Expect Less Accept More Quotes

It was time to expect more of myself. Yet as I thought about happiness, I kept running up against paradoxes. I wanted to change myself but accept myself. I wanted to take myself less seriously -- and also more seriously. I wanted to use my time well, but I also wanted to wander, to play, to read at whim. I wanted to think about myself so I could forget myself. I was always on the edge of agitation; I wanted to let go of envy and anxiety about the future, yet keep my energy and ambition.

I have found that the less expectation you put on others, the more happiness you will find with them and yourself.

The less approval I get, the more chances I have to develop a relationship with my inner sense of approval. Thankless environments are actually useful for this. They help me discover my own thankfulness and my own self-appreciation.

A woman in her thirties came to see me. As she greeted me, I could sense the pain behind her polite and superficial smile. She started telling me her story, and within one second her smile changed into a grimace of pain. Then, she began to sob uncontrollably. She said she felt lonely and unfulfilled. There was much anger and sadness. As a child she had been abused by a physically violent father. I saw quickly that her pain was not caused by her present life circumstances but by an extraordinarily heavy pain-body. Her pain-body had become the filter through which she viewed her life situation. She was not yet able to see the link between the emotional pain and her thoughts, being completely identified with both. She could not yet see that she was feeding the pain-body with her thoughts. In other words, she lived with the burden of a deeply unhappy self. At some level, however, she must have realized that her pain originated within herself, that she was a burden to herself. She was ready to awaken, and this is why she had come. I directed the focus of her attention to what she was feeling inside her body and asked her to sense the emotion directly, instead of through the filter of her unhappy thoughts, her unhappy story. She said she had come expecting me to show her the way out of her unhappiness, not into it. Reluctantly, however, she did what I asked her to do. Tears were rolling down her face, her whole body was shaking. “At this moment, this is what you feel.” I said. “There is nothing you can do about the fact that at this moment this is what you feel. Now, instead of wanting this moment to be different from the way it is, which adds more pain to the pain that is already there, is it possible for you to completely accept that this is what you feel right now?” She was quiet for a moment. Suddenly she looked impatient, as if she was about to get up, and said angrily, “No, I don't want to accept this.” “Who is speaking?” I asked her. “You or the unhappiness in you? Can you see that your unhappiness about being unhappy is just another layer of unhappiness?” She became quiet again. “I am not asking you to do anything. All I'm asking is that you find out whether it is possible for you to allow those feelings to be there. In other words, and this may sound strange, if you don't mind being unhappy, what happens to the unhappiness? Don't you want to find out?” She looked puzzled briefly, and after a minute or so of sitting silently, I suddenly noticed a significant shift in her energy field. She said, “This is weird. I 'm still unhappy, but now there is space around it. It seems to matter less.” This was the first time I heard somebody put it like that: There is space around my unhappiness. That space, of course, comes when there is inner acceptance of whatever you are experiencing in the present moment. I didn't say much else, allowing her to be with the experience. Later she came to understand that the moment she stopped identifying with the feeling, the old painful emotion that lived in her, the moment she put her attention on it directly without trying to resist it, it could no longer control her thinking and so become mixed up with a mentally constructed story called “The Unhappy Me.” Another dimension had come into her life that transcended her personal past – the dimension of Presence. Since you cannot be unhappy without an unhappy story, this was the end of her unhappiness. It was also the beginning of the end of her pain-body. Emotion in itself is not unhappiness. Only emotion plus an unhappy story is unhappiness. When our session came to an end, it was fulfilling to know that I had just witnessed the arising of Presence in another human being. The very reason for our existence in human form is to bring that dimension of consciousness into this world. I had also witnessed a diminishment of the pain-body, not through fighting it but through bringing the light of consciousness to it.

At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured. On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war--seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came. One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

When expectations are shattered, practice allowing that to be the way it is. Relax, let go, allow, and recognize that some of your desires are about how you think your world should be, rather than how it is in that moment. Become an astute observer…judge less and listen more. Take time to open your mind to the fascinating mystery and uncertainty that we all experience.

The truth will set you free, but it doesn’t make truth hurt any less, nor does it make truth any prettier, and it certainly doesn’t absolve you of the responsibilities that truth requires. One of the biggest obstacles guys face in unplugging is accepting the hard truths that Game forces upon them. Among these is bearing the burden of realizing what you’ve been conditioned to believe for so long were comfortable ideals and loving expectations are really liabilities. Call them lies if you want, but there’s a certain hopeless nihilism that accompanies categorizing what really amounts to a system that you are now cut away from. It is not that you’re hopeless, it’s that you lack the insight at this point to see that you can create hope in a new system – one in which you have more direct control over.

The Key to Abundance is Acceptance. The more you expect the less you accept.

When you accept a lord's meat and mead, all you do reflects on him. Always do more than he expects of you, never less. Never flinch at any task or hardship. And above all, never shame the lord you serve.

• “To us today, it is tempting to ask why societies with early writing systems accepted the ambiguities that restricted writing to a few functions and a few scribes. But even to pose that question is illustrate the gap between ancient perspectives and our own expectations of mass literacy. The intended restricted uses of early writing provided a positive disincentive for devising less ambiguous writing systems. The kings and priests of ancient Sumer wanted writing to be used by professional scribes to recorded numbers of sheep owed in taxes, not by the masses to write poetry and hatch plots. As the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss put it, ancients writing’s main function was “to facilitate the enslavement of other human beings.” Personal uses of writing by nonprofessionals came only much later, as writing systems grew simpler and more expressive

Over the years I have developed and employed a variety of such coping mechanisms, mostly focusing around a philosophy I call, “Live Because.” “Live Because” is in contrast to what I’ve termed “Live Despite,” which is the idea that people can live rich, full lives in spite of their physical or emotional barriers. “Live Because” takes this a step further by suggesting that in many cases, patients can live a more fulfilling life with their illness than they could ever have done without it. Ehlers-Danlos syndrome has transformed me from a frequently petty and self-absorbed person into the person I am today (still somewhat self-absorbed, but a lot less petty, and with a clearly defined purpose of alleviating whatever suffering I can). I am better because of my illness, and not just in spite of it. But this process was, and still is, a journey. Chronic illness is nearly always accompanied by depression, and the need to constantly remain one step ahead of my illness has left me fearful and exhausted. I could never go through this alone... A part of me will always be angry; such is the process of mourning the pieces of oneself that are lost to chronic disease. I have learned to accept the duality of being bitter and at peace; ignorant and enlightened... while still laying a foundation of hope for the possibility that I can still realize my personal dreams and ambitions, even if not in the exact ways I had expected.

Accept myself, and expect more of myself. Give myself limits to give myself freedom. Make people happier by acknowledging that they’re not feeling happy. Plan ahead to be spontaneous; only with careful preparation do I feel carefree. Accomplish more by working less. Happiness doesn’t always make me feel happy. Flawed can be more perfect than perfection. It’s very hard to make things easier. My material desires have a spiritual aspect. Hell is other people. Heaven is other people. What was “happiness,” anyway, and was it even possible to make myself happier?

As infants, we see the world in parts. There is the good—the things that feed and nourish us. There is the bad—the things that frustrate or deny us. As children mature, they come to see the world in more complex ways, realizing, for example, that beyond black and white, there are shades of gray. The same mother who feeds us may sometimes have no milk. Over time, we transform a collection of parts into a comprehension of wholes.4 With this integration, we learn to tolerate disappointment and ambiguity. And we learn that to sustain realistic relationships, one must accept others in their complexity. When we imagine a robot as a true companion, there is no need to do any of this work.

And this is more or less all that I had left after the holidays. Nothing really; hopeless confusion, a narrative without a possible conclusion, full of doubtful meanings, belied by the very elements that I had to give it shape. I didn't know the significance of what I'd seen, I was repelled by the idea of finding out and being sure. All that counts is that I felt at peace when I finished writing, certain I had enjoyed the greatest success one can expect from this kind of task: I had accepted a challenge, and turned at least one daily defeat into a victory.

He had to learn that not giving at the right time was more compassionate than giving at the wrong time, and that fostering independence was more loving than taking care of people who could otherwise take care of themselves. He even had to learn that expressing his own needs, anger, resentments and expectations was every bit as necessary to the mental health of his family as his self-sacrifice, and therefore that love must be manifested in confrontation as much as in beatific acceptance. Gradually coming to realize how he infantilized his family, he began to make

To the one and only Alex Jenkins Reid: Thank you for understanding why this book was so important to me and for being so into it. But more important, thank you for being the kind of man who encourages me to shout louder, dream bigger, and take less shit. Thank you for never making me feel as if I should make myself smaller to make anyone else feel better. It brings me an absolutely unparalleled amount of pride and joy to know that our daughter is growing up with a father who will stick by her side no matter who she is, who will show her how she should expect to be treated by modeling it for her. Evelyn did not have that. I did not have that. But she will. Because of you. And lastly, to my baby girl. You were teeny teeny tiny—I believe the size of half the period on the end of this sentence—when I started writing this book. And when I finished it, you were mere days away from making your entrance. You were with me every step of the way. I suspect it was, in no small part, you who gave me the strength to write it. I promise that I will repay the favor by loving you unconditionally and accepting you always, so that you feel strong enough and safe enough to do anything you set your mind to. Evelyn would want that for you. She would say, “Lilah, go out there, be kind, and grab what you want out of this world with both hands.” Well, she might not have put as big an emphasis on being kind. But as your mother, I must insist.

The pretense, the fiction (for it is scarcely more than that) of an attack on the books of chivalry is kept up throughout; but as the story develops and deepens beyond the author's expectations as well as those of the reader, Don Quixote becomes nothing less than a novelistic treatment of the essential nature of human life and man's greatest metaphysical problem: that of illusion and reality. It is a problem as old as Plato-and a good deal older- and as new as Jean-Paul Sartre. It is one that, as Lionel Trilling has rightly observed, has always been the serious novelist's chief concern. In this light, there can no longer be any question as to Don Quixote's "madness" in the ordinary acceptation of that term. In Waldo Frank's finely expressive phrase, he is "a man possessed, not a madman.

As we were wrapping up the book, I sat down and thought about all the lessons I’d learned over the past two years. I couldn’t list them all, but here are a few: Never complain about the price of a gift from your spouse--accept it with love and gratitude. You can’t put a price on romance. Take lots of videos, even of the mundane. You will forget the sound of your children’s voices and you will miss your youth as much as theirs. Celebrate every wedding anniversary. Make time for dates. Hug your spouse every single morning. And always, ALWAYS, say “I love you.” Believe in your partner. When you hit hard times as a couple, take a weekend away or at least a night out. The times that you least feel like doing it are likely the times that you need it the most. Write love notes to your spouse, your children, and keep the ones they give you. Don’t expect a miniature pig to be an “easy” pet. Live life looking forward with a goal of no regrets, so you can look back without them. Be the friend you will need some day. Often the most important thing you can do for another person is just showing up. Question less and listen more. Don’t get too tied up in your plans for the future. No one really knows their future anyway. Laugh at yourself, and with life. People don’t change their core character. Be humble, genuine, and gracious. Before you get into business with someone, look at their history. Expect them to be with you for the long haul, even if you don’t think they will be. If they aren’t someone you could take a road trip across the country with, don’t do business with them in the first place. Real families and real sacrifices live in the fabric of the Red, White, and Blue; stand for the national anthem.

Over the years I've come to expect being groped in gay bars. Complaining about this unwanted touching is often deemed sex-negative, un-queer or even homophobic. Touching in gay bars is often seen as an acceptable form of cruising. [...] I've also witnessed gay men grabbing women's breasts many times on the dance floor. When asked to stop, some have replied 'Don't worry I'm gay! I'm not into girls!" Not being into girls, however, is sometimes less about sexual preference and more about disdain. Is grabbing women's breasts a way to make women feel unsafe and therefore keep them out of gay bars?

