Great Session Quotes

Come on, Hathaway," he said, taking my arm. "You can be my partner. Let’s see what you’ve been doing all this time." An hour later, he had his answer. "Not practicing, huh?" "Ow,” I groaned, momentarily incapable of normal speech. He extended a hand and helped me up from the mat he’d knocked me down on—about fifty times. "I hate you,” I told him, rubbing a spot on my thigh that was going to have a wicked bruise tomorrow. "You’d hate me more if I held back." "Yeah, that’s true," I agreed, staggering along as the class put the equipment back. "You actually did okay." "What? I just had my ass handed to me." "Well, of course you did. It’s been two years. But hey, you’re still walking. That’s something." He grinned mockingly. "Did I mention I hate you?” He flashed me another smile, which quickly faded to something more serious. "Don’t take this the wrong way…I mean, you really are a scrapper, but there’s no way you’ll be able to take your trials in the spring—" "They’re making me take extra practice sessions," I explained. Not that it mattered. I planned on getting Lissa and me out of here before those practices really became an issue. "Extra sessions with who?" "That tall guy. Dimitri." Mason stopped walking and stared at me. "You’re putting in extra time with Belikov?" "Yeah, so what?" "So the man is a god." "Exaggerate much?" I asked. "No, I’m serious. I mean, he’s all quiet and antisocial usually but when he fights...wow. If you think you’re hurting now, you’re going to be dead when he’s done with you." Great. Something else to improve my day.

Brittany Ellis, I'm goin' to prove to you I'm the guy you believed in ten months ago, and I'm gonna be the successful man you dreamed I could be. My plan is to ask you to marry me four years from now, the day we graduate."'And I guarantee you a lifetime of fun, probably one with no lack of fightin', for you are one passionate mamacita . . . but I definitely look forward to some great make-up sessions. Maybe one day we can even go back to Fairfield and help make it the place my dad always hoped it would be. You, me, and Shelley. And any other Fuentes or Ellis family member who wants to be a part of our lives. We'll be one big, crazy Mexican-American family. What do you think? Mujer, you own my soul.

In a perfect Friendship this Appreciative love is, I think, often so great and so firmly based that each member of the circle feels, in his secret heart, humbled before the rest. Sometimes he wonders what he is doing there among his betters. He is lucky beyond desert to be in such company. Especially when the whole group is together; each bringing out all that is best, wisest, or funniest in all the others. Those are the golden sessions; when four or five of us after a hard day's walk have come to our inn; when our slippers are on, our feet spread out toward the blaze and our drinks are at our elbows; when the whole world, and something beyond the world, opens itself to our minds as we talk; and no one has any claim on or any responsibility for another, but all are freemen and equals as if we had first met an hour ago, while at the same time an Affection mellowed by the years enfolds us. Life — natural life — has no better gift to give. Who could have deserved it?

For all its rooted loveliness, the world has no continuing city here; it is an outlandish place, a foreign home, a session in via to a better version of itself-and it is our glory to see it so and to thirst until Jerusalem comes home at last. We were given appetites, not to consume the world and forget it, but to taste its goodness and hunger to make it great.

I like photographing women who appear to know something of life. I recently did a session with a great beauty, a movie star in in her thirties. I photographed her twice within three weeks and the second time I said: "You're much more beautiful today than you were three weeks ago." And she replied: "But I'm also three weeks older.

Tom Paine has almost no influence on present-day thinking in the United States because he is unknown to the average citizen. Perhaps I might say right here that this is a national loss and a deplorable lack of understanding concerning the man who first proposed and first wrote those impressive words, 'the United States of America.' But it is hardly strange. Paine's teachings have been debarred from schools everywhere and his views of life misrepresented until his memory is hidden in shadows, or he is looked upon as of unsound mind. We never had a sounder intelligence in this Republic. He was the equal of Washington in making American liberty possible. Where Washington performed Paine devised and wrote. The deeds of one in the Weld were matched by the deeds of the other with his pen. Washington himself appreciated Paine at his true worth. Franklin knew him for a great patriot and clear thinker. He was a friend and confidant of Jefferson, and the two must often have debated the academic and practical phases of liberty. I consider Paine our greatest political thinker. As we have not advanced, and perhaps never shall advance, beyond the Declaration and Constitution, so Paine has had no successors who extended his principles. Although the present generation knows little of Paine's writings, and although he has almost no influence upon contemporary thought, Americans of the future will justly appraise his work. I am certain of it. Truth is governed by natural laws and cannot be denied. Paine spoke truth with a peculiarly clear and forceful ring. Therefore time must balance the scales. The Declaration and the Constitution expressed in form Paine's theory of political rights. He worked in Philadelphia at the time that the first document was written, and occupied a position of intimate contact with the nation's leaders when they framed the Constitution. Certainly we may believe that Washington had a considerable voice in the Constitution. We know that Jefferson had much to do with the document. Franklin also had a hand and probably was responsible in even larger measure for the Declaration. But all of these men had communed with Paine. Their views were intimately understood and closely correlated. There is no doubt whatever that the two great documents of American liberty reflect the philosophy of Paine. ...Then Paine wrote 'Common Sense,' an anonymous tract which immediately stirred the fires of liberty. It flashed from hand to hand throughout the Colonies. One copy reached the New York Assembly, in session at Albany, and a night meeting was voted to answer this unknown writer with his clarion call to liberty. The Assembly met, but could find no suitable answer. Tom Paine had inscribed a document which never has been answered adversely, and never can be, so long as man esteems his priceless possession. In 'Common Sense' Paine flared forth with a document so powerful that the Revolution became inevitable. Washington recognized the difference, and in his calm way said that matters never could be the same again. It must be remembered that 'Common Sense' preceded the declaration and affirmed the very principles that went into the national doctrine of liberty. But that affirmation was made with more vigor, more of the fire of the patriot and was exactly suited to the hour... Certainly [the Revolution] could not be forestalled, once he had spoken. {The Philosophy of Paine, June 7, 1925}

You see, even after decades of therapy and workshops and retreats and twelve-steps and meditation and even experiencing a very weird session of rebirthings, even after rappeling down mountains and walking over hot coals and jumping out of airplanes and watching elephant races and climbing the Great Wall of China, and even after floating down the Amazon and taking ayahuasca with an ex-husband and a witch doctor and speaking in tongues and fasting (both nutritional and verbal), I remained pelted and plagued by feelings of uncertainty and despair. Yes, even after sleeping with a senator, and waking up next to a dead friend, and celebrating Michael Jackson’s last Christmas with him and his kids, I still did not feel—how shall I put this?—mentally sound.

Happiness is a state of mental,physical and spiritual well-being. Think pleasantly,engaged sport and read daily to enhance your well-being.

