own tired eyes and examine why we waste so much time sniffing at every distraction, why we cower at the thought of revealing our true selves to the world, why we scurry so quickly from conflict, and why we consent to play small.

You’ve approached the opportunity before you at a leisurely pace, but now it’s time to grab it and go for it with gusto. By meeting this challenging situation head-on, you’ll discover that you have some powerful gifts and skills that you were unaware of. If one way isn’t working, try another; and don’t get stuck in any single approach. Spend a day or two with no plans or agenda, guided only by your intuition—whether a day of activity, quiet reflection, or a combination. Take full responsibility for your thoughts, feelings, and actions, rather than blaming others or life circumstances. GREAT BLUE HERON Take some time for self-examination, reflecting dispassionately on your goals, motivations, actions, feelings, strengths, and limiting beliefs. Only you know what’s best for you, so follow your inner wisdom and guidance rather than the dictates and pressures of others.

For us the Bible is not merely a combination of ancient documents, historical details, and religious information. It is the living Word of God that still speaks to the minds, hearts, and souls of men and women today. It confronts our sin, exposes our selfishness, examines our motives, challenges our presuppositions, calls us to repentance, asks us to believe its incredible claims, stretches our faith, heals our hurts, blesses our hearts, and soothes our souls.

We can make our own plans,        but the LORD gives the right answer. 2 People may be pure in their own eyes,        but the LORD examines their motives. 3 Commit your actions to the LORD,        and your plans will succeed.

Examine your self-talk. Never speak to yourself more harshly than you would to a small child.

The Commissioner asserts 'motivated intruders' evidence from Professor Anderaon was accepted under cross-examination as an 'over-extension' from his personal experiences with completely unrelated animal rights activists - see para.24 of the closing submissions, Professor Anderson's "wild speculations" about the possibility of "young men, borderline sociopathic or psychopathic" attaching themselves to the PACE trial criticism 'do him no credit". Nor do his extrapolations from benign Twitter requests for information to an "organised campaign” from an "adversarial group" show that he has maintained the necessary objectivity and accuracy that he is required to maintain. He does not distinguish between legitimate ethical and political disagreement, and the use of positions of access to confidential data. He stated that where there was legitimate disagreement one should assume that people will act in unlawful ways, This proposition that one should in every case assume the absolute worst about data disclosure is clearly neither sensible nor realistic. Freedom of Information Act tribunal judgment

the public welfare must come before everything. As to certain inaccuracies and figures of speech, so to speak, you will also admit that the motive, aim, and intention, are the chief thing. It is a question, above all, of making a wholesome example; the individual case can be examined afterwards;

In my experience, the pupil who sets down the night's dream, or recasts the day before into ideal form, who takes the morning hour to write a complete anecdote or a passage of sharp dialogue, is likely to be the short story writer in embryo. Certain types of character sketching, when it is brief and concerned with rather general (or even obvious) traits, point the same way. A subtler analysis of characters, a consideration of motives, acute self-examination (as distinct from romanticizing one's actions), the contrasting of different characters faced by the same dilemma, most often indicate the novelist. A kind of musing introspection or of speculation only sketched in is found in the essay writer's notebook, although with a grain of drama added, and with the particularizing of an abstract speculation by assigning the various elements of the problem to characters who act out the idea, there is promise of the more meditative type of novelist.

This book will show you how to harness the power of kaizen: using small steps to accomplish large goals. Kaizen is an ancient philosophy captured in this powerful statement from the Tao Te Ching: “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Though it is rooted in ancient philosophy, it is just as practical and effective when applied to our hectic modern lives. Kaizen has two definitions: using very small steps to improve a habit, a process, or product using very small moments to inspire new products and inventions I’ll show you how easy change can be when the brain’s preference for change is honored. You’ll discover many examples of how small steps can achieve your biggest dreams. Using kaizen, you can change bad habits, like smoking or overeating, and form good ones, like exercising or unlocking creativity. In business, you’ll learn how to motivate and empower employees in ways that will inspire them. But first, let’s examine some common beliefs about change, and how kaizen dismantles all the obstacles we may have spent years putting in our way.