Life is less like a straight line and more like a pendulum. We swing back and forth between illness and health, joy and suffering, right and wrong, progression and regression. The secret to life is to accept this duality as a normal process and not to expect one side to be a permanent state. This is how we achieve balance.

The world has been changing even faster as people, devices and information are increasingly connected to each other. Computational power is growing and quantum computing is quickly being realised. This will revolutionise artificial intelligence with exponentially faster speeds. It will advance encryption. Quantum computers will change everything, even human biology. There is already one technique to edit DNA precisely, called CRISPR. The basis of this genome-editing technology is a bacterial defence system. It can accurately target and edit stretches of genetic code. The best intention of genetic manipulation is that modifying genes would allow scientists to treat genetic causes of disease by correcting gene mutations. There are, however, less noble possibilities for manipulating DNA. How far we can go with genetic engineering will become an increasingly urgent question. We can’t see the possibilities of curing motor neurone diseases—like my ALS—without also glimpsing its dangers. Intelligence is characterised as the ability to adapt to change. Human intelligence is the result of generations of natural selection of those with the ability to adapt to changed circumstances. We must not fear change. We need to make it work to our advantage. We all have a role to play in making sure that we, and the next generation, have not just the opportunity but the determination to engage fully with the study of science at an early level, so that we can go on to fulfil our potential and create a better world for the whole human race. We need to take learning beyond a theoretical discussion of how AI should be and to make sure we plan for how it can be. We all have the potential to push the boundaries of what is accepted, or expected, and to think big. We stand on the threshold of a brave new world. It is an exciting, if precarious, place to be, and we are the pioneers. When we invented fire, we messed up repeatedly, then invented the fire extinguisher. With more powerful technologies such as nuclear weapons, synthetic biology and strong artificial intelligence, we should instead plan ahead and aim to get things right the first time, because it may be the only chance we will get. Our future is a race between the growing power of our technology and the wisdom with which we use it. Let’s make sure that wisdom wins.

Much that was unjust and still more that was simply unintelligible seemed to be accepted, not only without resentment, but with a certain satisfaction provided only that it was striking. Even about his present situation he showed very much less curiosity than Mark would have thought possible. It did not make sense, but then the man did not expect things to make sense. He deplored the absence of tobacco and regarded the “Foreigners” as very dangerous people; but the main thing, obviously, was to eat and drink as much as possible while the present conditions lasted.

For Uncle Giles had been relegated by most of the people who knew him at all well to that limbo where nothing is expected of a person, and where more than usually outrageous actions are approached, at least conversationally, as if they constituted a series of practical jokes, more or less enjoyable, according to where responsibility for clearing up matters might fall. The curious thing about persons regarding whom society has taken this largely self-defensive measure is that the existence of the individual himself reaches a pitch when nothing he does can ever be accepted as serious.

There was not one in that room, unless it was Mary Wharton, who was not more or less angry with Emily, thinking her to be perverse and unreasonable. Even to Mary her cousin’s strange obstinacy was matter of surprise and sorrow, — for to her Arthur Fletcher was one of those demigods, who should never be refused, who are not expected to do more than express a wish and be accepted. Her own heart had not strayed that way because she thought but little of herself, knowing herself to be portionless, and believing from long thought on the subject that it was not her destiny to be the wife of any man.

The point of a humoring response is to become more accepting of the worry so that it matters less to you. It’s to get better at hearing and accepting the thought for what it is—simply a thought, a twitch in your internal world. It’s okay to have thoughts—smart ones, dumb ones, pleasant ones, angry ones, scary ones, and so on. We don’t have that much choice in the matter. We all have lots of thoughts. And a lot of them are misleading and exaggerated. That’s okay. We don’t have to be guided by them, or argue with them, or disprove them, or silence them. We just have to be willing to hear them as we go on about our business.

Over the years I have seen the power of taking an unconditional relationship to life. I am surprised to have found a sort of willingness to show up for whatever life may offer and meet with it rather than wishing to edit and change the inevitable...When people begin to take such an attitude, they seem to become intensely alive, intensely present. Their losses and suffering have not caused them to reject life, have not cast them into a place of resentment, victimization, or bitterness. From such people, I have learned a new definition of the word 'joy.' I had thought joy to be rather synonymous with happiness, but it seems now to be far less vulnerable than happiness. Joy seems to be part of an unconditional wish to live, not holding back because life may not meet our preferences and expectations. Joy seems to be a function of the willingness to accept the whole, and to show up to meet with whatever is there. It has a kind of invincibility that attachment to any particular outcome would deny us. Rather than the warrior who fights toward a specific outcome and therefore is haunted by the specter of failure and disappointment, it is the lover drunk with the opportunity to love despite the possibility of loss, the player for whom playing has become more important than winning or losing. The willingness to win or lose moves us out of an adversarial relationship to life and into a powerful kind of openness. From such a position, we can make a greater commitment to life. Not only pleasant life, or comfortable life, or our idea of life, but all life. Joy seems more closely related to aliveness than happiness. The strength that I notice developing in many of my patients and in myself after all these years could almost be called a form of curiosity. What one of my colleagues calls fearlessness. At one level, of course, I fear outcome as much as anyone. But more and more I am able to move in and out of that and to experience a place beyond preference for outcome, a life beyond life and death. It is a place of freedom, even anticipation. Decisions made from this perspective are life-affirming and not fear-driven. It is a grace.

Fifteen. Be as careful as crossing frozen water, alert as a Warrior on enemy ground. Be as courteous as a Guest, as fluid as a Stream. Be as shapeable as a block of wood, as receptive as a glass. Don’t seek and don’t expect. Be patient and wait until your mud settles and your water is clear. Be patient and wait. Your mud will settle. Your water will be clear. Sixty-three. Act without doing, work without effort, think of the large as small and the many as few. Confront the difficult while it is easy, accomplish the great one step at a time. Don’t reach and you will find, if you run into trouble throw yourself toward it. Don’t cling to comfort and everything will be comfortable. Seventy-nine. Failure is an opportunity. If you blame others, there is no end to blame. Fulfill your obligations, correct your mistakes. Do what you need to do and step away. Demand nothing and give all. Demand nothing and give all. Twenty-four. Stand on your toes and you won’t stand firm. Rush ahead and you won’t go far. Try to shine and you’ll extinguish your light. Try to define yourself, you won’t know who you are. Don’t try to control others. Let go and let them be. As I read this book it calms me without effort, fills in the blanks of my strategy for survival. Control by letting go of control, fix your problems by forgetting they’re problems. Deal with them and the World and yourself with patience and simplicity and compassion. Let things be, let yourself be, let everything be and accept it as it is. Nothing more. Nothing less. Nothing more.

At a talk I gave at a church months later, I spoke about Charlie and the plight of incarcerated children. Afterward, an older married couple approached me and insisted that they had to help Charlie. I tried to dissuade these kind people from thinking they could do anything, but I gave them my card and told them they could call me. I didn't expect to hear from them, but within days they called, and they were persistent. We eventually agreed that they would write a letter to Charlie and send it to me to pass on to him. When I received the letter weeks later, I read it. It was remarkable. Mr. and Mrs. Jennings were a white couple in their mid-seventies from a small community northeast of Birmingham. They were kind and generous people who were active in their local United Methodist church. They never missed a Sunday service and were especially drawn to children in crisis. They spoke softly and always seemed to be smiling but never appeared to be anything less than completely genuine and compassionate. They were affectionate with each other in a way that was endearing, frequently holding hands and leaning into each other. They dressed like farmers and owned ten acres of land, where they grew vegetables and lived simply. Their one and only grandchild, whom they had helped raise, had committed suicide when he was a teenager, and they had never stopped grieving for him. Their grandson struggled with mental health problems during his short life, but he was a smart kid and they had been putting money away to send him to college. They explained in their letter that they wanted to use the money they'd saved for their grandson to help Charlie. Eventually, Charlie and this couple began corresponding with one another, building up to the day when the Jenningses met Charlie at the juvenile detention facility. They later told me that they "loved him instantly." Charlie's grandmother had died a few months after she first called me, and his mother was still struggling after the tragedy of the shooting and Charlie's incarceration. Charlie had been apprehensive about meeting with the Jenningses because he thought they wouldn't like him, but he told me after they left how much they seemed to care about him and how comforting that was. The Jenningses became his family. At one point early on, I tried to caution them against expecting too much from Charlie after his release. 'You know, he's been through a lot. I'm not sure he can just carry on as if nothing has ever happened. I want you to understand he may not be able to do everything you'd like him to do.' They never accepted my warnings. Mrs. Jennings was rarely disagreeable or argumentative, but I had learned that she would grunt when someone said something she didn't completely accept. She told me, 'We've all been through a lot, Bryan, all of us. I know that some have been through more than others. But if we don't expect more from each other, hope better for one another, and recover from the hurt we experience, we are surely doomed.' The Jenningses helped Charlie get his general equivalency degree in detention and insisted on financing his college education. They were there, along with his mother, to take him home when he was released.

A 2011 study done by Alan Krueger, a Princeton economics professor who served for two years as the chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, and Stacy Dale, an analyst with Mathematica Policy Research, tried to adjust for that sort of thing. Krueger and Dale examined sets of students who had started college in 1976 and in 1989; that way, they could get a sense of incomes both earlier and later in careers. And they determined that the graduates of more selective colleges could expect earnings 7 percent greater than graduates of less selective colleges, even if the graduates in that latter group had SAT scores and high school GPAs identical to those of their peers at more exclusive institutions. But then Krueger and Dale made their adjustment. They looked specifically at graduates of less selective colleges who had applied to more exclusive ones even though they hadn’t gone there. And they discovered that the difference in earnings pretty much disappeared. Someone with a given SAT score who had gone to Penn State but had also applied to the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League school with a much lower acceptance rate, generally made the same amount of money later on as someone with an equivalent SAT score who was an alumnus of UPenn. It was a fascinating conclusion, suggesting that at a certain level of intelligence and competence, what drives earnings isn’t the luster of the diploma but the type of person in possession of it. If he or she came from a background and a mindset that made an elite institution seem desirable and within reach, then he or she was more likely to have the tools and temperament for a high income down the road, whether an elite institution ultimately came into play or not. This was powerfully reflected in a related determination that Krueger and Dale made in their 2011 study: “The average SAT score of schools that rejected a student is more than twice as strong a predictor of the student’s subsequent earnings as the average SAT score of the school the student attended.

[There is] no direct relationship between IQ and economic opportunity. In the supposed interests of fairness and “social justice”, the natural relationship has been all but obliterated. Consider the first necessity of employment, filling out a job application. A generic job application does not ask for information on IQ. If such information is volunteered, this is likely to be interpreted as boastful exaggeration, narcissism, excessive entitlement, exceptionalism [...] and/or a lack of team spirit. None of these interpretations is likely to get you hired. Instead, the application contains questions about job experience and educational background, neither of which necessarily has anything to do with IQ. Universities are in business for profit; they are run like companies, seek as many paying clients as they can get, and therefore routinely accept people with lukewarm IQ’s, especially if they fill a slot in some quota system (in which case they will often be allowed to stay despite substandard performance). Regarding the quotas themselves, these may in fact turn the tables, advantaging members of groups with lower mean IQ’s than other groups [...] sometimes, people with lower IQ’s are expressly advantaged in more ways than one. These days, most decent jobs require a college education. Academia has worked relentlessly to bring this about, as it gains money and power by monopolizing the employment market across the spectrum. Because there is a glut of college-educated applicants for high-paying jobs, there is usually no need for an employer to deviate from general policy and hire an applicant with no degree. What about the civil service? While the civil service was once mostly open to people without college educations, this is no longer the case, and quotas make a very big difference in who gets hired. Back when I was in the New York job market, “minorities” (actually, worldwide majorities) were being spotted 30 (thirty) points on the civil service exam; for example, a Black person with a score as low as 70 was hired ahead of a White person with a score of 100. Obviously, any prior positive correlation between IQ and civil service employment has been reversed. Add to this the fact that many people, including employers, resent or feel threatened by intelligent people [...] and the IQ-parameterized employment function is no longer what it was once cracked up to be. If you doubt it, just look at the people running things these days. They may run a little above average, but you’d better not be expecting to find any Aristotles or Newtons among them. Intelligence has been replaced in the job market with an increasingly poor substitute, possession of a college degree, and given that education has steadily given way to indoctrination and socialization as academic priorities, it would be naive to suppose that this is not dragging down the overall efficiency of society. In short, there are presently many highly intelligent people working very “dumb” jobs, and conversely, many less intelligent people working jobs that would once have been filled by their intellectual superiors. Those sad stories about physics PhD’s flipping burgers at McDonald's are no longer so exceptional. Sorry, folks, but this is not your grandfather’s meritocracy any more.