If you want to see philosophy in action, pay a visit to a robo-rat laboratory. A robo-rat is a run-ofthe-mill rat with a twist: scientists have implanted electrodes into the sensory and reward areas in the rat’s brain. This enables the scientists to manoeuvre the rat by remote control. After short training sessions, researchers have managed not only to make the rats turn left or right, but also to climb ladders, sniff around garbage piles, and do things that rats normally dislike, such as jumping from great heights. Armies and corporations show keen interest in the robo-rats, hoping they could prove useful in many tasks and situations. For example, robo-rats could help detect survivors trapped under collapsed buildings, locate bombs and booby traps, and map underground tunnels and caves. Animal-welfare activists have voiced concern about the suffering such experiments inflict on the rats. Professor Sanjiv Talwar of the State University of New York, one of the leading robo-rat researchers, has dismissed these concerns, arguing that the rats actually enjoy the experiments. After all, explains Talwar, the rats ‘work for pleasure’ and when the electrodes stimulate the reward centre in their brain, ‘the rat feels Nirvana’. To the best of our understanding, the rat doesn’t feel that somebody else controls her, and she doesn’t feel that she is being coerced to do something against her will. When Professor Talwar presses the remote control, the rat wants to move to the left, which is why she moves to the left. When the professor presses another switch, the rat wants to climb a ladder, which is why she climbs the ladder. After all, the rat’s desires are nothing but a pattern of firing neurons. What does it matter whether the neurons are firing because they are stimulated by other neurons, or because they are stimulated by transplanted electrodes connected to Professor Talwar’s remote control? If you asked the rat about it, she might well have told you, ‘Sure I have free will! Look, I want to turn left – and I turn left. I want to climb a ladder – and I climb a ladder. Doesn’t that prove that I have free will?

A government is a band of hypnostists, they hate people who open their eyes during session

This isn’t a sparring session or a training exercise. In this situation, fighting fair is a great way to end up dead.

How could it be winter without snow?I appreciated every season, but winter was my favorite.I loved when it was time to pull out my thick sweaters.I loved the smell of a wood fire.I loved skiing and snow boarding and sledding, when i could find the time-although time was in a short supply when school was in session.I even enjoyed the cold, wintry weather, it was great for snuggling.

For now, though, as long as he insists on giving in to mischievous impulses, such as hiding under the Great Council table during session, he must take his punishment.” “Oh, Daniel, you didn’t.” Legna tsked at the child, making his chubby cheeks turn a brilliant scarlet color. “I didn’t mean to. I was just playing hide and seek with Uncle Noah.” “Yes, well, next time perhaps you ought to begin the game by actually informing your uncle he is part of it instead of having him find out the hard way, eh?

It is perfectly possible to live a life from cradle to grave that is entirely dishonest.One might never reveal one's true identity, the yearnings and cravings of one's innermost self, even to the most intimate circle of family and friends; never really speak the truth to anyone. Priests and psychotherapists may believe that the confessional-box or the analysis session reveals truths, but you know and I know and every human being knows that we lie all the time to all the world. Lying is as much a part of us as wearing clothes. Indeed Man's first act in Eden was to give names to everything on earth, our first act of possession and falsehood was to take away a stone's right to be a stone by imprisoning it with the name "stone". There are in reality, as Fenellosa said, no nouns in the universe. Man's next great act was to cover himself up. We have been doing so ever since. We feel that our true identities shame us. Lying is a deep part of us. TO take it away is to make us something less than, not more than, human.

Why is it that, you can only truly love someone if you make out with them or if they are your family? Whatever happened to friendship love? Look. I have never have met anyone on this site. But the love here - that shit is real. I don't care if you're all some random perverted thirty-year old men just wanting to bang some chick. I love you all. You guys gave me the courage to move on in life. You taught me that its okay to cry and feel pity for myself as long as I got back up. And I'll always be greatful to you for that. Look. I don't know what you guys look like, but if its anything like what you're like on the inside - than you are all gorgeous, wonderful, beautiful people and the world just can't handle your awesomeness. Okay? So I just wanted to say thank you. And to anyone who doubts this love, screw you. Because these people saved me when no one else cared to even try. These people are my courage, my legs to stand on, my world. And trust me when I say this. These people are my soul mates. Not 'like my soul mates', no. These people are my soul mates. And this love can't simply be defined in a couple of make out sessions. It goes beyond that. Beyond your imagination. So shut the hell up and don't bother telling me that I can't possible love these people because I never met them. Some feelings reach through the screen, and don't need to have the interaction among one another. Some feelings surpass all. So shut up. I love these people.

In closing, new therapists are encouraged to be themselves with clients rather than trying to fulfill the role of a therapist. Perhaps Kahn says it best: When all is said and done, nothing in our work may be more important than our willingness to bring as much of ourselves as possible to the therapeutic session.... One of the great satisfactions of this work comes at the moment students realize that when they enter the consulting room, they don’t need to don a therapist mask, a therapist voice, a therapist posture, and a therapist vocabulary. They can discard those accouterments because they have much, much more than that to give their clients.

You have to free your brain to roam to places that are a little impractical, and innovation consultants have come up with some great ways to encourage that. One of my favorites comes from Legrand, who tells people in group brainstorming sessions to try to come up with the WORST possible ideas that they can think of. ... Once you have a list of really, really bad suggestions - and coming up with them does force your brain to work in a different way - you try to flip them over into the positive.

Every average-looking American is just a treadmill and six laser hair-removal sessions away from looking like Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively (who are a great couple, by the way).

NO SURROGATE CAN BIRTH YOUR GREATNESS SO LET THEM STEAL TIME WILL REVEAL

Avoid the use of abusive words when communication is in session; you might scare away someone who is meant to become your mentor or your customer.

Video games hold closed beta sessions all the time, after all; maybe launching without a rehearsal wasn’t such a great idea.

--And yet this great wink of eternity, Of rimless floods, unfettered leewardings, Samite sheeted and processioned where Her undinal vast belly moonward bends, Laughing the wrapt inflections of our love; Take this Sea, whose diapason knells On scrolls of silver snowy sentences, The sceptred terror of whose sessions rends As her demeanors motion well or ill, All but the pieties of lovers’ hands. And onward, as bells off San Salvador Salute the crocus lustres of the stars, In these poinsettia meadows of her tides,-- Adagios of islands, O my Prodigal, Complete the dark confessions her veins spell. Mark how her turning shoulders wind the hours, And hasten while her penniless rich palms Pass superscription of bent foam and wave,-- Hasten, while they are true,--sleep, death, desire, Close round one instant in one floating flower. Bind us in time, O Seasons clear, and awe. O minstrel galleons of Carib fire, Bequeath us to no earthly shore until Is answered in the vortex of our grave The seal’s wide spindrift gaze toward paradise.