Master Hsing Yun now uses a wheelchair to get around, but his mind remains clear and sharp. Partway through our meal, he turned to me with a blunt question. “Kai-Fu, have you ever thought about what your goal is in life?” Without thinking, I reflexively gave him the answer I had given to myself and others for decades: “To maximize my impact and change the world.” Speaking those words, I felt the burning embarrassment that comes when we expose our naked ambitions to others. The feeling was magnified by the silence emanating from the monk across the table. But my answer was an honest one. This quest to maximize my impact was like a tumor that had always lived inside of me, ever tenacious and always growing. I had read widely in philosophy and religious texts, but for decades had never critically examined or doubted this core motivating belief within me.

Harvard professor Teresa Amabile concurs. After examining 12,000 daily diary entries by several hundred workers, she found that the single largest motivator was making progress in meaningful work.16 Wins needn’t be large to be meaningful. When you enter a new role, set up small “high-probability” targets and celebrate when you hit them.

Deke proposed a system which had been used in previous selections, and with minor modifications we agreed. It was a thirty-point system divided equally into three parts: academics, pilot performance, character and motivation. “Academics” was really a misnomer, as an examination of its components will reveal: IQ score—one point; academic degrees, honors, and other credentials—four points; results of NASA-administered aptitude tests—three points; and results of a technical interview—two points. Pilot performance broke down into: examination of flying records (total time, type of airplane, etc.)—three points; flying rating by test pilot school or other supervisors—one point; and results of technical interview—six points. Character and motivation was not subdivided, but the entire ten-point package was examined in the interview, and the victim’s personality was an important part of it. Hence, of the thirty points (the maximum a candidate could earn), eighteen could be awarded during the all-important interview. My recollection is that we spent an hour per man, using roughly forty-five minutes to quiz him and fifteen in a postmortem. We sat all day long in a stuffy room in the Rice Hotel, interviewing from early morning to early evening, for one solid week.

People often talk behind each other’s backs in a smug manner, intending to gain other’s approval or favor. It seems gossip is, unfortunately, part of who we are. But after looking at it closely, I learned that it does not have to be. I believe the tendency to gossip is more environmental than physiological. And we can certainly overcome such environmental influences – but only if we work at it. In this book, we will open up a dialogue about gossip. We will examine why people gossip. We will look at what motivates people to gossip. Most importantly, we will look at the impact of gossip and cover strategies and tips on how to alter that behavior.

If you're examining successful people, look at their mother and father, study what they did, for clues about energy and motivation.

And there is further testimony, so extensive and so powerful that it seems unpardonable to ignore it. Our corruptibility is not contingent. We pretend to know this but rarely examine the relevance of this knowledge to our hopes. We pretend to know that nothing is evergreen, that each source of life is eventually exhausted and each concentration of energy eventually dispersed. We pretend to know that the biological process of life itself is the source of anxiety, conflict, aggression, uncertainty, concern. We pretend to know that no consistent system of values is possible and that at every step values that we consider important become mutually exclusive when we attempt their practical application to individual cases; tragedy, the moral victory of evil, is always possible. We pretend to know that reason often hampers our ability to liberate our energies, that moments of joy are more often than not wrested from intellectual lucidity. We pretend to know that creation is a struggle of man against himself and, more often than not, against others also, that the bliss of love lies in hopeful dissatisfaction, that in our world, death is the only total unity. We pretend to know why our noble motives slide into evil results, why our will toward good emerges from pride, hatred ,vanity, envy, personal ambition. We pretend to know that most of life consists in taking flight from reality and concealing this reality from ourselves. We pretend to know that our efforts to improve the world are constrained by the narrow limits defined by our biological structure and by the pressures of the past which have molded us and which we cannot leave very far behind. All these things, which we pretend to be aware of, compose the reality of original sin---and yet it is this reality that we attempt to deny.

we were called into freedom, and this freedom results in gratitude, an overflowing heart, and love for others...If your giving is not leading to cheer, then you need to examine the Law of Motivation. The Law of Motivation says this: Freedom first, service second. If you serve to get free of your fear, you are doomed to failure. Let God work on the fears, resolve them, and create some healthy boundaries to guard the freedom you were called to. pg. 92

Origins should never be a barrier to success. A modest start in life can be a help more than a hindrance. If you're examining successful people, look at their mother and father, study what they did, for clues about energy and motivation.