Nonconformity is an affront to those in the mainstream. Our impulse is to dismiss this lifestyle, create reasons why it can’t work, why it doesn’t even warrant consideration. Why not? Living outdoors is cheap and can be afforded by a half year of marginal employment. They can’t buy things that most of us have, but what they lose in possessions, they gain in freedom. In Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge, lead character Larry returns from the First World War and declares that he would like to “loaf.”23 The term “loafing” inadequately describes the life he would spend traveling, studying, searching for meaning, and even laboring. Larry meets with the disapproval of peers and would-be mentors: “Common sense assured…that if you wanted to get on in this world, you must accept its conventions, and not to do what everybody else did clearly pointed to instability.” Larry had an inheritance that enabled him to live modestly and pursue his dreams. Larry’s acquaintances didn’t fear the consequences of his failure; they feared his failure to conform. I’m no maverick. Upon leaving college I dove into the workforce, eager to have my own stuff and a job to pay for it. Parents approved, bosses gave raises, and my friends could relate. The approval, the comforts, the commitments wound themselves around me like invisible threads. When my life stayed the course, I wouldn’t even feel them binding. Then I would waiver enough to sense the growing entrapment, the taming of my life in which I had been complicit. Working a nine-to-five job took more energy than I had expected, leaving less time to pursue diverse interests. I grew to detest the statement “I am a…” with the sentence completed by an occupational title. Self-help books emphasize “defining priorities” and “staying focused,” euphemisms for specialization and stifling spontaneity. Our vision becomes so narrow that risk is trying a new brand of cereal, and adventure is watching a new sitcom. Over time I have elevated my opinion of nonconformity nearly to the level of an obligation. We should have a bias toward doing activities that we don’t normally do to keep loose the moorings of society. Hiking the AT is “pointless.” What life is not “pointless”? Is it not pointless to work paycheck to paycheck just to conform? Hiking the AT before joining the workforce was an opportunity not taken. Doing it in retirement would be sensible; doing it at this time in my life is abnormal, and therein lay the appeal. I want to make my life less ordinary.

By Jove, what claptrap! Love can turn to contempt in the blink of an eye. When it sours, believe me, only bitterness and misery remain. Such disappointment spoils all other affection. Whereas mature, reasonable expectations cannot be disappointed, my lady, because they can be fulfilled.” “I will not marry without love, my lord.” “Nor will I pretend to love in order to marry,” he growled in reply. “I won’t spout drivel to stoke your overheated fantasies. If we can rub along, that is enough for me. In return, I will honor you, provide for you and protect you.”   “My father loved my mother deeply, devotedly. He loves her to this day. That is perfect, enduring love.”   “I cannot promise you perfection.”   “It’s not impossible to love with devotion. Swans mate for life, why can’t I?” “Perhaps because you are not an aggressive water fowl with a brain the size of an acorn. You have the option to act as a rational creature and accept that there is no such thing as perfect love in reality.”   “ I will not settle for less.” “By all means, don’t settle, Lady Elizabeth,” Clun said and rudely stood up to leave. “Don’t settle for me. Hold out for a poet. Or more appealing waterfowl for all I care. In the meantime, do not presume to lecture me about the proper basis of marriage, as if you knew better than I.

Nobody as yet had really acknowledged to himself what the disease connoted. Most people were chiefly aware of what ruffled the normal tenor of their lives or affected their interests. They were worried and irritated—but these are not feelings with which to confront plague. Their first reaction, for instance, was to abuse the authorities. The Prefect’s riposte to criticisms echoed by the press—Could not the regulations be modified and made less stringent?—was somewhat unexpected. Hitherto neither the newspapers nor the Ransdoc Information Bureau had been given any official statistics relating to the epidemic. Now the Prefect supplied them daily to the bureau, with the request that they should be broadcast once a week. In this, too, the reaction of the public was slower than might have been expected. Thus the bare statement that three hundred and two deaths had taken place in the third week of plague failed to strike their imagination. For one thing, all the three hundred and two deaths might not have been due to plague. Also, no one in the town had any idea of the average weekly death-rate in ordinary times. The population of the town was about two hundred thousand. There was no knowing if the present death-rate were really so abnormal. This is, in fact, the kind of statistics that nobody ever troubles much about—notwithstanding that its interest is obvious. The public lacked, in short, standards of comparison. It was only as time passed and the steady rise in the death-rate could not be ignored that public opinion became alive to the truth. For in the fifth week there were three hundred and twenty-one deaths, and three hundred and forty-five in the sixth. These figures, anyhow, spoke for themselves. Yet they were still not sensational enough to prevent our townsfolk, perturbed though they were, from persisting in the idea that what was happening was a sort of accident, disagreeable enough, but certainly of a temporary order. So they went on strolling about the town as usual and sitting at the tables on café terraces. Generally speaking, they did not lack courage, bandied more jokes than lamentations, and made a show of accepting cheerfully unpleasantnesses that obviously could be only passing. In short, they kept up appearances.

When we finished we sat quietly and watched the endless view. I was slowly realizing that this was one of the Seer’s qualities that I appreciated the most. To be present without words, without expectations and without any judgement. These were the times when I felt that he could communicate his thoughts and visions through his presence alone. Looking out became looking in. It was an undramatic kind of transmission, which would move you almost imperceptibly and silently. At these moments I felt my body relax completely. Each fibre, each muscle and every single cell found its correct place. An empathetic vigilance grew from this relaxed condition, a vigilance, which saw people and things as they were on their own merit. This was not about acceptance any more, since there was nothing to accept. Everything was as it was. It was a long-forgotten language. He showed me how almost all communication between people, the spoken and the written word, is nothing but our desperate attempts to cling to illusory personalities and identities tainted by prejudices, fear and vanity. A language which did not allow any room for listening, which focused on itself, which was excluding and only lived due to its attack and defence system was, according to him, a poor and inhumane one. Although the users of this language were usually very good at repartee and were able to write infinitely, they were really only good at maintaining and communicating limitations without end. It was this maintenance of limitations which was one of the main reasons that the great paradigm change, which all were waiting for, did not happen. He did not judge. He simply looked at and worked for the release of limitations wherever he met them. Not until the dissolution of all mental noise would it be possible to practise the transmission of stillness as a transforming kind of communication between people. It was not possible to enter this condition with a limited attention. The road to the transpersonal and the related level might seem difficult, because it demanded an obligation which included the complete human being. It was not enough to be just a little bit pregnant. You either were or you were not. And the paradoxical difference between the one and the other was the simple fact that the sleeping person decided to open his eyes, to wake up and become conscious of his wakeful condition. The fact that such a seemingly simple decision could appear so difficult lay in the fact that it entailed the release of more or less everything that you have ever learned and gained, and which you erroneously have interpreted as a true realization. He presented all these considerations to me on the mountain. In one single thought, without words, without judgement.

I ask them to write brief descriptions of two recent moments in the classroom: a moment when things went so well that you knew you were born to be a teacher and a moment when things went so poorly that you wished you had never been born! Then we get into small groups to learn more about our own natures through the two cases. First, I ask people to help each other identify the gifts that they possess that made the good moment possible. It is an affirming experience to see our gifts at work in a real-life situation-and it often takes the eyes of others to help us see. Our strongest gifts are usually those we are barely aware of possessing. They are a part of our God-given nature, with us from the moment we drew first breath, and we are no more conscious of having them than we are of breathing. Then we turn to the second case. Having been bathed with praise in the first case, people now expect to be subjected to analysis, critique, and a variety of fixes: "If I had been in your shoes, I would have ... ," or, "Next time you are in a situation like that, why don't you ... ?" But I ask them to avoid that approach. I ask them instead to help each other see how limitations and liabilities are the flip side of our gifts, how a particular weakness is the inevitable trade-off for a particular strength. We will become better teachers not by trying to fill the potholes in our souls but by knowing them so well that we can avoid falling into them. My gift as a teacher is the ability to "dance" with my students, to teach and learn with them through dialogue and interaction. When my students are willing to dance with nee, the result can be a thing of beauty. When they refuse to dance, when my gift is denied, things start to become messy: I get hurt and angry, I resent the students-whom I blame for my plight-and I start treating them defensively, in ways that make the dance even less likely to happen. But when I understand this liability as a trade-off for my strengths, something new and liberating arises within me. I no longer want to have my liability "fixed"-by learning how to dance solo, for example, when no one wants to dance with me-for to do that would be to compromise or even destroy my gift. Instead I want to learn how to respond more gracefully to students who refuse to dance, not projecting my limitation on them but embracing it as part of myself. I will never be a good teacher for students who insist on remaining wallflowers throughout their careers-that is simply one of my many limits. But perhaps I can develop enough self-understanding to keep inviting the wallflowers onto the floor, holding open the possibility that some of them might hear the music, accept the invitation, and join me in the dance of teaching and learning.

A little deeper was a fear of falling in love without reservation, of committing herself to someone who might then be snatched from her. Or simply leave her. But if you never really fall in love, you can never really miss it. (She did not dwell on this sentiment, dimly aware that it did not ring quite true.) Also, if she never really fell in love with someone, she could never really betray him, as in her heart of hearts she felt that her mother had betrayed her long-dead father. She still missed him terribly. With Ken it seemed to be different. Or had her expectations been gradually compromised over the years? Unlike many other men she could think of, when challenged or stressed Ken displayed a gentler, more compassionate side. His tendency to compromise and his skill in scientific politics were part of the accoutrements of his job; but underneath she felt she had glimpsed something solid. She respected him for the way he had integrated science into the whole of his life, and for the courageous support for science that he had tried to inculcate into two administrations. They had, as discreetly as possible, been staying together, more or less, in her small apartment at Argus. Their conversations were a joy, with ideas flying back and forth like shuttlecocks. Sometimes they responded to each other’s uncompleted thoughts with almost perfect foreknowledge. He was a considerate and inventive lover. And anyway, she liked his pheromones. She was sometimes amazed at what she was able to do and say in his presence, because of their love. She came to admire him so much that his love for her affected her own self-esteem: She liked herself better because of him. And since he clearly felt the same, there was a kind of infinite regress of love and respect underlying their relationship. At least, that was how she described it to herself. In the presence of so many of her friends, she had felt an undercurrent of loneliness. With Ken, it was gone. She was comfortable describing to him her reveries, snatches of memories, childhood embarrassments. And he was not merely interested but fascinated. He would question her for hours about her childhood. His questions were always direct, sometimes probing, but without exception gentle. She began to understand why lovers talk baby talk to one another. There was no other socially acceptable circumstance in which the children inside her were permitted to come out. If the one-year-old, the five-year-old, the twelve-year-old, and the twenty-year-old all find compatible personalities in the beloved, there is a real chance to keep all of these sub-personas happy. Love ends their long loneliness. Perhaps the depth of love can be calibrated by the number of different selves that are actively involved in a given relationship. With her previous partners, it seemed, at most one of these selves was able to find a compatible opposite number; the other personas were grumpy hangers-on.