Jorja felt great after her session with the crew from physical therapy. She'd never been one for acting, but if Cat could have seen her, she'd have offered her the Academy Award for "Best Performance by a Previously Dead Person in a Reincarnated Body." Jorja chuckled at the thought...

This soirée was followed by a longer and more serious session in Pommeroy's, which had ended once again, I regret to say, with Henry and me recalling the great hits of Dame Vera Lynn. So now I turned my face to the wall, closed my eyes and knew what it was like to stand on the edge of eternity.

The South must be opened to the light of law and liberty, and this session of Congress is relied upon to accomplish this important work. The plain, common-sense way of doing this work, as intimated at the beginning, is simply to establish in the South one law, one government, one administration of justice, one condition to the exercise of the elective franchise, for men of all races and colors alike. This great measure is sought as earnestly by loyal white men as by loyal blacks, and is needed alike by both. Let sound political prescience but take the place of an unreasoning prejudice, and this will be done.

Humans are curious creatures, and most people find it almost impossible to ignore their email and social media notifications until the end of their work sessions. If you’re being interrupted every few minutes by a ping or flashing browser tab, it will greatly reduce your productivity and concentration. Additionally, these social activities are pleasurable—they give our brains a little hit of dopamine, otherwise known as the happy hormone. In other words, social media can be addictive. A quick five minutes on Facebook can easily turn into an hour, as many of us can attest to. Rather than struggling against your brain’s natural inclination to procrastinate, save yourself a lot of time and hassle by simply closing your email tab and banning social media during work time.

And yet, despite the multiplicity of times we've done it, it is still a funny, exultant, true thing - where for a short time you turn into something else and fly; where you stop fretting and wanting, and are simply alight with joy - and all while never venturing beyond the walls of your room. And I would put our continued success down to one simple thing. At the end of every tumbling session, one of us will turn to the other and say, "Thank you very much. That was very pleasant. Very pleasant indeed. My dear, I am much obliged to you." Because at the end of the day, that is the hottest sex tip of all: gratitude. That you've found someone who wants to do that thing, with you, and no government has yet found a way to charge you VAT on it. You can set fire to the sky, and not be charged a penny. Sometimes, it's great being a human.

Near the end of the session, a slight, middle-aged man in a dress shirt approached the microphone. “I’m here to ask your forgiveness,” he said quietly. “I’ve been a pastor with a conservative denomination for more than thirty years, and I used to be an antigay apologist. I knew every argument, every Bible verse, every angle, and every position. I could win a debate with just about anyone, and I confess I yelled down more than a few ‘heretics’ in my time. I was absolutely certain that what I was saying was true and I assumed I’d defend that truth to death. But then I met a young lesbian woman who, over a period of many years, slowly changed my mind. She is a person of great faith and grace, and her life was her greatest apologetic.” The man began to sob into his hands. “I’m so sorry for what I did to you,” he finally continued. “I might not have hurt any of you directly, but I know my misguided apologetics, and then my silent complicity, probably did more damage than I can ever know. I am truly sorry and I humbly repent of my actions. Please forgive me.” “We forgive you!” someone shouted from up front. But the pastor held up his hand and then continued to speak. “And if things couldn’t get any weirder,” he said with a nervous laugh, “I was dropping my son off at school the other day—he’s a senior in high school—and we started talking about this very issue. When I told him that I’d recently changed my mind about homosexuality, he got really quiet for a minute and then he said, ‘Dad, I’m gay.’ ” Nearly everyone in the room gasped. “Sometimes I wonder if these last few years of studying, praying, and rethinking things were all to prepare me for that very moment,” the pastor said, his voice quivering. “It was one of the most important moments of my life. I’m so glad I was ready. I’m so glad I was ready to love my son for who he is.

Measuring the wrong thing is often worse than measuring nothing, because you do get what you measure. So if the assessments focus on how much people “enjoy” the experience—be that reading a book, watching a talk, or going to a training session—those same books, talks, and trainings will respond to those measurements by prioritizing the wrong outcomes: making participants feel good and giving them a good time. Simply stated, measuring entertainment value produces great entertainment, not change; measuring the wrong things crowds out assessing other, more relevant indicators such as improvements in workplaces. Improvement comes from employing measurements that are appropriate, those that are connected to the areas in which we seek improvement. In the case of leadership, that appropriate measurement would include assessing the frequency of desirable leader behaviors; actual workplace conditions such as engagement, satisfaction, and

After a few weeks Jobs finally had enough. “Stop!” he shouted at one big product strategy session. “This is crazy.” He grabbed a magic marker, padded to a whiteboard, and drew a horizontal and vertical line to make a four-squared chart. “Here’s what we need,” he continued. Atop the two columns he wrote “Consumer” and “Pro”; he labeled the two rows “Desktop” and “Portable.” Their job, he said, was to make four great products, one for each quadrant. “The room was in dumb silence,” Schiller recalled.

A good exercise session leaves an athlete person gasping for air, sweating, and exhausted, and so is writing and drawing for writers and artists, but the brain is what pants and feels exhaustion. Writing and drawing are a great mental effort that equals tiring physical training. When you write and draw, you need to use all your brain muscles to transfer your ideas into the paper. Concentration, knowledge, experience, creativity, imagination, all unite, trying hard to finish a text or an art piece.

It is always true to say when reviewing one of this patient’s sessions that if she could scream she would be well,” wrote Winnicott. “The great non-event of every session is screaming.”6 The Burmese master who counseled Sharon was making much the same point. In encouraging her to cry her heart out, he was countering her inclination to make crying the “great non-event” of every meditation session. Like the Burmese teacher, Winnicott felt that if his patient could cry her heart out, her psyche would grow.

Governments and business-news promoters go to great pains to make things easy for news organizations. They provide the media organizations with facilities in which to gather; they give journalists advance copies of speeches and forthcoming reports; they schedule press conferences at hours well-geared to news deadlines; they write press releases in usable language; and they carefully organize their press conferences and "photo opportunity" sessions. It is the job of news officers "to meet the journalist's scheduled needs with material that their beat agency has generated at its own pace.

I remember one session with British Prime Minister James Callaghan, who asked for a conversation that would be totally off the record. We had a cocktail while enjoying the new rocking chairs, and he described Great Britain’s economic troubles and told me that the International Monetary Fund was putting pressure on him to reduce their deficit with what seemed to be draconian actions. I interrupted to offer my help in easing the IMF demands, and he said, “No, no! I want you to support their restraints. I want them to force me and my government to do what I know is right but is not politically popular.