These changes have been steadily eroding the barrier between scholarship and activism. It used to be considered a failure of teaching or scholarship to work from a particular ideological standpoint. The teacher or scholar was expected to set aside her own biases and beliefs in order to approach her subject as objectively as possible. Academics were incentivized to do so by knowing that other scholars could—and would—point out evidence of bias or motivated reasoning and counter it with evidence and argument. Teachers could consider their attempts at objectivity successful if their students did not know what their political or ideological positions were. This is not how Social Justice scholarship works or is applied to education. Teaching is now supposed to be a political act, and only one type of politics is acceptable—identity politics, as defined by Social Justice and Theory. In subjects ranging from gender studies to English literature, it is now perfectly acceptable to state a theoretical or ideological position and then use that lens to examine the material, without making any attempt to falsify one’s interpretation by including disconfirming evidence or alternative explanations. Now, scholars can openly declare themselves to be activists and teach activism in courses that require students to accept the ideological basis of Social Justice as true and produce work that supports it.38 One particularly infamous 2016 paper in Géneros: Multidisciplinary Journal of Gender Studies even favorably likened women’s studies to HIV and Ebola, advocating that it spread its version of feminism like an immune-suppressing virus, using students-turned-activists as carriers.39

Thus, multiple regression requires two important tasks: (1) specification of independent variables and (2) testing of the error term. An important difference between simple regression and multiple regression is the interpretation of the regression coefficients in multiple regression (b1, b2, b3, …) in the preceding multiple regression model. Although multiple regression produces the same basic statistics discussed in Chapter 14 (see Table 14.1), each of the regression coefficients is interpreted as its effect on the dependent variable, controlled for the effects of all of the other independent variables included in the regression. This phrase is used frequently when explaining multiple regression results. In our example, the regression coefficient b1 shows the effect of x1 on y, controlled for all other variables included in the model. Regression coefficient b2 shows the effect of x2 on y, also controlled for all other variables in the model, including x1. Multiple regression is indeed an important and relatively simple way of taking control variables into account (and much easier than the approach shown in Appendix 10.1). Key Point The regression coefficient is the effect on the dependent variable, controlled for all other independent variables in the model. Note also that the model given here is very different from estimating separate simple regression models for each of the independent variables. The regression coefficients in simple regression do not control for other independent variables, because they are not in the model. The word independent also means that each independent variable should be relatively unaffected by other independent variables in the model. To ensure that independent variables are indeed independent, it is useful to think of the distinctively different types (or categories) of factors that affect a dependent variable. This was the approach taken in the preceding example. There is also a statistical reason for ensuring that independent variables are as independent as possible. When two independent variables are highly correlated with each other (r2 > .60), it sometimes becomes statistically impossible to distinguish the effect of each independent variable on the dependent variable, controlled for the other. The variables are statistically too similar to discern disparate effects. This problem is called multicollinearity and is discussed later in this chapter. This problem is avoided by choosing independent variables that are not highly correlated with each other. A WORKING EXAMPLE Previously (see Chapter 14), the management analyst with the Department of Defense found a statistically significant relationship between teamwork and perceived facility productivity (p <.01). The analyst now wishes to examine whether the impact of teamwork on productivity is robust when controlled for other factors that also affect productivity. This interest is heightened by the low R-square (R2 = 0.074) in Table 14.1, suggesting a weak relationship between teamwork and perceived productivity. A multiple regression model is specified to include the effects of other factors that affect perceived productivity. Thinking about other categories of variables that could affect productivity, the analyst hypothesizes the following: (1) the extent to which employees have adequate technical knowledge to do their jobs, (2) perceptions of having adequate authority to do one’s job well (for example, decision-making flexibility), (3) perceptions that rewards and recognition are distributed fairly (always important for motivation), and (4) the number of sick days. Various items from the employee survey are used to measure these concepts (as discussed in the workbook documentation for the Productivity dataset). After including these factors as additional independent variables, the result shown in Table 15.1 is