The idea of cultivation and exercise, so dear to the saints of old, has now no place in our total religious picture. It is too slow, too common. We now demand glamour and fast flowing dramatic action. A generation of Christians reared among push buttons and automatic machines is impatient of slower and less direct methods of reaching their goals. We have been trying to apply machine-age methods to our relations with God. We read our chapter, have our short devotions and rush away, hoping to make up for our deep inward bankruptcy by attending another gospel meeting or listening to another thrilling story told by a religious adventurer lately returned from afar. The tragic results of this spirit are all about us. Shallow lives, hollow religious philosophies, the preponderance of the element of fun in gospel meetings, the glorification of men, trust in religious externalities, quasi-religious fellowships, salesmanship methods, the mistaking of dynamic personality for the power of the Spirit: these and such as these are the symptoms of an evil disease, a deep and serious malady of the soul. For this great sickness that is upon us no one person is responsible, and no Christian is wholly free from blame. We have all contributed, directly or indirectly, to this sad state of affairs. We have been too blind to see, or too timid to speak out, or too self-satisfied to desire anything better than the poor average diet with which others appear satisfied. To put it differently, we have accepted one another's notions, copied one another's lives and made one another's experiences the model for our own. And for a generation the trend has been downward. Now we have reached a low place of sand and burnt wire grass and, worst of all, we have made the Word of Truth conform to our experience and accepted this low plane as the very pasture of the blessed. It will require a determined heart and more than a little courage to wrench ourselves loose from the grip of our times and return to Biblical ways. But it can be done. Every now and then in the past Christians have had to do it. History has recorded several large-scale returns led by such men as St. Francis, Martin Luther and George Fox. Unfortunately there seems to be no Luther or Fox on the horizon at present. Whether or not another such return may be expected before the coming of Christ is a question upon which Christians are not fully agreed, but that is not of too great importance to us now. What God in His sovereignty may yet do on a world-scale I do not claim to know: but what He will do for the plain man or woman who seeks His face I believe I do know and can tell others. Let any man turn to God in earnest, let him begin to exercise himself unto godliness, let him seek to develop his powers of spiritual receptivity by trust and obedience and humility, and the results will exceed anything he may have hoped in his leaner and weaker days.

The necessity of nature’s final victory was expected and accepted in generations before our own. Doctors were far more willing to recognize the signs of defeat and far less arrogant about denying them.

was so much more than she’d ever expected for herself, but she was finding that nothing less would satisfy her. For the rest of her life, every man she came into contact with would be judged against Tristan. No one could meet his standard. I made love to this man, she thought, awed, drawing in his scent that still clung to her skin. Several times. Peace fluttered inside her, a feeling she’d thought she possessed before—a sort of satisfaction with her life, an acceptance. She’d deceived herself, convinced herself that her life was fine the way it was. Now she knew the truth. True satisfaction was only found in Tristan’s arms. With him, she felt alive, whole. Desired.

Do not accept less than what you are capable of. Never expect more than you are capable of, but never accept less either.

I’ve told you before, Alera--Andrius lives on in you. I see him in you every day.” I smiled, tipping my head in acceptance of the compliment. “And in you--” she said, once more turning to Narian, tapping a finger against her lips in thought “--I see Cannan.” She was lightly cajoling him, exactly as a parent would do. I couldn’t imagine what was going on in his mind, but he was no longer eager to leave, his eyes never once flicking toward me or the door. “What do you mean?” he asked. “Cannan is strong and decisive. He seems unemotional, untouchable, but underneath he has more heart than most men taken together. And he could so easily have buried that compassion. In some ways, he would have hurt less throughout the years had he done so, but he would be half the man he is today.” I was remembering things Baelic had told me, vague things about Cannan and their father. I had never considered that my mother would have knowledge on the subject, although I should have surmised it. She had grown up in the nobility with the men of her generation, and Cannan had been one of Crown Prince Andrius’s best friends. Seeing the curiosity on Narian’s face, she went on, “It was no secret that Baron Burvaul--Cannan’s father--was a tyrant. In their family, everyone wore smiles for fear of what Burvaul might do if they did not, and everything stayed behind closed doors--except for bruises and broken bones, the vast majority of which were bestowed on Cannan. At that time, of course, Cannan could not fight his father, and so he fought the world instead. “But when he was eighteen and was sent into the field of war, he changed. He gained perspective. And when Andrius died and Cannan was called back to become Sergeant at Arms, and later Captain of the Guard, he was more powerful than his father, in position and character. He never abused that power, but his victory lay in the fact that Burvaul could not bear the reversal of control. He lived the rest of his life in fear of his own son, who never punished him. “I see that personality in you, Narian. Just like Cannan, you will never become the man who controlled you.” “He didn’t control me,” Narian abruptly said. “He didn’t in the end, did he?” she agreed, taking a sip of her tea. “Of course, the real question is about your mother. What was she like?” “You know my mother,” Narian replied, his expression strange. I’d never seen him this way before--he seemed younger, less defensive. He was hesitant, but not guarded like he had been upon entering the room. It was almost as if he wanted to open up to her. “I mean the woman who raised you. Your Cokyrian mother.” Narian was shaking his head, despite the change I had detected in him. “I didn’t have a mother in Cokyri.” “You’re far too well-mannered not to have had a mother growing up.” Her blue eyes were twinkling, unthreatening. Again, she was teasing him, and although I expected him to simply sidestep her a third time, he did not. “To the extent I had a mother, she was the High Priestess.” I looked incredulously back and forth between the two of them, for in half an hour, my mother had enticed Narian to divulge as much to her as I had gleaned in two years. Though I was now bursting to speak, I refrained, and she pressed him further.

If I start thinking you’re just some deadbeat looking to scam Granny out of her house, I’m done.” “Are you seriously going to do this for me?” “I guess I am.” He pulled the cheap department-store diamond he’d picked up that morning from his pocket and held it out to her. “Wait.” There was a faint thread of panic in her voice. “What are you doing?” “There’s hedging and then there’s outright lying. I’d like to keep the latter to a minimum, so I’m going to propose to you, and you’re going to accept.” “Oh. Okay.” “So how about it? Wanna be my fiancé?” When she blushed and nodded, he slid the ring on her finger. He had to wiggle it a bit to get it over her knuckle, but it fit better than he’d expected. It got a little awkward then, because it seemed as something should follow a marriage proposal. A kiss. A hug. Hell, even a handshake. Then she shoved her hands—ring and all—in the front pockets of her jeans. “Thank you. For doing this, I mean. And for the ring. I can pay you for it.” “Don’t worry about it.” False pretenses or not, no woman of his—more or less—would pay for her own jewelry.

Steldor, maybe you could try to deter your father, you know, from making arrangements for me so soon. Would another year or two really matter?” He responded with a dry laugh. “Deter my father? Shaselle, trying to deter my father once he’s made up his mind is like yelling whoa at a stampede of wild horses.” “Doesn’t stop you,” I muttered, crossing my arms with a huff. Again that cynical chuckle. “I assure you, it does.” “No, it doesn’t.” I pushed off the rough stone to stare at him. Annoyance came to me ever more quickly these days, and now the disagreeable temperament my mother and older sister condemned was emerging. I pointed back up the road. “Explain that scarecrow to me, if you’re so obedient! I know your father was upset with you after you posted your rules, but you went ahead anyway, without his blessing.” Steldor clamped a hand over my mouth, the other holding the back of my neck, then he leaned close to hiss, “I’d prefer if my involvement in both of those incidents remained undisclosed.” My cheeks burned, and I pushed his hands away. “Sorry. That was stupid. But isn’t there anything you can do? You have the captain’s ear.” “What I have is his attention,” he corrected, having accepted my apology and brushed aside our tense exchange. “Not intentionally, mind you, but I’ll be keeping it over the next few weeks. He’ll probably be distracted from you anyway.” “You’re planning another stunt?” He winked. “Would you expect anything less of Galen and me?” “Can I help you?” The up-and-down nature of our conversation persisted, and he shook his head vehemently. “This is dangerous, what we’ve been doing. We laugh, but these aren’t games. If we’re caught, we’ll be arrested. There’s a reason my father disapproves, in spite of his own ambitions.” He let his rebuff hang in the hot air while I again felt color rising in my cheeks. “Just go home, Shaselle. Put on a dress. Be a lady, and stay out of trouble. Understand?” “I hate them, too, you know,” I said, his dismissal and the humiliation that came with it rankling me. “It’s not just your homeland that the Cokyrians have sullied--it’s my homeland, too. And those bastards killed my father.” “And bitches,” he added, catching me off guard. “Wouldn’t want to forget the women.” I didn’t know how to respond, so I gaped at him foolishly until he stepped onto the cobblestone of the thoroughfare. “Come on. Let me take you home.” We walked in silence back to the western residential area where I lived, though he stopped at the beginning of my street to let me traverse the rest of the distance by myself. “I shouldn’t be seen around here. Not where Galen’s assigned--the Cokyrians are trying to keep us apart to avoid plots big and small, and will be suspicious if we’re seen in the same area.” I nodded and turned to go, but he grabbed my arm. “I know how you feel, Shaselle. I know you want to do something, and it’s not even that I don’t think you could. I just can’t let you be involved, for the sake of your safety. And mine,” he added as an afterthought. “My father would kill me if I let you help and you came to harm. Just please, let this go, and I swear I’ll do my best to influence him on your marriage issue.” Now that I was thinking rationally, offering my assistance had been absurd--I had no special skills aside from horseback riding, and certainly no military training , so accepting Steldor’s offered compromise was not difficult.

The major differences between democracy and populism should have become clear by now: one enables majorities to authorize representatives whose actions may or may not turn out to conform to what a majority of citizens expected or would have wished for; the other pretends that no action of a populist government can be questioned, because “the people” have willed it so. The one assumes fallible, contestable judgments by changing majorities; the other imagines a homogeneous entity outside all institutions whose identity and ideas can be fully represented. The one assumes, if anything, a people of individuals, so that in the end only numbers (in elections) count; the other takes for granted a more or less mysterious “substance” and the fact that even large numbers of individuals (even majorities) can fail to express that substance properly. The one presumes that decisions made after democratic procedures have been followed are not “moral” in such a way that all opposition must be considered immoral; the other postulates one properly moral decision even in circumstances of deep disagreement about morality (and policy). Finally—and most importantly—the one takes it that “the people” can never appear in a noninstitutionalized manner and, in particular, accepts that a majority (and even an “overwhelming majority,” a beloved term of Vladimir Putin) in parliament is not “the people” and cannot speak in the name of the people; the other presumes precisely the opposite.

We should also accept the limits of our ability to decipher strangers. In the interrogation of KSM, there were two sides. James Mitchell and his colleague Bruce Jessen were driven by the desire to make KSM talk. On the other side, Charles Morgan worried about the cost of forcing people to talk: what if in the act of coercing a prisoner to open up, you damaged his memories and made what he had to say less reliable? Morgan’s more-modest expectations are a good model for the rest of us.