I started to turn toward the closest bus stop. Alex turned the other way. "Suivez-moi," he commanded. So I followed. "Bon.Je pensais que nous irions-" "Alex." He stopped. "Ella." "Don't do that, the immersion thing." "Mais, c'est tres important." "Alex." "Ella." "Please.I know you do this with other linguistic losers, but it makes me feel like I should have a great big L lipsticked onto my forehead in some swirly French calligraphy." "Do you often contemplate decorating yourself in such a manner?" I took a quick look down.I was wearing Sienna's turtleneck again, but my own jeans. There was a large blue sea horse from the art museum fountain running from my knee to the crease of my thigh. "Yeah," I admitted. "I do." "Quelle horreur!" he declared, eyes round in mock distress. "Casse-toi." He let out a bark of laughter that sounded just like a seal. "Tres bien, Mademoiselle Marino. Got any more?" "A couple.Frankie gave me a copy of How to Offend the French when I managed to get a B in 1B last year." "Well,I never trade insults on a first date. Not that kinda guy. But after two or three..." I liked that he'd said "date," instead of "tutoring session." Even if it wasn't and he totally didn't mean it. I couldn't help it.

Mentally practice two or three times each week for about 10 to 15 minutes per rehearsal. Select a specific sports skill to further develop, or work your way though different scenarios, incorporating various game-ending situations. Examples include meeting your marathon goal time, striking out the side in the bottom of the ninth, or making the game-winning shot as the final buzzer is sounding. Mental practice sessions that are shorter in length are also beneficial. Good times include during any downtime in your schedule, the night before a competition, as an element of your pregame routine, and especially as part of a preshot routine.

When problems of transference are involved, as they usually are, psychotherapy is, among other things, a process of map-revising. Patients come to therapy because their maps are clearly not working. But how they may cling to them and fight the process every step of the way! Frequently their need to cling to their maps and fight against losing them is so great that therapy becomes impossible, as it did in the case of the computer technician. Initially he requested a Saturday appointment. After three sessions he stopped coming because he took a job doing lawn-maintenance work on Saturdays and Sundays. I offered him a Thursday-evening appointment. He came for two sessions and then stopped because he was doing overtime work at the plant. I then rearranged my schedule so I could see him on Monday evenings, when, he had said, overtime work was unlikely. After two more sessions, however, he stopped coming because Monday-night overtime work seemed to have picked up. I confronted him with the impossibility of doing therapy under these circumstances. He admitted that he was not required to accept overtime work. He stated, however, that he needed the money and that the work was more important to him than therapy. He stipulated that he could see me only on those Monday evenings when there was no overtime work to be done and that he would call me at four o’clock every Monday afternoon to tell me if he could keep his appointment that evening. I told him that these conditions were not acceptable to me, that I was unwilling to set aside my plans every Monday evening on the chance that he might be able to come to his sessions. He felt that I was being unreasonably rigid, that I had no concern for his needs, that I was interested only in my own time and clearly cared nothing for him, and that therefore I could not be trusted. It was on this basis that our attempt to work together was terminated, with me as another landmark on his old map. The problem of transference is not simply a

Roosevelt fought hard for the United States to host the opening session [of the United Nations]; it seemed a magnanimous gesture to most of the delegates. But the real reason was to better enable the United States to eavesdrop on its guests. Coded messages between the foreign delegations and their distant capitals passed through U.S. telegraph lines in San Francisco. With wartime censorship laws still in effect, Western Union and the other commercial telegraph companies were required to pass on both coded and uncoded telegrams to U.S. Army codebreakers. Once the signals were captured, a specially designed time-delay device activated to allow recorders to be switched on. Devices were also developed to divert a single signal to several receivers. The intercepts were then forwarded to Arlington Hall, headquarters of the Army codebreakers, over forty-six special secure teletype lines. By the summer of 1945 the average number of daily messages had grown to 289,802, from only 46,865 in February 1943. The same soldiers who only a few weeks earlier had been deciphering German battle plans were now unraveling the codes and ciphers wound tightly around Argentine negotiating points. During the San Francisco Conference, for example, American codebreakers were reading messages sent to and from the French delegation, which was using the Hagelin M-209, a complex six-wheel cipher machine broken by the Army Security Agency during the war. The decrypts revealed how desperate France had become to maintain its image as a major world power after the war. On April 29, for example, Fouques Duparc, the secretary general of the French delegation, complained in an encrypted note to General Charles de Gaulle in Paris that France was not chosen to be one of the "inviting powers" to the conference. "Our inclusion among the sponsoring powers," he wrote, "would have signified, in the eyes of all, our return to our traditional place in the world." In charge of the San Francisco eavesdropping and codebreaking operation was Lieutenant Colonel Frank B. Rowlett, the protégé of William F. Friedman. Rowlett was relieved when the conference finally ended, and he considered it a great success. "Pressure of work due to the San Francisco Conference has at last abated," he wrote, "and the 24-hour day has been shortened. The feeling in the Branch is that the success of the Conference may owe a great deal to its contribution." The San Francisco Conference served as an important demonstration of the usefulness of peacetime signals intelligence. Impressive was not just the volume of messages intercepted but also the wide range of countries whose secrets could be read. Messages from Colombia provided details on quiet disagreements between Russia and its satellite nations as well as on "Russia's prejudice toward the Latin American countries." Spanish decrypts indicated that their diplomats in San Francisco were warned to oppose a number of Russian moves: "Red maneuver . . . must be stopped at once," said one. A Czechoslovakian message indicated that nation's opposition to the admission of Argentina to the UN. From the very moment of its birth, the United Nations was a microcosm of East-West spying. Just as with the founding conference, the United States pushed hard to locate the organization on American soil, largely to accommodate the eavesdroppers and codebreakers of NSA and its predecessors.

There is a moment in the tractate Menahot when the Rabbis imagine what takes place when Moses ascends Mount Sinai to receive the Torah. In this account (there are several) Moses ascends to heaven, where he finds God busily adding crownlike ornaments to the letters of the Torah. Moses asks God what He is doing and God explains that in the future there will be a man named Akiva, son of Joseph, who will base a huge mountain of Jewish law on these very orthographic ornaments. Intrigued, Moses asks God to show this man to him. Moses is told to 'go back eighteen rows,' and suddenly, as in a dream, Moses is in a classroom, class is in session and the teacher is none other than Rabbi Akiva. Moses has been told to go to the back of the study house because that is where the youngest and least educated students sit. Akiva, the great first-century sage, is explaining Torah to his disciples, but Moses is completely unable to follow the lesson. It is far too complicated for him. He is filled with sadness when, suddenly, one of the disciples asks Akiva how he knows something is true and Akiva answers: 'It is derived from a law given to Moses on Mount Sinai.' Upon hearing this answer, Moses is satisfied - though he can't resist asking why, if such brilliant men as Akiva exist, Moses needs to be the one to deliver the Torah. At this point God loses patience and tells Moses, 'Silence, it's my will.