Andrew Murray comments boldly, but I think rightly, on Christ’s pledge: “Ask and you shall receive; everyone that asks, receives.” This is the fixed eternal law of the kingdom: if you ask and receive not, it must be because there is something amiss or wanting in the prayer. Hold on; let the Word and Spirit teach you to pray aright, but do not let go the confidence He seeks to waken: Everyone who asks receives. . . . Let every learner in the school of Christ therefore take the Master’s word in all simplicity. . . . Let us beware of weakening the Word with our human wisdom.[18] Because God answers prayer, when we “ask and receive not” we must consider the possibility that there is “something amiss or wanting” in our prayer. Perhaps God has indeed answered, but not in an obvious way. And possibly our prayers show nothing amiss, but we don’t yet see the answer only because God intends for us to persevere in praying about the matter awhile longer. Still, we must learn to examine our prayers. Are we asking for things outside the will of God or that would not glorify Him? Are we praying with selfish motives? Are we failing to deal with the kind of blatant sin that causes God to put all our prayers on hold? Despite what we see in response to our prayers, however, let’s not become so accustomed to our shortcomings in prayer and to the perception of asking without receiving that our faith in the force of Jesus’ promise is diminished. Prayer is answered.

IN 1930, JOSEPH ROSSMAN, who had served for decades as an examiner in the U.S. Patent Office, polled more than seven hundred patentees, producing a remarkable picture of the mind of the inventor. Some of the results were predictable;6 the three biggest motivators were “love of inventing,” “desire to improve,” and “financial gain,” the ranking for each of which was statistically identical, and each at least twice as important as those appearing down the list, such as “desire to achieve,” “prestige,” or “altruism” (and certainly not the old saw, “laziness,” which was named roughly one-thirtieth as frequently as “financial gain”). A century after Rocket, the world of technology had changed immensely: electric power, automobiles, telephones. But the motivations of individual inventors were indistinguishable from those inaugurated by the Industrial Revolution.

Gregory of Nazianus taught around AD 370: “The responsibility of pastoral office is great indeed, and no one ought to enter who has not deeply examined motive and ability, who has not struggled against call in the face of godly demands of office and the frailty of mere humanity.

Only the heartless were close to the Network, and I suspected the Bombshell would fit the job. Maybe I felt the need to kill her to save the lives that she would take during her reign, but I wouldn’t spare the concentration to examine my own motives.

A person must move beyond guilt and unexamined thoughts and motives in order to discover a purpose for living vibrantly.

I had thirty-nine typed pages and a contract stating I would send the completed manuscript in by February 1, 2002. I knew where I wanted the novel to go, but I couldn’t seem to shove it past page 39. I couldn’t find the point of view I needed to examine the life and motives of a man who wanted to conquer the world. I did the usual: sacrificed small rodents to the moon, offered my soul to demons in exchange for inspiration, did some research. Nobody wanted the rodents or my soul, and the research into ancient conquerors seemed barren. Finally, out of the blue, a young girl stepped into my head, opened her mouth and told me where that part of the story began.

Looking for the best deal on your next food truck? Tampabayfoodtruckrally catering lists trucks carts, and allowance preview from highly-motivated sellers located across the Tampa. Our vetting process ensures that only legit listings are published on our website, but we still recommend examining a truck in person prior to making any type of purchase decision and getting the vehicle evaluated by a professional.

By concentrating almost exclusively on thesis-support exposition in college composition classes, we are implicitly teaching that the ability to support an assertion is more important than the ability to examine an issue.

In ministry it is important that we always allow our heart, which includes our motives, to be examined by God.