Hi Tim, Patience. Far too soon to expect strength improvements. Strength improvements [for a movement like this] take a minimum of 6 weeks. Any perceived improvements prior to that are simply the result of improved synaptic facilitation. In plain English, the central nervous system simply became more efficient at that particular movement with practice. This is, however, not to be confused with actual strength gains. Dealing with the temporary frustration of not making progress is an integral part of the path towards excellence. In fact, it is essential and something that every single elite athlete has had to learn to deal with. If the pursuit of excellence was easy, everyone would do it. In fact, this impatience in dealing with frustration is the primary reason that most people fail to achieve their goals. Unreasonable expectations timewise, resulting in unnecessary frustration, due to a perceived feeling of failure. Achieving the extraordinary is not a linear process. The secret is to show up, do the work, and go home. A blue collar work ethic married to indomitable will. It is literally that simple. Nothing interferes. Nothing can sway you from your purpose. Once the decision is made, simply refuse to budge. Refuse to compromise. And accept that quality long-term results require quality long-term focus. No emotion. No drama. No beating yourself up over small bumps in the road. Learn to enjoy and appreciate the process. This is especially important because you are going to spend far more time on the actual journey than with those all too brief moments of triumph at the end. Certainly celebrate the moments of triumph when they occur. More importantly, learn from defeats when they happen. In fact, if you are not encountering defeat on a fairly regular basis, you are not trying hard enough. And absolutely refuse to accept less than your best. Throw out a timeline. It will take what it takes. If the commitment is to a long-term goal and not to a series of smaller intermediate goals, then only one decision needs to be made and adhered to. Clear, simple, straightforward. Much easier to maintain than having to make small decision after small decision to stay the course when dealing with each step along the way. This provides far too many opportunities to inadvertently drift from your chosen goal. The single decision is one of the most powerful tools in the toolbox. 2 Wealthy “If you set your goals ridiculously high and it’s a failure, you will fail above everyone else’s success.” —James Cameron

You will invariably face jobs that are associated with uncomfortable feelings, ranging from relatively minor annoyance (e.g., taking out the garbage in the rain) to more persistent and recurring feelings of stress and discomfort (e.g., dissertation, organizing income taxes) that activate your procrastination script. Even a minimal degree of stress or inconvenience (what we have come to describe as the feeling of “Ugh”) can be potent enough to make you delay action. Think about some of the mundane examples of procrastination, such as watching a boring television show because the remote control is out of reach (e.g., “It’s ALL THE WAY over there.”) or exercise (e.g., “I’m TOO TIRED to change into my workout clothes.”). The use of capital letters is meant to illustrate the tone of voice of your selftalk, which serves to exaggerate and convince you of the difficulty of what you want to do. You are capable to perform the action, but your thoughts and feelings (including feeling tired or “low energy”) makes you conclude that you are not at your best and therefore cannot and will not follow through (for seemingly justifiable reasons). You might think, “I have to be in the mood to do some things.” But, how often are any of us in the mood to do many of the tasks on which we end up procrastinating? The very fact that we have to plan them indicates that these tasks require some targeted planning and effort. When facing emotional discomfort, ADHD adults are particularly at risk for bolting to pleasant, easy, and yet often unsatisfying activities, such as eating junk food, watching television, social networking, surfing the Internet, etc. In fact, sometimes you may escape from stressful tasks by performing other, lower priority errands or chores. Thus, you rationalize violating your high-priority project plan in order to run out to fill your car with gas. This strategy can be seen as a form of “plea bargaining”—“I will do something productive in order to justify not doing the higher priority but less appealing task.” Moreover, these errands are often more discrete and time limited than the task you are putting off (i.e., “If I start mowing the lawn now, I will be done in 1 hour. I don’t know how long taxes will take me.”), which is often their appeal—even though they are low priority, you are more confident you will get them done. You need not be “in the mood” for a task in order to perform it. A useful reframe is the reminder that you have “enough” energy to get started and recall that once you get started on the first step, you usually feel better and more engaged. Breaking the task down into its discrete steps and setting an end time help you to reframe the plan (e.g., “I’m tired, but I have enough energy to do this task for 15 minutes.”). Rather than setting up the unrealistic expectation that you must be stress-free and 100% energized before you can do tasks, the notion of acceptance of discomfort is a useful mindset to adopt and practice.

Welch and others, through the 1980s, pioneered using people as an expendable resource to the benefit of investors. Since then, it has become increasingly more common for companies to use layoffs to beef up their bottom line. It is considered an acceptable business practice today to lay off people, often ending their careers, simply to balance the books for the quarter or the year. If careers are to be ended, it should be for negligence or incompetence or as a last resort to save the company. But in our twenty first-century version of capitalism, the expectation that we are working in meritocracies seems false. In many cases, it doesn’t matter how hard we’ve worked; if the company falls a little short, people will have to be laid off. No hard feelings, it’s just business. Can you imagine getting rid of one of your children because you made less money than you expected last year? Imagine how your kids would feel if that were the plan. Well, that’s how it is in too many companies today.

We need to teach our children to want more and to expect more, of themselves, and others. Men need to know there is more to being a man, than just being a male, and women need to know that they do not have to accept anything less than the knight of their dreams.

Hi Tim, Patience. Far too soon to expect strength improvements. Strength improvements [for a movement like this] take a minimum of 6 weeks. Any perceived improvements prior to that are simply the result of improved synaptic facilitation. In plain English, the central nervous system simply became more efficient at that particular movement with practice. This is, however, not to be confused with actual strength gains. Dealing with the temporary frustration of not making progress is an integral part of the path towards excellence. In fact, it is essential and something that every single elite athlete has had to learn to deal with. If the pursuit of excellence was easy, everyone would do it. In fact, this impatience in dealing with frustration is the primary reason that most people fail to achieve their goals. Unreasonable expectations timewise, resulting in unnecessary frustration, due to a perceived feeling of failure. Achieving the extraordinary is not a linear process. The secret is to show up, do the work, and go home. A blue collar work ethic married to indomitable will. It is literally that simple. Nothing interferes. Nothing can sway you from your purpose. Once the decision is made, simply refuse to budge. Refuse to compromise. And accept that quality long-term results require quality long-term focus. No emotion. No drama. No beating yourself up over small bumps in the road. Learn to enjoy and appreciate the process. This is especially important because you are going to spend far more time on the actual journey than with those all too brief moments of triumph at the end. Certainly celebrate the moments of triumph when they occur. More importantly, learn from defeats when they happen. In fact, if you are not encountering defeat on a fairly regular basis, you are not trying hard enough. And absolutely refuse to accept less than your best. Throw out a timeline. It will take what it takes. If the commitment is to a long-term goal and not to a series of smaller intermediate goals, then only one decision needs to be made and adhered to. Clear, simple, straightforward. Much easier to maintain than having to make small decision after small decision to stay the course when dealing with each step along the way. This provides far too many opportunities to inadvertently drift from your chosen goal. The single decision is one of the most powerful tools in the toolbox.

Men who start new relationships are judged less harshly. Women are expected to carry the torch of love, and when the flame is extinguished they are supposed to mourn for it longer. The weeping widow lives up to our expectations. The widow who dances and dates does not. These differences reflect a double standard rooted in a range of issues, from women feeling more guilt and anxiety about new romances to a greater cultural acceptance of men marrying younger women to the demographic reality of women living longer than men.

It was time to expect more of myself. Yet as I thought about happiness, I kept running up against paradoxes. I wanted to change myself but accept myself. I wanted to take myself less seriously—and also more seriously. I wanted to use my time well, but I also wanted to wander, to play, to read at whim. I wanted to think about myself so I could forget myself. I was always on the edge of agitation; I wanted to let go of envy and anxiety about the future, yet keep my energy and ambition.

Traditional structures of social and economic support slowly weakened; no longer was it possible for a man to follow his father and grandfather into a manufacturing job, or to join the union and start on the union ladder of wages. Marriage was no longer the only socially acceptable way to form intimate partnerships, or to rear children. People moved away from the security of legacy religions or the churches of their parents and grandparents, toward churches that emphasized seeking an identity, or replaced membership with the search for connection or economic success (Wuthnow, 1988). These changes left people with less structure when they came to choose their careers, their religion, and the nature of their family lives. When such choices succeed, they are liberating; when they fail, the individual can only hold himself or herself responsible. In the worst cases of failure, this is a Durkheim-like recipe for suicide. We can see this as a failure to meet early expectations or, more fundamentally, as a loss of the structures that give life a meaning.10 Durkheim,

Traditional structures of social and economic support slowly weakened; no longer was it possible for a man to follow his father and grandfather into a manufacturing job, or to join the union and start on the union ladder of wages. Marriage was no longer the only socially acceptable way to form intimate partnerships, or to rear children. People moved away from the security of legacy religions or the churches of their parents and grandparents, toward churches that emphasized seeking an identity, or replaced membership with the search for connection or economic success (Wuthnow, 1988). These changes left people with less structure when they came to choose their careers, their religion, and the nature of their family lives. When such choices succeed, they are liberating; when they fail, the individual can only hold himself or herself responsible. In the worst cases of failure, this is a Durkheim-like recipe for suicide. We can see this as a failure to meet early expectations or, more fundamentally, as a loss of the structures that give life a meaning.10 Durkheim, in his book On Suicide, wrote: It is sometimes said that, by virtue of his psychological make-up, man cannot live unless he attaches himself to an object that is greater than himself and outlives him, and this necessity has been attributed to a supposedly common need not to perish entirely. Life, they say, is only tolerable if one can see some purpose in it, if it has a goal and one that is worth pursuing. But the individual in himself is not sufficient as an end for himself. He is too small a thing. Not only is he confined in space, he is also narrowly limited in time.

For Zelma it was less about expression and more about reply. She couldn't tune out the exhortations but neither could she allow them simply to pass through her unchecked and uninterrogated. She had to respond and yet the responses that were expected of her work proscribed. It wasn't enough, she often said, to discuss these things online. To do so, she felt, was to accept the space she had been allotted. She wanted argument and debate to unfold in the same location it was initiated. When an advert invaded her mental and visual space, she invaded its physical and aesthetic space right back. In our rush to the web, she said, we had ceded ground in the physical world. As a result, ever more overt expressions went unnoticed and unchallenged. What once would have found itself defaced was now, instead, photographed and shared online for critique. But its form, its face, remained unaltered, untarnished, clean. (p.128)

When I had been at sea, she felt so close, yet now living full time on land in our bed she couldn’t have been any more distant than the summit of Mauna Kea from the sea mountain. I longed for this woman beside me, like a first-time marathoner desires the finish line. I could envision the big picture; I saw us as old people holding hands and watching our children graduate from college. I was mentally prepared for the hardest of miles. In my mind, none of our problems were more than a mere hang-up in a lifetime commitment to something bigger than ourselves. Schooled by the sea, I feared not hard work, less than perfect conditions, or the hands of time. Accepting the temperamental nature of the sea and women, I expected this storm to pass as the others had before. She would toss and turn, relentlessly complaining about summer heat in our room, yet no number of blankets could warm me from her wintery chill. I had been over a thousand miles out to sea before, but after the accident, my side of the bed became the loneliest place I ever visited on the planet.

As often as possible, sometimes at all costs, and often times in spite of good reason, we are both compelled by our psyche and pressured by our social circumstances to always be right. And when we aren’t, it hurts. So much so that it can often create horrible sensations in the brain akin to real physical pain. And so, we of course try to avoid it, or at least admitting it, at all costs. And yet, it is impossible to avoid. And furthermore, it is possibly the case that fundamentally, we are never actually right at all. In the words of St. Augustine, “I err, therefore I am.” As a consciousness, in the form that we are born into, we are all put up against the imperative of our mind to desire absolute truth, while simultaneously, the seeming imperative of the natural world that prohibits us from obtaining it. We will all cling to reason and answers and worldviews just to have them smashed to pieces time and time again, whether we know it or admit it to ourselves or not. We will all likely not only be wrong often but right rarely, even in the meta, subjective sense. And so, perhaps we can and must learn how to be ok with this if we wish to be ok with consciousness. Perhaps we must learn how to fundamentally be ok with being wrong, or we will loath ourselves until the end. Perhaps we must love and accept the hypocrisy that runs through the very veins of the human condition, or we will hate all of humankind. Perhaps we must learn how to dial back our expectations and the degree in which we dread over the inevitable failure of everything we believe, and the beliefs of others just the same. This is not to make light of the immense challenge of such an arduous endeavor. It is an endless upward climb of surpassing one’s default mode and understanding of the world. But perhaps if we can, at least some of the time, succeed in doing so, we can feel a little less embarrassed, disgusted, miserable, ashamed, bitter, angry, and all the rest, and perhaps we can be a little less wrong a little more often. This apparent impossibility of successfully thinking paired with the inability to ever not be thinking, seems to beg the question: is consciousness a gift or a curse? Or perhaps some combination of both? Perhaps the answer depends on whether or not all of this, the ability to be curious about and discuss things like the possible impossibility of ever truly being right is worth possibly never being right about anything. And perhaps such a truth can only be answered by you.