Doubting free will is not just a philosophical exercise. It has practical implications. If organisms indeed lack free will, it implies we could manipulate and even control their desires using drugs, genetic engineering or direct brain stimulation. If you want to see philosophy in action, pay a visit to a robo-rat laboratory. A robo-rat is a run-of-the-mill rat with a twist: scientists have implanted electrodes into the sensory and reward areas in the rat’s brain. This enables the scientists to manoeuvre the rat by remote control. After short training sessions, researchers have managed not only to make the rats turn left or right, but also to climb ladders, sniff around garbage piles, and do things that rats normally dislike, such as jumping from great heights.

On the other hand, irrational fears are difficult, if not impossible, to quantify. Here’s an example: when 152 people were infected with swine flu in Mexico in 2009, people around the world, prodded by the media’s manufactured hysteria, erupted in fear of an epidemic. We were warned that the threat was everywhere—that everyone was potentially at risk; however, the data showed these fears to be completely unwarranted. Weeks into the “outbreak,” there were around 1,000 reported cases of the virus in 20 countries. The number of fatalities stood at 26—25 in Mexico, and one in the United States (a boy who had just traveled to Texas from Mexico). Yet schools were closed, travel was restricted, emergency rooms were flooded, hundreds of thousands of pigs were killed, hand sanitizer and face masks disappeared from store shelves, and network news stories about swine flu consumed 43% of airtime.9 “There is too much hysteria in the country and so far, there hasn’t been that great a danger,” commented Congressman Ron Paul in response. “It’s overblown, grossly so.”10 He should know. During Paul’s first session in Congress in 1976, a swine flu outbreak led Congress to vote to vaccinate the entire country. (He voted against it.) Twenty-five people died from the vaccination itself, while only one person was killed from the actual virus; hundreds, if not more, contracted Guillain-Barre syndrome, a paralyzing neurological illness, as a result of the vaccine. Nearly 25 percent of the population was vaccinated before the effort was cancelled due to safety concerns.

Toward the end of our sessions, Daniel and Peter spotted an undertaker polishing an old hearse while visiting the nearby village of Monmouth. It was love at first sight, and we ended up buying the poor old jalopy. After celebrating the purchase of this new Bauhausmobile, Peter decided to take the studio owner's daughter and her girlfriend for a spin down the unlit winding country roads of the Wye Valley. Drunk to the gills, he ended up driving the crate into a ditch. Despite this incident, and much to the chagrin of our manager, Harry Isles, this clapped-out crate became the band's official touring vehicle. It was constantly breaking down, and over time, many motorists would be entertained and possibly quite disturbed by the sight of four black-clad, corpse-like figures pushing their funereal conveyance down the highways and byways of Great Britain.

Mr. Sturgess ran the classes with iron, ex-military discipline. We each had spots on the floor, denoting where we should stand rigidly to attention, awaiting our next task. And he pushed us hard. It felt like Mr. Sturgess had forgotten that we were only age six--but as kids, we loved it. It made us feel special. We would line up in rows beneath a metal bar, some seven feet off the ground, then one by one we would say: “Up, please, Mr. Sturgess,” and he would lift us up and leave us hanging, as he continued down the line. The rules were simple: you were not allowed to ask permission to drop off until the whole row was up and hanging, like dead pheasants in a game larder. And even then you had to request: “Down, please, Mr. Sturgess.” If you buckled and dropped off prematurely, you were sent back in shame to your spot. I found I loved these sessions and took great pride in determining to be the last man hanging. Mum would say that she couldn’t bear to watch as my little skinny body hung there, my face purple and contorted in blind determination to stick it out until the bitter end. One by one the other boys would drop off the bar, and I would be left hanging there, battling to endure until the point where even Mr. Sturgess would decide it was time to call it. I would then scuttle back to my mark, grinning from ear to ear. “Down, please, Mr. Sturgess,” became a family phrase for us, as an example of hard physical exercise, strict discipline, and foolhardy determination. All of which would serve me well in later military days. So my training was pretty well rounded. Climbing. Hanging. Escaping. I loved them all. Mum, still to this day, says that growing up I seemed destined to be a mix of Robin Hood, Harry Houdini, John the Baptist, and an assassin. I took it as a great compliment.

has a liberty and a license to do that. The normal rules of social engagement, he feels, don’t apply to him. Because of how very sensitive he is, he knows exactly how to efficiently and effectively hurt someone. And he does do that. Every now and then a wise colleague would pull Jobs aside to try to get him to settle down. Lee Clow was a master. “Steve, can I talk to you?” he would quietly say when Jobs had belittled someone publicly. He would go into Jobs’s office and explain how hard everyone was working. “When you humiliate them, it’s more debilitating than stimulating,” he said in one such session. Jobs would apologize and say he understood. But then he would lapse again. “It’s simply who I am,” he would say. One thing that did mellow was his attitude toward Bill Gates. Microsoft had kept its end of the bargain it made in 1997, when it agreed to continue developing great software for the Macintosh. Also, it was becoming less relevant as a competitor, having failed thus far to replicate Apple’s digital hub strategy. Gates and Jobs had very different approaches to products and innovation, but their rivalry had produced in each a surprising self-awareness.

Starting with a Statement •What a beautiful day.What’s your favorite season of the year? •I was truly touched by that movie.How did you like it? Why? •This is a wonderful restaurant.What is your favorite restaurant? Why? •What a great conference! Tell me about the sessions you attended. •I was absent last week.What did I miss? •That was an interesting program after lunch.What did you think? •Presidential campaigns seem to start immediately after the inauguration.What do you think of the campaign process? •I am so frustrated with getting this business off the ground.Do you have any ideas? •I am excited about our new mayor.How do you think her administration will be different from her predecessor’s? •Your lawn always looks so green.What is your secret? •We’ve been working together for months now.I’d like to get to know you better.Tell me about some of your outside interests. •You worked pretty hard on that stair stepper.What other equipment do you use? •You always wear such attractive clothes.What are your favorite stores? •What a beautiful home.How do you manage to run a house with four children? •I read in the newspaper that our governor has taken another trip overseas.What do you think of all his travel?