But at keast we know that the Brotherhood was both a scientific academy and a monastic order; that its members led an ascetic communal life where all property was shared, thus anticipating the Essenes and the primitive Christian communities. We know that much of their time was spent in contemplation, and that initiation into the higher mysteries of mathematics, astronomy, and medicine depended upon the purification of spirit and body, which the aspirant had to achieve by abstinences and examinations of conscience. Pythagoras himself, like St. Francis, is said to have preached to animals; the whole surviving tradition indicates that his disciples, while engaged in number-lore and astronomical calculations, firmly believed that a true scientist must be a saint, and that the wish to become one was the motivation of his labours.

Leaders of women should continually challenge women to ask the Holy Spirit to examine their motives for ministries of mercy. Are they seeking self-fulfillment or God’s glory?

How easy it is to be motivated by earthly success—by money, status, career advancement, and personal pleasure. How easy it is, amidst our busyness and insatiable thirst for more, to forget that the eyes of Manasseh are upon us. The next generation is watching us—examining our faith, testing our lives, and determining whether or not our God is true.

The Three Lives We all lead three lives: our public life, our private life, and our deep inner life. Our public life takes place in a community setting, where we interact with others. Our private life is away from the public—we may be alone, with a friend, or with family members. But our deep inner life is our most significant life. It is where our heart is. It’s where we have the capacity to explore our own motives, to examine our own thoughts and desires, and to analyze our problems and our needs. We can go into this deep private life—we could call it a secret life—even when we are in a public or a private setting. Our secret life is where we are able to tap into the power of the four human endowments: self-awareness, conscience, imagination, and independent will. When you are dealing with the development of a personal mission statement, you need to go into the deep inner or secret life, which influences the other two. It is the part of you where you decide the most fundamental issues of your life. As the psalmist put it: “Search your own heart with all diligence, for out of it flows the issues of your life.” It truly is a secret life. No one knows the thoughts and intents of your heart.

It is not necessary here to examine the important moral and material contribution of the United States to the general victory. But in the Peace Conference—to European eyes—President Wilson sought to play a part out of all proportion to any stake which his country had contributed or intended to contribute to European affairs. Actuated by the noblest motives he went far beyond any commission which the American Senate or people were willing to accord him, and armed with this inflation of his own constitutional power he sought to bend the world—no doubt for its own good—to his personal views.

This book is written to confront the issue of the often unhealthy shape of pastoral culture and to put on the table the temptations that are either unique to or intensified by pastoral ministry. This is a book of warning that calls you to humble self-reflection and change. It is written to make you uncomfortable, to motivate you toward change. At points it may make you angry, but I am convinced that the content of this book is a reflection of what God has called me to do. Perhaps we have become too comfortable. Perhaps we have quit examining ourselves and the culture that surrounds those of us who have been called to ministry in the local church. I think that, more than any other book I have written, I wrote this book because I could not live with not writing it. And I have launched myself on a ministry career direction to get help for pastors who have lost their way.

Within the context of fulfilling our call, we tend to forget the need to stop and examine our motives and methods. It’s easy to become caught up in the good things that are going on in ministry and overlook whether our motives are correct. We need to look in the mirror, examine ourselves, and ask God to reveal to us if our motives are correct.