You fear the man who has a dollar less than you, that dollar is rightfully his, he makes you feel like a moral defrauder. You hate the man who has a dollar more than you, that dollar is rightfully yours, he makes you feel that you are morally defrauded. The man below is a source of your guilt, the man above is a source of your frustration. You do not know what to surrender or demand, when to give and when to grab, what pleasure in life is rightfully yours and what debt is still unpaid to others—you struggle to evade, as ‘theory,’ the knowledge that by the moral standard you’ve accepted you are guilty every moment of your life, there is no mouthful of food you swallow that is not needed by someone somewhere on earth—and you give up the problem in blind resentment, you conclude that moral perfection is not to be achieved or desired, that you will muddle through by snatching as snatch can and by avoiding the eyes of the young, of those who look at you as if self-esteem were possible and they expected you to have it. Guilt is all that you retain within your soul—and so does every other man, as he goes past, avoiding your eyes. Do you wonder why your morality has not achieved brotherhood on earth or the good will of man to man?

I asked for nothing more of the day ahead every morning and expected nothing less than that I would do my best and accept the results as best I could when the time came.

Amazon’s Leadership Principles6 Customer Obsession. Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers. Ownership. Leaders are owners. They think long term and don’t sacrifice long-term value for short-term results. They act on behalf of the entire company, beyond just their own team. They never say, “that’s not my job.” Invent and Simplify. Leaders expect and require innovation and invention from their teams and always find ways to simplify. They are externally aware, look for new ideas from everywhere, and are not limited by “not invented here.” As we do new things, we accept that we may be misunderstood for long periods of time. Are Right, A Lot. Leaders are right a lot. They have strong judgment and good instincts. They seek diverse perspectives and work to disconfirm their beliefs. Learn and Be Curious. Leaders are never done learning and always seek to improve themselves. They are curious about new possibilities and act to explore them. Hire and Develop the Best. Leaders raise the performance bar with every hire and promotion. They recognize exceptional talent, and willingly move them throughout the organization. Leaders develop leaders and take seriously their role in coaching others. We work on behalf of our people to invent mechanisms for development like Career Choice. Insist on the Highest Standards. Leaders have relentlessly high standards—many people may think these standards are unreasonably high. Leaders are continually raising the bar and drive their teams to deliver high-quality products, services, and processes. Leaders ensure that defects do not get sent down the line and that problems are fixed so they stay fixed. Think Big. Thinking small is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Leaders create and communicate a bold direction that inspires results. They think differently and look around corners for ways to serve customers. Bias for Action. Speed matters in business. Many decisions and actions are reversible and do not need extensive study. We value calculated risk-taking. Frugality. Accomplish more with less. Constraints breed resourcefulness, self-sufficiency, and invention. There are no extra points for growing headcount, budget size, or fixed expense. Earn Trust. Leaders listen attentively, speak candidly, and treat others respectfully. They are vocally self-critical, even when doing so is awkward or embarrassing. Leaders do not believe their or their team’s body odor smells of perfume. They benchmark themselves and their teams against the best.

The lamb could not take living in the forest with the tiger anymore so she went to the other animals in the woods and said good-bye. Her friends would not hear of it. “Surely this whole thing can be worked out. We’re all reasonable here. Stay calm. There is probably just some misunderstanding that can easily be resolved if we all sit down together and communicate.” The lamb, however, had several misgivings about such a meeting. First of all, if her friends had explained away the tiger’s behavior by saying it was simply a tiger’s nature to behave that way, why did they now think that as a result of communication the tiger would be able to change that nature? Second, thought the lamb, such meetings, well intentioned as they might be, usually try to resolve problems through compromise. Now, while the tiger might agree to growl less, and indeed might succeed in reducing some of its aggressive behavior, what would she, the lamb, be expected to give up in return? Be more accepting of the tiger’s growling? There was something wrong, thought the lamb, with the notion that an agreement is equal if the invasive creature agrees to be less invasive and the invaded one agrees to tolerate some invasiveness.

At the end of the long corridor, he opened another door and we stepped out into a huge kitchen filled with bustling staff who were refilling champagne glasses and making up more of the fancy bite-sized bits of food. Darius skirted the madness and I followed him, careful not to get in anyone’s way. He approached a woman who was working on a tray of creamy puff things and leaned close to ask her something. She instantly stopped what she was doing and headed away with a bow. Darius beckoned for me to follow him and I gritted my teeth as I did, wondering why I’d even come down here with him. The drink was making my head swimmy and apparently it was affecting my judgement too. He led me through a door to a darkened room with a few soft chairs by the far window and a small table in the centre of the space. Darius headed for the chairs but I ignored him, taking a perch on the table instead. “Do you ever do as you’re told?” he asked me, noticing the fact that I’d stopped following him. “Nope. Do you ever stop telling people what to do?” I asked. “I think I might just miss your smart mouth when you fail The Reckoning,” he muttered. I didn’t validate that with a response. He removed his black jacket and I eyed his fitted white shit appreciatively before pulling my gaze away. I did not need to fall under the spell of Darius Acrux’s stupidly hot appearance. Darius tossed his jacket down on the closest chair and moved to stand beside me. I could feel his eyes on me but I gave my attention to the room, studying portraits of old men in stuffy clothes and dragons soaring across the sky. Their choice in decor was boringly repetitive. The door opened and the kitchen maid came in carrying two plates with subs for us. I smiled at her as I accepted mine. “Thanks,” I said and she stared at me like I’d just slapped her before heading out of the room. “What was that about?” I asked before taking a bite of my sandwich. Holy hell that's good. “Serving jobs are generally taken by Fae with negligible amounts of magic,” Darius said as I ate like a woman possessed. “Thanking them for their work is kind of like the sun thanking a daisy for blooming. Just having a position in our household is beyond what they expect in life.” I paused, my food suddenly tasting like soot in my mouth. Of course that was how they viewed people with less than them. They were the elite, top of the pecking order, why would they waste time thanking those beneath them? If we’d met in the mortal world he never would have looked at me at all... and I’d have robbed him blind while he pretended not to notice my existence. I ate the last few bites of my food in silence and put the plate down beside me as soon as I was done. “I’d like to go back to the party now,” I said coldly. Darius eyed me over his own sandwich which he’d barely touched. “Because I don’t thank servants for doing their jobs?” he asked with barely concealed ridicule. “Because you’re boringly predictable just like everyone else here. You’re all more concerned about what everybody else thinks and sees than you are about enjoying life. What difference does it make if someone’s the most powerful Fae in the room or the least? I’d sooner have the time of my life with a powerless nobody than stand about posturing with a guy who doesn’t even know how to have fun.” I shrugged and got to my feet, intending to make my own way back to the ballroom but Darius moved forward a step, boxing me against the table as he placed his sandwich down. (Tory)

Champions keep it in perspective.  They are able to accept responsibility and recognize the situation as a temporary setback nothing more, nothing less.  Yes it hurts, so they look at it, learn from it, and then let it go.  I’ve lost myself, of course. In fact, that was how I met Leo-tai in the first place. I was a young martial artist competing in tournaments and I’d just lost a major international competition—worse still, one that I’d been really expecting to win. I was having a tough time with the loss. People kept telling me, “You still did great!” But runner-up wasn’t what I’d wanted to be.  As time went by, in response to my annoyance with myself, my training tailed off, my determination flagged, and everything seemed either too boring or too difficult to fuss about.  I was slacking off. I remember an older kid asking me once if I had ever heard of Coach Leo. “I don’t think so,” I said. “What does he teach?” “Mostly Shaolin—Chinese Kickboxing, but he teaches other things too.  He really helped me once with my training.” “So, how’d he help then?” I asked, interested. “Call him, here’s his number.  He only teaches small classes.  Tell him you know me.” I carried that sheet of paper around with me for about two weeks.  Finally I thought, “Well, what have I got to lose?”  I called him and told him about myself.  Coach Leo listened quietly on the phone, so much so that I began to wonder if he’d wandered off or hung up. “Come tomorrow,” he told me, and that ended our conversation. When the next day came, I almost didn’t go.  I kept asking myself, “Why did I call this coach?”  I was looking for a reason to miss our appointment.  But before I knew it, and despite my best efforts to talk myself out of it, I wound up knocking on his door and then there he was.  A medium-sized, elderly, rather stoic figure, his face calm and genuine.

Like the lover, the friend expects no reward for his feelings. He does not wish the performance of any duty in return, he does not view the person he has chosen as his friend with any illusion, he sees his faults and accepts him with all their consequences. Such is the ideal. And without such an ideal, would there be any point to life? And if a friend fails, because he is not a true friend, is one allowed to attack his character and his weaknesses? What is the value of a friendship in which one person loves the other for his virtue, his loyalty, his steadfastness? What is the value of a love that expects loyalty? Isn’t it our duty to accept the faithless friend as we do the faithful one who sacrifices himself? Is disinterest not the essence of every human relationship? That the more we give, the less we expect? And if a man gives someone his trust through all the years of his youth and stands ready to make sacrifices for him in manhood because of that blind, unconditional devotion, which is the highest thing any one person can offer another, only then to witness the faithlessness and base behavior of his friend, is he permitted to rise up in protest and demand vengeance? And if he does rise up and demand vengeance, having been deceived and abandoned, what does that say about the validity of his friendship in the first place?

Many people get confused about the purpose of speaking up. They feel that unless the other person hears their points of view and accepts it, it was a wasted effort. However, the purpose of speaking up is not to change the other person's point of view, but merely to assert yours. In some sense, it doesn't matter whether the other person even heard you, much less was persuaded by you. What matters is that you were able to speak your mind, that you didn't squelch your ideas and feelings. Once you begin to assert yourself without any expectations, you will gain more self-esteem and the courage to continue speaking up.