This book festival...grew to attract thousands of visitors every year. Now they felt like they needed a new purpose. The festival’s continuing existence felt assured. What was it for? What could it do? How could it make itself count? The festival’s leadership reached out to me for advice on these questions. What kind of purpose could be their next great animating force? Someone had the idea that the festival’s purpose could be about stitching together the community. Books were, of course, the medium. But couldn’t an ambitious festival set itself the challenge of making the city more connected? Couldn’t it help turn strong readers into good citizens? That seemed to me a promising direction—a specific, unique, disputable lodestar for a book festival that could guide its construction...We began to brainstorm. I proposed an idea: Instead of starting each session with the books and authors themselves, why not kick things off with a two-minute exercise in which audience members can meaningfully, if briefly, connect with one another? The host could ask three city- or book-related questions, and then ask each member of the audience to turn to a stranger to discuss one of them. What brought you to this city—whether birth or circumstance? What is a book that really affected you as a child? What do you think would make us a better city? Starting a session with these questions would help the audience become aware of one another. It would also break the norm of not speaking to a stranger, and perhaps encourage this kind of behavior to continue as people left the session. And it would activate a group identity—the city’s book lovers—that, in the absence of such questions, tends to stay dormant. As soon as this idea was mentioned, someone in the group sounded a worry. “But I wouldn’t want to take away time from the authors,” the person said. There it was—the real, if unspoken, purpose rousing from its slumber and insisting on its continued primacy. Everyone liked the idea of “book festival as community glue” in theory. But at the first sign of needing to compromise on another thing in order to honor this new something, alarm bells rang. The group wasn’t ready to make the purpose of the book festival the stitching of community if it meant changing the structure of the sessions, or taking time away from something else. Their purpose, whether or not they admitted it, was the promotion of books and reading and the honoring of authors. It bothered them to make an author wait two minutes for citizens to bond. The book festival was doing what many of us do: shaping a gathering according to various unstated motivations, and making half-hearted gestures toward loftier goals.

performance during PMS: Take 250 milligrams of magnesium, 45 milligrams of zinc, 80 milligrams of aspirin (baby aspirin), and 1 gram of omega-3 fatty acids (flaxseed and fish oil) each night for the 7 days before your period starts. Pretraining: Take 5 to 7 grams of branched-chain amino acid supplement (BCAAs) to fight the lack of mojo. These amino acids cross the blood-brain barrier and decrease the estrogen-progesterone effect on central nervous system fatigue. In training: Consume a few more carbohydrates per hour. In this high-hormone phase, aim for about 0.45 gram of carbohydrate per pound of body weight (about 61 grams for a 135-pound woman) per hour. In the low-hormone phase (first 2 weeks of the cycle), you can go a bit lower—about 0.35 gram of carbohydrate per pound of body weight (about 47 grams for a 135-pound woman) per hour. (For reference: 2.2 kilograms = 1 pound.) Post-training: Recovery is critical. Progesterone is extremely catabolic (breaks muscle down) and inhibits recovery. Aim to consume 20 to 25 grams of protein within 30 minutes of finishing your session. Overall you should aim to get 0.9 to 1 gram of protein per pound per day (a 135-pound woman needs about 122 to 135 grams of protein per day; see the Roar Daily Diet Cheat Sheet for Athletes for more information). THE MARTIAL ARTIST WHO BEAT HER BLOAT It may not be nice to fool Mother Nature, but there are definitely times when you need to trick her a little.

On Sunday, November 10, Kaiser Wilhelm II was dethroned, and he fled to Holland for his life. Britain’s King George V, who was his cousin, told his diary that Wilhelm was “the greatest criminal known for having plunged the world into this ghastly war,” having “utterly ruined his country and himself.” Keeping vigil at the White House, the President and First Lady learned by telephone, at three o’clock that morning, that the Germans had signed an armistice. As Edith later recalled, “We stood mute—unable to grasp the significance of the words.” From Paris, Colonel House, who had bargained for the armistice as Wilson’s envoy, wired the President, “Autocracy is dead. Long live democracy and its immortal leader. In this great hour my heart goes out to you in pride, admiration and love.” At 1:00 p.m., wearing a cutaway and gray trousers, Wilson faced a Joint Session of Congress, where he read out Germany’s surrender terms. He told the members that “this tragical war, whose consuming flames swept from one nation to another until all the world was on fire, is at an end,” and “it was the privilege of our own people to enter it at its most critical juncture.” He added that the war’s object, “upon which all free men had set their hearts,” had been achieved “with a sweeping completeness which even now we do not realize,” and Germany’s “illicit ambitions engulfed in black disaster.” This time, Senator La Follette clapped. Theodore Roosevelt and Senator Lodge complained that Wilson should have held out for unconditional German surrender. Driven down Capitol Hill, Wilson was cheered by joyous crowds on the streets. Eleanor Roosevelt recorded that Washington “went completely mad” as “bells rang, whistles blew, and people went up and down the streets throwing confetti.” Including those who had perished in theaters of conflict from influenza and other diseases, the nation’s nineteen-month intervention in the world war had levied a military death toll of more than 116,000 Americans, out of a total perhaps exceeding 8 million. There were rumors that Wilson planned to sail for France and horse-trade at the peace conference himself. No previous President had left the Americas during his term of office. The Boston Herald called this tradition “unwritten law.” Senator Key Pittman, Democrat from Nevada, told reporters that Wilson should go to Paris “because there is no man who is qualified to represent him.” The Knickerbocker Press of Albany, New York, was disturbed by the “evident desire of the President’s adulators to make this war his personal property.” The Free Press of Burlington, Vermont, said that Wilson’s presence in Paris would “not be seemly,” especially if the talks degenerated into “bitter controversies.” The Chattanooga Times called on Wilson to stay home, “where he could keep his own hand on the pulse of his own people” and “translate their wishes” into action by wireless and cable to his bargainers in Paris.

When someone is judging you, it's unlikely that their judgment is actually about you. As I see it, we're all carrying around a bunch of suitcases. We have our insecurities suitcase. We have our stress suitcase. We have our guilt and our worries suitcases. Some suitcases we might have been carrying since our childhood, stories we were told about who we are that aren't even true. They're fiction that we were handed, picked up, believed, and still carry. Sometimes a person comes along with one of their suitcases, with their issues all packed up and ready to go, and they try to hand it to us. Do not pick up that suitcase! Do not pick it up! Because if you pick up their suitcase, you will be up all night, worrying if what they said about you is true, stressing yourself out, questioning yourself, getting bitter, and feeding your insecurities. Over a suitcase that never belonged to you in the first place. So if people keep trying to hand off their suitcases to you like you're a bellhop, you might need to break up with them the same way you would break off an unhealthy relationship with an emotionally abusive boyfriend. And as you go through life, trying to figure out how to ferry around those suitcases that do belong to you (and we all have our own stuff . . . the stuffiest of stuffs!), don't try to hand those off to someone else as a way to try to get rid of your pain. Instead, sit down with a friend or a great therapist and have a big, nonjudgmental "let's unpack these suitcases together" session.