In a letter written to the play's director, Peter Wood, on 30th March 1958, just before the start of rehearsals, Pinter rightly refused to add extra lines explaining or justifying Stanley's motives in withdrawing from the world into a dingy seaside boarding-house: 'Stanley cannot perceive his only valid justification - which is he is what he is - therefore he certainly can never be articulate about it.' But Pinter came much closer than he usually does to offering an explanation of the finished work: We've agreed: the hierarchy, the Establishment, the arbiters, the socio- religious monsters arrive to affect censure and alteration upon a member of the club who has discarded responsibility (that word again) towards himself and others. (What is your opinion, by the way, of the act of suicide?) He does possess, however, for my money, a certain fibre - he fights for his life. It doesn't last long, this fight. His core being a quagmire of delusion, his mind a tenuous fuse box, he collapses under the weight of their accusation - an accusation compounded of the shit- stained strictures of centuries of 'tradition'. This gets us right to the heart of the matter. It is not simply a play about a pathetic victim brainwashed into social conformity. It is a play about the need to resist, with the utmost vigour, dead ideas and the inherited weight of the past. And if you examine the text, you notice how Pinter has toughened up the original image of the man in the Eastbourne digs with 'nowhere to go'. Pinter's Stanley Webber - a palpably Jewish name, incidentally - is a man who shores up his precarious sense of self through fantasy, bluff, violence and his own manipulative form of power-play. His treatment of Meg initially is rough, playful, teasing: he's an ersatz, scarpegrace Oedipus to her boardinghouse Jocasta. But once she makes the fateful, mood-changing revelation - 'I've got to get things in for the two gentlemen' - he's as dangerous as a cornered animal. He affects a wanton grandeur with his talk of a European concert tour. He projects his own fear on to Meg by terrorising her with stories of nameless men coming to abduct her in a van. In his first solo encounter with McCann, he tries to win him over by appealing to a shared past (Maidenhead, Fuller's tea shop, Boots library) and a borrowed patriotism ('I know Ireland very well. I've many friends there. I love that country and I admire and trust its people... I think their policemen are wonderful'). At the start of the interrogation he resists Goldberg's injunction to sit down and at the end of it he knees him in the stomach. And in the panic of the party, he attempts to strangle Meg and rape Lulu. These are hardly the actions of a supine victim. Even though Stanley is finally carried off shaven, besuited, white-collared and ostensibly tamed, the spirit of resistance is never finally quelled. When asked how he regards the prospect of being able to 'make or break' in the integrated outer world, he does not stay limply silent, but produces the most terrifying noises.

I failed and failed because I was unaware of the changes in principles of the war but I choose to stand in field until my last performance and to examine the man in me. I am me. I am me ​

Fanon examined how colonialism is internalized by the colonized and inculcates an inferiority complex through the mechanism of racism. In the same way, the tyrannical mechanism of patriarchy oppresses women not only physically or mentally but also colonizes their minds and shatters their souls through constant emotional, economic, and mental violence. This internalization of inferiority by women themselves in a male-dominated society forcibly compels them to stay in a repressive and a violent marriage. In such precarious situations, with no available critical internal or external support from the wider family network or the state, and no hope left, a woman’s self-esteem collapses, and her humanness is crushed to the extent that she ceases to be a self-motivated person. The calculative presumptions of patriarchy control and overwhelmingly dominate and subjugate women while normalizing and trivializing their brutal torture and murder in the garb of transferring wealth to the daughters in connection with marriage.

As a society, we pursue happiness and become measurably less happy over time. We privilege autonomy, and end up bound by rules to which we never assented, and more spied on than any people since the beginning of time. We pursue leisure through technology, and discover that the average working day is longer than ever, and that we have less time than we had before. The means to our ends are ever more available, while we have less sense of what our ends should be, or whether there is purpose in anything at all. Economists carefully model and monitor the financial markets in order to avoid any future crash: they promptly crash. We are so eager that all scientific research result in ‘positive findings’ that it has become progressively less adventurous and more predictable, and therefore discovers less and less that is a truly significant advance in scientific thinking. We grossly misconceive the nature of study in the humanities as utilitarian, in order to get value for money, and thus render it pointless and, in this form, certainly a waste of resource. We ‘improve’ education by dictating curricula and focussing on exam results to the point where free-thinking, arguably an overarching goal of true education, is discouraged; in our universities many students are, in any case, so frightened that the truth might turn out not to conform to their theoretical model that they demand to be protected from discussions that threaten to examine the model critically; and their teachers, who should know better, in a serious dereliction of duty, collude. We over-sanitise and cause vulnerability to infection; we over-use antibiotics, leading to super-bacteria that no antibiotic can kill; we make drugs illegal to protect society, and, while failing comprehensively to control the use of drugs, create a fertile field for crime; we protect children in such a way that they cannot cope with – let alone relish – uncertainty or risk, and are rendered vulnerable. The left hemisphere’s motivation is control; and its means of achieving it alarmingly linear, as though it could see only one of the arrows in a vastly complex network of interactions

Other studies examining the brain effects of cold-water immersion in humans and animals show similar elevations in monoamine neurotransmitters (dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin), the same neurotransmitters that regulate pleasure, motivation, mood, appetite, sleep, and alertness. Beyond neurotransmitters, extreme cold in animals has been shown to promote neuronal growth, all the more remarkable since neurons are known to alter their microstructure in response to only a small handful of circumstances.