The findings that were deemed believable enough to be published, however, revolutionized ethologists’ thinking. Ethologists began to speak less often of a chasm between man and ape; they began to speak instead of a dividing “line.” And it was a line that, in the words of Harvard primatologist Irven De Vore, was “a good deal less clear than one would ever have expected.” What makes up this line between us and our fellow primates? No longer can it be claimed to be tool use. Is it the ability to reason? Wolfgang Kohler once tested captive chimps’ reasoning ability by placing several boxes and a stick in an enclosure and hanging a banana from the high ceiling by a string. The animals quickly figured out that they could get to the banana by stacking the boxes one atop the other and then reaching to swat at the banana with a stick. (Once Geza Teleki found himself in exactly this position at Gombe. He had followed the chimpanzees down into a valley and around noon discovered he had forgotten to bring his lunch. The chimps were feeding on fruit in the trees at the time, and he decided to try to knock some fruit from nearby vines with a stick. For about ten minutes he leaped and swatted with his stick but didn’t manage to knock down any fruit. Finally an adolescent male named Sniff collected a handful of fruit, came down the tree, and dropped the fruit into Geza’s hands.) Some say language is the line that separates man from ape. But this, too, is being questioned. Captive chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans have been taught not only to comprehend, but also to produce language. They have been taught American Sign Language (ASL), the language of the deaf, as well as languages that use plastic chips in place of words and computer languages. One signing chimp, Washoe, often combined known signs in novel and creative ways: she had not been taught the word for swan, but upon seeing one, she signed “water-bird.” Another signing chimp, Lucy, seeing and tasting a watermelon for the first time, called it a “candy-drink”; the acidic radish she named “hurt-cry-food.” Lucy would play with toys and sign to them, much as human children talk to their dolls. Koko, the gorilla protegee of Penny Patterson, used sign language to make jokes, escape blame, describe her surroundings, tell stories, even tell lies. One of Biruté’s ex-captives, a female orangutan named Princess, was taught a number of ASL signs by Gary Shapiro. Princess used only the signs she knew would bring her food; because she was not a captive, she could not be coerced into using sign language to any ends other than those she found personally useful. Today dolphins, sea lions, harbor seals, and even pigeons are being taught artificial languages, complete with a primitive grammar or syntax. An African grey parrot named Alex mastered the correct use of more than one hundred spoken English words, using them in proper order to answer questions, make requests, do math, and offer friends and visitors spontaneous, meaningful comments until his untimely death at age 31 in 2007. One leading researcher, Ronald Schusterman, is convinced that “the components for language are present probably in all vertebrates, certainly in mammals and birds.” Arguing over semantics and syntax, psychologists and ethologists and linguists are still debating the definitions of the line. Louis Leakey remarked about Jane’s discovery of chimps’ use of tools that we must “change the definition of man, the definition of tool, or accept chimps as man.” Now some linguists have actually proposed, in the face of the ape language experiments, changing the definition of language to exclude the apes from a domain we had considered uniquely ours. The line separating man from the apes may well be defined less by human measurement than by the limits of Western imagination. It may be less like a boundary between land and water and more like the lines we draw on maps separating the domains of nations.

When his teaching is more straightforward, it is no less baffling or challenging. Blessed are the meek (Mt 5:5); to look at a woman with lust is to commit adultery (Mt 5:28); forgive wrongs seventy times seven (Mt 18:22); you can't be my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions (Lk 14:33); no divorce (Mk 10:9); love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you (Mt 5:44). A passage that gives us the keys to the reign, or kingdom, of God is Matthew 25:31–46, the scene of the judgment of the nations: Then the king will say to those on his right hand, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” As Mother Teresa put it, we meet Christ in the distressing disguise of the poor. Jesus’ teaching and witness is obviously relevant to social, economic, and political issues. Indeed, the Jewish leaders and the Romans (the powers that be of the time) found his teaching and actions disturbing enough to arrest him and execute him. A scene from the life of Clarence Jordan drives home the radicalism and relevance of Jesus’ message. In the early 1950s Clarence approached his brother, Robert Jordan, a lawyer and future state senator and justice of the Georgia Supreme Court, to legally represent Koinonia Farm. Clarence, I can't do that. You know my political aspirations. Why if I represented you, I might lose my job, my house, everything I've got. We might lose everything too, Bob. It's different for you. Why is it different? I remember, it seems to me, that you and I joined the church the same Sunday, as boys. I expect when we came forward the preacher asked me about the same question he did you. He asked me, “Do you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior?” And I said, “Yes.” What did you say? I follow Jesus, Clarence, up to a point. Could that point by any chance be—the cross? That's right. I follow him to the cross, but not on the cross. I'm not getting myself crucified. Then I don't believe you're a disciple. You're an admirer of Jesus, but not a disciple of his. I think you ought to go back to the church you belong to, and tell them you're an admirer not a disciple. Well now, if everyone who felt like I do did that, we wouldn't have a church, would we? The question, Clarence said, is, “Do you have a church?”25 The early Christian community tried to live according to the values of the reign of God that Jesus proclaimed, to be disciples. The Jerusalem community was characterized by unlimited liability and total availability for each other, sharing until everyone's needs were met (Acts 2:43–47; 4:32–37).26 Paul's exhortation to live a new life in Christ in his letter to the Romans, chapters 12 through 15, has remarkable parallels to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, chapters 5 through 7, and Luke 6:20–49.27 Both Jesus and Paul offer practical steps for conflict resolution and peacemaking. Similarly, the Epistle of James exhorts Christians to “be doers of the word and not merely hearers who deceive themselves” (1:22), and warns against class divisions (2:1–13) and the greed and corruption of the wealthy (5:1–6).

The key to abundance is acceptance. The more you expect, the less you accept.

Expect less and Accept more for peace of mind and healthy relationships!

A man's voice was saying, "Odette seems a little off tonight." "You think?" answered a woman. "Less confident than last night's," said the man. "I wonder if she's injured." A loud put-upon sigh. "Not to mention that the swans sound more like a herd of elephants." Oh, come on, Grigori wanted to say: You spoiled, spoiled people. The dancer was wonderful, just like the swan-girls, doing their best to deliver them magnificence. If she was "slightly off", it was nothing Grigori had been able to notice. These people - himself included - were all so thoroughly indulged, could they not simply accept the wonder of it, sitting in this lush, gilded theater while a live orchestra accompanied so much physical exquisiteness? And this man thought he had the right to be disappointed! That these people expected so much, that they could expect that much, and not be ashamed of their petty disappointments.

TIMOTHY AND THE PAROUSIA. 1 TIM. 6:14: - [I give thee charge] ‘that thou keep this commandment without spot, unrebukable, until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ: which in his times he shall show,’ etc. This implies that Timothy might expect to live until that event took place. The apostle does not say, ‘Keep this commandment as long as you live;’ nor, ‘Keep it until death;’ but ‘until the appearing of Jesus Christ.’ These expressions are by no means equivalent. The ‘appearing’ [έπιφάνωια] is identical with the Parousia, an event which St. Paul and Timothy alike believed to be at hand. Alford’s note on this verse is eminently unsatisfactory. After quoting Bengel’s remark ‘that the faithful in the apostolic age were accustomed to look forward to the day of Christ as approaching; whereas we are accustomed to look forward to the day of death in like manner,’ he goes on to observe: - ‘We may fairly say that whatever impression is betrayed by the words that the coming of the Lord would be in Timotheus’s life-time, is chastened and corrected by the καιρόις ίδίοις [his own times] of the next verse.’ dldl In other words, the erroneous opinion of one sentence is corrected by the cautious vagueness of the next! Is it possible to accept such a statement? Is there anything in καιρόις ίδίοις to justify such a comment? or is such an estimate of the apostle’s language compatible with a belief in his inspiration? It was no ‘impression’ that the apostle ‘betrayed,’ but a conviction and an assurance founded on the express promises of Christ and the revelations of His Spirit. No less exceptionable is the concluding reflection: - ‘From such passages as this we see that the apostolic age maintained that which ought to be the attitude of all ages, - constant expectation of the Lord’s return.’ But if this expectation was nothing more than a false impression, is not their attitude rather a caution than an example? We now see (assuming that the Parousia never took place) that they cherished a vain hope, and lived in the belief of a delusion. And if they were mistaken in this, the most confident and cherished of their convictions, how can we have any reliance on their other opinions? To regard the apostles and primitive Christians as all involved in an egregious delusion on a subject which had a foremost place in their faith and hope, is to strike a fatal blow at the inspiration and authority of the New Testament. When St. Paul declared, again and again, ‘The Lord is at hand,’ he did not give utterance to his private opinion, but spoke with authority as an organ of the Holy Ghost. Dean Alford’s observations may be best answered in the words of his own rejoinder to Professor Jowett: - ‘Was the apostle or was he not writing in the power of a spirit higher than his own? Have we, in any sense, God speaking in the Bible, or have we not? If we have, then of all passages it is in these which treat so confidently of futurity that we must recognise His voice: if we have it not in these passages, then where are we to listen for it at all?

In Walked Jim September 2013: Entering his first morning staff meeting as FBI director, Jim Comey loped to the head of the table, put down his briefing books, and lowered his six-foot-eight-inch, shirtsleeved self into a huge leather chair. He leaned the chair so far back on its hind legs that he lay practically flat, testing gravity. Then he sat up, stretched like a big cat, pushed the briefing books to the side, and said, as if he were talking to a friend, I don’t want to talk about these today. I’d rather talk about some other things first. He talked about how effective leaders immediately make their expectations clear and proceeded to do just that for us. Said he would expect us to love our jobs, expect us to take care of ourselves … I remember less of what he said than the easygoing way he spoke and the absolute clarity of his day-one priority: building relationships with each member of his senior team. Comey continually reminded the FBI leadership that strong relationships with one another were critical to the institution’s functioning. One day, after we reviewed the briefing books, he said, Okay, now I want to go around the room, and I want you all to say one thing about yourselves that no one else here knows about you. One hard-ass from the criminal division stunned the room to silence when he said, My wife and I, we really love Disney characters, and all our vacation time we spend in the Magic Kingdom. Another guy, formerly a member of the hostage-rescue team, who carefully tended his persona as a dead-eyed meathead—I thought his aesthetic tastes ran the gamut from YouTube videos of snipers in Afghanistan to YouTube videos of Bigfoot sightings—turned out to be an art lover. I really like the old masters, he said, but my favorite is abstract expressionism. This hokey parlor game had the effect Comey intended. It gave people an opportunity to be interesting and funny with colleagues in a way that most had rarely been before. Years later, I remember it like yesterday. That was Jim’s effect on almost everyone he worked with. I observed how he treated people. Tell me your story, he would say, then listen as if there were only the two of you in the whole world. You were, of course, being carefully assessed at the same time that you were being appreciated and accepted. He once told me that people’s responses to that opening helped him gauge their ability to communicate. Over the next few years I would sit in on hundreds of meetings with him. All kinds of individuals and organizations would come to Comey with their issues. No matter how hostile they were when they walked in the door, they would always walk out on a cloud of Comey goodness. Sometimes, after the door had closed, he would look at me and say, That was a mess. Jim has the same judgmental impulse that everyone has. He is complicated, with many different sides, and he is so good at showing his best side—which is better than most people’s—that his bad side, which is not as bad as most people’s, can seem more shocking on the rare moments when it flashes to the surface.

It was time to expect more of myself. Yet as I thought about happiness, I kept running up against paradoxes. I wanted to change myself but accept myself. I wanted to take myself less seriously—and also more seriously. I wanted to use my time well, but I also wanted to wander, to play, to read at whim. I wanted to think about myself so I could forget myself. I was always on the edge of agitation; I wanted to let go of envy and anxiety about the future, yet keep my energy and ambition. Elizabeth’s observation made me wonder about my motivations. Was I searching for spiritual growth and a life more dedicated to transcendent principles—or was my happiness project just an attempt to extend my driven, perfectionist ways to every aspect of my life?

Leaving West Africa was bitter sweet. I had made friends the most of which I would never see again. I was seen as an adult in Liberia and for the first time in my life I was accepted as a grown-up. In fact I was given responsibilities I could never have expected had I remained in the United States. As the captain of a coastal vessel I had the same duties as the captain of any ship, large or small and the decisions I made affected the lives of everyone aboard. Although I never gave it much thought the value of the ship and cargo was worth millions of dollars and I was entrusted with it and the lives of the crew and the occasional passengers that sailed with me. When I embarked on this venture I was under the legal age of 21 and signed for everything “under protest.” The skillsets needed to be the captain of a small ship are the same as those needed on a larger vessel only there were less people to do them. Navigation was the same and ship handling without tugboats or thrusters was even more difficult. I did my own piloting, calculated the center of gravity and figured out fuel, water and cargo placement without even the use of a calculator. Computers, GPS, Depth finder, Loran and Radar were thing not yet available for most ships. Since you don’t miss what you never had, life was good and I did what I had to do. Fortunately for the most part everything worked out well. I remember that when I returned to New York and rode in a subway car thinking “Wow, none of these people know that I just returned from West Africa where I was a harbor pilot and the captain of a ship.” The thought that I had accomplished so much at my young age seemed important to me and I thought that it was something they might want to know. The thought that flashed through my mind next brought me back down to earth. “No one would give a shit!” I was back in New York City and would soon be back out to sea….