Donald Trump repeatedly promised he would hire "the best people." He did not. That is not my opinion; it is President Trump's, which he expresses frequently. Trump has said that his first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, was "dumb as a rock" and "lazy as hell." His attorney general, Jeff Sessions, was "scared stiff and Missing in Action," "didn't have a clue," and "should be ashamed of himself." Trump described one of his assistants, Omarosa Manigault Newman, as "wacky," "deranged," "vicious, but not smart," a "crazed, crying lowlife," and finally a "dog." After lasting only eleven days as communications director, Anthony Scaramucci "was quickly terminated 'from' a position that he was totally incapable of handling" and was called "very much out of control." An anonymous adviser to the president was called "a drunk/drugged-up loser." Chief strategist Steve Bannon was "sloppy," a "leaker," and "dumped like a dog by almost everyone." His longtime lawyer Michael Cohen was "TERRIBLE," "hostile," "a convicted liar & fraudster," and a "failed lawyer." The president was "Never a big fan!" of his White House counsel Don McGahn and "not even a little bit happy" with Jerome Powell, his selection to head the Federal Reserve, whom he called an "enemy." His third national security advisor, John Bolton, was mocked as a "tough guy [who] got us into Iraq." When the president was irritated with his former chief of staff, John Kelly, the president's press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, declared that Kelly "was totally unequipped to handle the genius of our great president.

In the eternities of time past, a vast, complex plan for mankind unfolded on the inside of God. In His infinite wisdom, He left nothing out as He looked down through the ages. He passed through generation after generation, planning every intricate detail of every life that would live on the face of the earth. God’s desire was to recover as many as possible from Satan’s rebellious camp and to gather unto Himself a people He could call His family. Somewhere in the midst of this divine planning session, long before the eons of time began, God came across your name! Then He formulated a perfect plan just for you that is unlike any other plan for any other person who has ever been born. Imagine — God the Father looked out across the great void of space and time and saw the moment in time when you would live on this earth. Then He decided precisely how that moment should be filled! We Must Choose His Plan God conceived a wonderful plan for every one of us. In His plan, we were predestined to become His sons and daughters at the Cross. But one potential obstacle stands between us and God’s perfectly conceived purposes: Using the free will God has given us, we must choose to walk in the plan He has ordained for our lives. God looks for a way to approach each of us in order to present His personal plan for our lives. He begins with the preaching of the Cross that encourages us to accept Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. If we accept Jesus, we take our first step into the plan God predestined for us before the foundations of the world. But if we reject Him, then like so many before us, we will live and die without ever taking that first step — salvation — into the divine purpose for our existence.

You have to eat the shit," he repeated over and over during one of our first sessions. He had the tone and zeal of a boxing trainer. "Shit tastes good!" "What does that even mean?" I chuckled. "Don't laugh," he said sternly. Marshall told me that my job wasn't to cook food. It wasn't about looking at numbers or commanding people, either. My company would live or die based on my capacity to eat shit and like it. "I am going to watch you eat as many bowls of shit as our time will allow," he said. We had plenty of time. Eating shit meant listening. Eating shit meant acknowledging my errors and shortcomings. Eating shit meant facing confrontations that made me uncomfortable. Eating shit meant putting my cell phone away when someone was talking to me. Eating shit meant not fleeing. Eating shit meant being grateful. Eating shit meant controlling myself when people fell short of expectations. Eating shit meant putting others before myself. This last detail was important. With Dr. Eliot, I got away with describing my MO as self-destructive--my managerial tendencies were harmful, but only to me. Now, according to Marshall, I was using that assessment as cover for my poor behavior. In my mind, all the people who had left Momofuku were leaving me. When they failed at their jobs, they were betraying me. Marshall pointed out the ugly truth that this belied. I believed that the people at Momofuku were there to serve me. I had always wielded my dedication to Momofuku with great arrogance. Friendships could crumble, hearts could break, cooks could fall to their knees and cry: all collateral damage in the noble pursuit of bringing good food to more people. I believed that I was Momofuku and that everything I did was for Momofuku. Therefore, whatever was good for me was good for Momofuku.

The man who invented bomb warfare against an innocent civilian population declared that this bomb warfare against Germany and so on will shortly be greatly stepped up. I would like to add one thing to this: in May 1940, Mr. Churchill sent the first bombers against the German civilian population. At the time, I kept warning him, for almost four months-in vain. Then, we struck. And we struck so thoroughly that he began to cry and declared that this was barbaric and terrible, and that England would seek revenge. The man on whose conscience all this weighs-not counting the great warmonger Roosevelt-and who is to blame for everything, this man then dared to claim that he was innocent. Today, he continues to wage this war. I would like to say here: the hour will also come this time when we have to answer! May the two great criminals of this war and their Jewish masterminds not start whining and weeping if the end is more terrible for England than the beginning! At the Reichstag session of September 1, 1939, I said two things: First, since this war was forced on us, neither the power of arms nor time will defeat us. Second, should Jewry instigate an international world war in order to exterminate the Aryan people of Europe, then not the Aryan people will be exterminated, but the Jews. The wire pullers of this insane man in the White House have managed to pull one nation after another into this war. Correspondingly, however, a wave of anti-Semitism swept over one nation after another. And it will continue to do so, taking hold of one state after another. Every state that enters this war will one day emerge from it as an anti- Semitic state. The Jews once laughed about my prophecies in Germany. I do not know whether they are still laughing today or whether they no longer feel like laughing. Today, too, I can assure you of one thing: they will soon not feel like laughing anymore anywhere. My prophecies will prove correct here, too.

We are praying to the God of our people, whom we call Hashem, literally, “the Name.” The true name for God is devastatingly holy and evocative; to utter it would represent a death wish, so we have safe nicknames for him instead: the Holy Name, the One, the Only, the Creator, the Destroyer, the Overseer, the King of All Kings, the One True Judge, the Merciful Father, Master of the Universe, O Great Architect, a long list of names for all his attributes. For the sake of this divinity I must surrender myself each morning, body and soul; for this God, my teachers say, I must learn silence so that only his voice can be heard through me. God lives in my soul, and I must spend my life scrubbing my soul clean of any trace of sin so that it deserves to host his presence. Repentance is a daily chore; at each morning prayer session we repent in advance for the sins we will commit that day. I look around at the others, who must sincerely believe in their inherent evil, as they are shamelessly crying and wailing to God to help them expunge the yetzer hara, or evil inclination, from their consciousness. Although I talk to God, it is not through prayer. I talk to him in my mind, and even I will admit that I do not come to God humbly, as I should. I talk to him frankly, as I would to a friend, and I’m constantly asking him for favors. Still, I feel like God and I are on pretty good terms, relatively speaking. This morning, as everyone sways passionately around me, I stand calmly in the sea of young girls, asking God to make this day a bearable one. I’m very easy to pick on. The teachers know I’m not important, that no one will defend me. I’m not a rabbi’s daughter, so when they get angry, I’m the perfect scapegoat. I make sure never to look up from my siddur during prayer, but Chavie Halberstam, the rabbi’s daughter, can elbow her friend Elky to point out the toilet paper stuck to the teacher’s shoe and it’s as if nothing happened. If I so much as smirk, I’m singled out immediately. This is why I need God on my side; I have no one else to stick up for me.