It is always wise to examine your motives before doing any act of kindness or goodness to make sure that your intentions are morally correct to the corrosion , erosion and corruption of the heart

Our dreams constantly speak to us of our beliefs and attitudes. They are of such crucial importance because they largely determine what we do, how we relate to people, and how we react to most situations. Most of us are not remotely aware of how much we are controlled by our beliefs, even less aware of how unconscious our attitude systems are. No one decides what beliefs and attitudes he or she will start off with. We all begin our lives with a set of attitudes that are dictated to us by the world outside us—family, tribe, or society. Generally, we don’t know we have them. If we are consciously aware of them as our beliefs, we assume that they are right; it rarely occurs to us to question them. At a certain point our dreams begin to challenge them and point them out to us, for the process of inner growth demands that we examine consciously everything that motivates us. If you look at the belief systems floating around in your dreams, you may find a power-mad dictator, a great general, a saint, or a sage living in you, with a complete matching set of attitudes. When this image appears, you should ask: “What set of beliefs, what opinions, does this character function out of? Do I unconsciously hold that same opinion without realizing it?

The stranger the coincidences are, the more people want to believe them. An entire town gone mad is a good story; people will actually go out of their way to verify it rather than examine the motives.

The bottom line, when it comes to rebooted retirement, is that it’s not just about a new “length of service.” It’s also a mindset shift, in which you’re only partially defined by what you do. Other criteria include how well you adapt to a variety of careers—ones that will hopefully give you a sense of purpose, satisfaction, and optimism. Some things to consider when it comes to a new approach to retirement: •   Zero in on the aspects of your work that you love and physically can do and focus on those. •   Examine educational opportunities to develop skills in new areas that will allow you to keep pursuing your passions. •   Assuming you’re financially stable, consider a second (or third or fourth) career in new areas in which you’re motivated by passion, rather than money.

Whether or not the sins are the root cause of all the pain, it seems that distress at least brings on sin. Sins of wrong thinking about God. Sins of ascribing improper, unloving motives to His actions. Sins of demanding explanations or fixes for the situation. Instead, it should be a time of examination and confession, if for no other reason than to break down the barrier to comfort.

His face would have had little to recommend it except youth, were it not for an expression that seldom failed to win upon those who had leisure to examine it, and to yield to the feeling of confidence it created. This expression was simply that of guileless truth, sustained by an earnestness of purpose, and a sincerity of feeling, that rendered it remarkable. At times this air of integrity seemed to be so simple as to awaken the suspicion of a want of the usual means to discriminate between artifice and truth, but few came in serious contact with the man, without losing this distrust in respect for his opinions and motives.

Search out the pretensions, the rubbish, the gloss, the whitewash, the emulsions of life covering the real feeling, real examination, real creativity

This gives a whole new meaning to ‘family mobbing.’ According to author and survivor, Stephanie A. Sellers, Ph.D, who wrote the book, Daughters Healing from Family Mobbing: Stories and Approaches to Recovery from Shunning, Aggression, and Family Violence, “Family Mobbing is a group act of aggression that targets a family member. It can be typified by a single act of violence or a pattern of abuse over years. Whether isolated or long-term, mobbing enforces the family’s domination and control over another. As family members continue to tyrannize their target, the aggressive group may expand to include friends, neighbors, business associates, and clergy. Family Mobbing encompasses varied acts of aggression that cannot be understood by examining one motivation or cause. The pattern of behavior always isolates one family member and inflicts as much emotional pain as possible. Unlike sibling rivalry, the intention is to establish superiority or to provoke fear and distress. Factors to consider include the motives, the degree of severity, a power of imbalance, victimization element, physical injuries, and trauma.