Here’s a proven sales meeting checklist of pre-meeting, during meeting, and post-meeting best practices and tips to follow and live by every day: Have clear meeting goals and expected outcomes documented and stated in email before and after meetings. Put agendas that are agreed to by your customers in meeting calendar invites. Meeting agendas should start with introductions and customers’ priorities/challenges review. Meeting agendas should close with discussion and time for questions. Research the company and recent announcements and know how their business is doing. Understand the context of their industry, too. Research the people attending your meeting and identify shared interests and shared executive connections. Connect with meeting attendees on LinkedIn before meeting. Some people believe this should be done after a meeting. My point of view is that it’s an important touch point when a prospect accepts your request to connect. Make the connection, and use your connection’s response and speed of response as a gauge of their awareness. If they connect fast, then it may mean they are excited to meet with you. If they don’t connect quickly, it could mean it’s not top of mind. Both are important to know. Don’t forget to personalize the message. Reconfirm agenda and meeting attendee participation. It’s good to do this the day before the meeting is scheduled to happen. Prepare a list of discovery and qualification questions to ask the prospect. The questions should preferably be open ended. Share the questions with your internal team to get alignment. It’s a requirement and best practice to brief executives attending the meeting with you beforehand. Share with your executives the context, current situation, and everything you learned during company, industry, and executive research. Your executives are busy. Help them help you. Be clear on what their role in the meeting is. Introduce meeting attendees at meeting outset, and let everyone have a voice. Go around and have people share their role and what they hope to get out of the meeting. Take thorough notes, capturing your customer’s words. Listen more and talk less. Watch the clock to begin and end meetings as promised. Leave time for questions and discussion at the end. Recap meeting outcomes and next steps before ending the call. Send meeting follow-up notes with clear action items the same day of the meeting using your customer’s words.

*WHAT IS MATURITY?* I used to think that maturity was about age and physical development, how wrong I was. I have since found out that age is only but a number, below are 20 definitions of *MATURITY* *-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-* 1.... *Maturity* is when you accept other people the way they are and their level of maturity. *+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+* 2.... *Maturity* is when you understand that your ideas are not always the best. *+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+* 3.... *Maturity* is when you learn to let go even if it pains. *+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+* 4... *Maturity* is when you are able to drop expectations from a relationship and give for giving sake. *+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+* 5.... *Maturity* is when you understand that whatever positive things you do, you do for your own peace. *-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+* 6... *Maturity* is when you stop proving to the world how RIGHT OR SUPERIOR you are. *+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+* 7.... *Maturity* is when you stop comparing yourself with others because life is not a competition. *+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-* 8.... *Maturity* is when you understand that you can't and shouldn't always get what you want every time. *+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+* 9.... *Maturity* is when you are contented and satisfied with your life and yet aspiring to be better everyday.. *+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+* 10.... *Maturity* is when someone hurt you and you understand their attitude and stay clear, rather than trying to hurt them back. *+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+* 11.... *Maturity* is when you start thinking about other people and not just yourself. *+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+* 12.... *Maturity* is when you know you cant please everyone. *+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+* 13.... *Maturity* is when you see things in different perspectives - far beyond the way they seem. *+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+* 14.... *Maturity* is when you love more and judge less. *+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+* 15.... *Maturity* is responsibility *+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+* 16.... *Maturity* is Love *+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+* 17.... *Maturity* is the application of wisdom and knowledge in humility.. *+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+* 18... *Maturity* is when you accept that your accomplishment, failures, destiny, reputations and virtually everything about your life depends on God's will and the choices you make and not pointing fingers at others. *+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+* 19... *Maturity* is when someone hates you and you still pray for them to succeed. *+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+* 20.... *Maturity* is knowing God, serving Him with all that you've got and pursuing His Kingdom no matter what people think or say... *+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+*

We will all cling to reasons and answers and worldviews only to have them smashed to pieces time and time again, whether we know it or admit it to ourselves or not. We will all not only be wrong often, but right rarely, even in the meta, subjective sense. And so, perhaps if we wish to be ok with consciousness, we must learn how to be ok with this. Perhaps we must learn how to fundamentally be ok with being wrong, or we will loathe ourselves until the end. Perhaps we must love and accept the hypocrisy that runs through the very veins of the human condition, or we will hate all of humankind. Perhaps we must learn how to dial back our expectations and the degree to which we dread the inevitable failure of everything we believe, and the beliefs of others just the same. This is not to make light of the immense challenge of such an arduous endeavor. It is an endless, upward climb of surpassing one’s default mode and understanding of the world. But perhaps if we can, at least some of the time, succeed in doing so, we can feel a little less embarrassed, disgusted, miserable, ashamed, bitter, angry, and all the rest. And perhaps we can be a little less wrong a little more often.

There were, of course, a handful of “speculators” in the early days of the oil markets. These were people who bought oil without ever expecting to actually handle it or deliver it. They were making a bet that they could sell their contract at a higher price before the time came to load a barge. This was a dangerous game. A trader like Howell might be able to sniff out a speculator and simply refuse to buy the oil contract off his hands, putting the speculator in a desperate position because he knew he couldn’t actually take delivery of all that oil. A trader like Howell could hold out until the speculator was forced to give away the oil for pennies on the dollar when it came time to accept delivery. This was a well-known trading maneuver called “the squeeze,” and it was a pitiless tactic that could financially ruin a person in a matter of hours. Traders like Howell (and his counterparts at Chevron and Exxon) were more or less immune to the squeeze. Howell could accept delivery of the barrels of oil, maybe at a loss, but not at a catastrophic loss.

When Harvard professor John Kotter studied change agents years ago, he found that they typically undercommunicated their visions by a factor of ten. On average, they spoke about the direction of the change ten times less often than their stakeholders needed to hear it. In one three-month period, employees might be exposed to 2.3 million words and numbers. On average during that period, the vision for change was expressed in only 13,400 words and numbers: a 30-minute speech, an hour-long meeting, a briefing, and a memo. Since more than 99 percent of the communication that employees encounter during those three months does not concern the vision, how can they be expected to understand it, let alone internalize it? The change agents don’t realize this, because they’re up to their ears in information about their vision. If we want people to accept our original ideas, we need to speak up about them, then rinse and repeat.

Thus, as I have said, in innumerable cases today’s family owes its existence merely to a force of inertia, conventions, practical convenience, and weakness of character in a regime of mediocrity and compromises. Nor can one expect external measures to bring about a change. I must repeat that familial unity could only remain firm when determined by a suprapersonal way of thinking, so as to leave mere individual matters on a secondary level. Then the marriage could even lack "happiness," the "needs of the soul" could be unsatisfied, and yet the unity would persist. In the individualistic climate of present society no higher reason demands that familial unity should persist even when the man or the woman "does not agree," and sentiment or sex leads them to new choices. Therefore, the increase of so-called failed marriages and related divorces and separations is natural in contemporary society. It is also absurd to think of any efficacy in restraining measures, since the basis of the whole is by now a change of an existential order. After this evaluation, it would almost be superfluous to specify what can be the behavior of the differentiated man today. In principle, he cannot value marriage, family, or procreation as I have just described them. All that can only be alien to him; he can recognize nothing significant to merit his attention. (Later I will return to the problem of the sexes in itself, not from the social perspective.) The contaminations in marriage between sacred and profane and its bourgeois conformism are evident to him, even in the case of religious, indissoluble, Catholic marriage. This indissolubility that is supposed to safeguard the family in the Catholic area is by now little more than a facade. In fact, the indissoluble unions are often profoundly corrupted and loosened, and in that area petty morality is not concerned in the least that the marriage is actually indissoluble; it is important only to act as if it were such. That men and women, once duly married, do more or less whatever they want, that they feign, betray, or simply put up with each other, that they remain together for simple convenience, reducing the family to what I have already described, is of little importance there. Morality is saved: One can believe that the family remains the fundamental unit of society so long as one condemns divorce and accepts that social sanction or authorization—as if it had any right—for any sexually based cohabitation that corresponds to marriage. What is more, even if we are not speaking of the "indissoluble" Catholic rite of marriage, but of a society that permits divorce, the hypocrisy persists: one worships at the altar of social conformism even when men and women separate and remarry repeatedly for the most frivolous and ridiculous motives, as typically happens in the United States, so that marriage ends up being little more than a puritanical veneer for a regime of high prostitution or legalized free love.

The future of the world no longer disturbs me; I do not try still to calculate, with anguish, how long or how short a time the Roman peace will endure; I leave that to the gods. Not that I have acquired more confidence in their justice, which is not our justice, or more faith in human wisdom; the contrary is true. Life is atrocious, we know. But precisely because I expect little of the human condition, man’s periods of felicity, his partial progress, his efforts to begin over again and to continue, all seem to me like so many prodigies which nearly compensate for the monstrous mass of ills and defeats, of indifference and error. Catastrophe and ruin will come; disorder will triumph, but order will too, from time to time. Peace will again establish itself between two periods of war; the words humanity, liberty, and justice will here and there regain the meaning which we have tried to give them. Not all our books will perish, nor our statues, if broken, lie unrepaired; other domes and other pediments will arise from our domes and pediments; some few men will think and work and feel as we have done, and I venture to count upon such continuators, placed irregularly throughout the centuries, and upon this kind of intermittent immortality. If ever the barbarians gain possession of the world they will be forced to adopt some of our methods; they will end by resembling us. Chabrias fears that the pastophor of Mithra or the bishop of Christ may implant himself one day in Rome, replacing the high pontiff. If by ill fate that day should come, my successor officiating in the vatical fields along the Tiber will already have ceased to be merely the chief of a gang, or of a band of sectarians, and will have become in his turn one of the universal figures of authority. He will inherit our palaces and our archives, and will differ from rulers like us less than one might suppose. I accept with calm these vicissitudes of Rome eternal.

The future of the world no longer disturbs me; I do not try still to calculate, with anguish, how long or how short a time the Roman peace will endure; I leave that to the gods. Not that I have acquired more confidence in their justice, which is not our justice, or more faith in human wisdom; the contrary is true. Life is atrocious, we know. But precisely because I expect little of the human condition, man’s periods of felicity, his partial progress, his efforts to begin over again and to continue, all seem to me like so many prodigies which nearly compensate for the monstrous mass of ills and defeats, of indifference and error. Catastrophe and ruin will come; disorder will triumph, but order will too, from time to time. Peace will again establish itself between two periods of war; the words humanity, liberty, and justice will here and there regain the meaning which we have tried to give them. Not all our books will perish, nor our statues, if broken, lie unrepaired; other domes and other pediments will arise from our domes and pediments; some few men will think and work and feel as we have done, and I venture to count upon such continuators, placed irregularly throughout the centuries, and upon this kind of intermittent immortality. If ever the barbarians gain possession of the world they will be forced to adopt some of our methods; they will end by resembling us. Chabrias fears that the pastophor of Mithra or the bishop of Christ may implant himself one day in Rome, replacing the high pontiff. If by ill fate that day should come, my successor officiating in the vatical fields along the Tiber will already have ceased to be merely the chief of a gang, or of a band of sectarians, and will have become in his turn one of the universal figures of authority. He will inherit our palaces and our archives, and will differ from rulers like us less than one might suppose. I accept with calm these vicissitudes of Rome eternal.