Well, Doctor Dillamond seemed to think they were in questionable taste, given the Banns on Animals Mobility." "Doctor Dillamond, alas," said Madame Morrible, "is a doctor. He is not a poet. He is also a God, and I might ask you girls if we have ever had a great Goat sonneteer or balladeer? Alas, dear Miss Elphaba, Doctor Dillamond doesn't understand the poetic convention of irony. Would you like to define irony for the class, please?" "I don't believe I can, Madame." "Irony, some say, is the art of juxtaposing incongruous parts. One needs a knowing distance. Irony presupposes detachment, which, alas, in the case of Animal Rights, we may forgive Doctor Dillamond for being without." "So that phrase that he objected to - Animals should be seen and not heard - that was ironic?" continued Elphaba, studying her papers and not looking at Madame Morrible. Galinda and her classmates were enthralled, for it was clear that each of the females at opposite ends of the room would have enjoyed seeing the other crumble in a sudden attack of the spleen. "One could consider it in an ironic mode if one chose," said Madame Morrible. "How do you choose?" said Elphaba. "How impertinent!" said Madame Morrible. "Well, but I don't mean impertinence. I'm trying to learn. If you - if anyone - thought that statement was true, then it isn't in conflict with the boring bossy bit that preceded it. It's just argument and conclusion, and I don't see the irony." "You don't see much, Miss Elphaba," said Madame Morrible. "You must learn to put yourself in the shoes of someone wiser than you are, and look from that angle. To be stuck in ignorance, to be circumscribed by the walls of one's own modest acumen, well, it is very sad in one so young and bright." She spit out the last word, and it seemed to Galinda, somehow, a low comment on Elphaba's skin color, which today was indeed lustrous with the effort of public speaking. "But I was trying to put myself in the shoes of Doctor Dillamond," said Elphaba, almost whining, but not giving up. "In the case of poetic interpretation, I venture to suggest, it may indeed be true. Animal should not be heard," snapped Madame Morrible. "Do you mean that ironically?" said Elphaba, but she sat down with her hands over her face and did not look up again for the rest of the session.

Remind yourself where you come from. I spent the majority of my life running away from Utah, from the life I led there, from the memories I associated with those early years. It felt very someone-else-ago to me. London changed me profoundly. When we were dancing on DWTS together, Jennifer Grey called me one night. She was having trouble with her back and wanted to see a physiotherapist. “Can you come with me?” she asked. She drove us through a residential section of Beverly Hills. We pulled into a house with a shed out back. Oddly, it didn’t look like a doctor’s office. There was a couch and incense burning. An Australian guy with a white beard came in : “Hey, mates.” I looked at Jen and she winked at me. This was no physical therapy. She’d signed us up for some bizarre couples therapy! The guy spoke to us for a while, then he asked Jennifer if she wouldn’t mind leaving us to chat. I thought the whole thing was pretty out there, but I didn’t think I could make a run for it. “So, Derek,” he said. “Tell me about your childhood.” I laid it all out for him--I talked for almost two hours--and he nodded. “You can go pick him up now.” I raised an eyebrow. “Pick who up?” The therapist smiled. “That younger boy, that self you left in Utah. You left him there while you’ve been on a mission moving forward so vigorously. Now you can go get him back.” I sat there, utterly stunned and speechless. It was beyond powerful and enlightening. Had I really left that part of me behind? Had I lost that fun-loving, wide-eyed kid and all his creative exuberance? When I came out of my therapy session, Jennifer was waiting for me. “If I’d told you this was where we were going, you wouldn’t have come,” she said. She was right. She had to blindside me to get me to grapple with this. She’s a very spiritual person, and she saw how I was struggling, how I seemed to be in some kind of emotional rut. Just visualizing myself taking the old Derek by the hand was an incredible exercise. I think we often tuck our younger selves away for safekeeping. In my case, I associated my early years with painful memories. I wanted to keep young Derek at a distance. But what I forgot was all the good I experienced with him as well: the joy, the hope, the excitement, the wonder. I forgot what a great kid Derek was. I gave myself permission to reconnect with that little boy, to see the world through his eyes again. It was the kick in the butt I needed. Jennifer would say, “Told ya so.

In late fall, I had a phone sessions with my Oregon therapist. For some reason, we started talking about happiness. “Chris achieved happiness so easily,” I said to him. “And I don’t.” The counselor interrupted me. “Do you know how he did?” I started to answer that I didn’t. But then I realized that Chris had set out to do many things, and he’d achieved them. He’d wanted to be a rodeo competitor, work as a cowboy, join the SEALs. He’d done all of those. What’s more, he excelled at them. Those achievements made him happy, or at least confident enough that he could be happy. As we talked, the counselor noted that I, too, had my own achievements. But I told him--as he already knew--that I wanted to do so many more things. And I always do. Was that a reason not to be happy? The counselor pointed out that I tend to focus on what I haven’t done, rather than what I’ve achieved. My thinking runs; If I do A, then B, then C, then I’ll be happy. But when I achieve A, rather than saying “Yay!” I say, “I haven’t done B and C, so I can’t be happy.” Why focus on what I haven’t done? Why not celebrate those things I have done, even as I look forward to doing other things on my list? Those achievements are accomplishments--I should feel good about them, confident I can do more. And happy. Or at least happier. Another lesson. There are other components to happiness beyond achievement. “Smaller” things, like carving out time for workouts as well as the kids, are actually big things when they are added up. Yet I often feel those things are distractions from what I really want to achieve. Blockers, rather than stepping-stones. Obviously, the wrong way to think about them. On paper, it doesn’t seem like a very profound realization. But put into practice, it means that I--we, all of us--have to keep things in the larger perspective. If you want to achieve a lot, then the reality is that you are always going to have something else you want to do. Keep trying to achieve, but don’t beat yourself up for not getting everything done. The “smaller” things are just as essential to happiness. So: the key to my happiness is appreciating what I have and what I’ve done, and realizing that I’ll always have something else to do. Profound? No, but empowering. I might never have realized it had I not been grieving so deeply. I would have felt silly, really, talking about achieving happiness when Chris was alive. Why wouldn’t I be happy with a great husband and wonderful children? I was happy. But not at the deepest level. I’m not there yet, obviously. But it is possible now. And yet I still wonder: How can I possibly be happy with Chris gone?

ESTABLISH STABLE ANCHORS OF ATTENTION Mindfulness meditation typically involves something known as an anchor of attention—a neutral reference point that helps support mental stability. An anchor might be the sensation of our breath coming in and out of the nostrils, or the rising and falling of our abdomen. When we become lost in thought during practice, we can return to our anchor, fixing our attention on the stimuli we’ve chosen. But anchors can also intensify trauma. The breath, for instance, is far from neutral for many survivors. It’s an area of the body that can hold tension related to a trauma and connect to overwhelming, life-threatening events. When Dylan paid attention to the rising and falling of his abdomen, he would be swamped with memories of mocking faces while walking down the hallway. Other times, feeling a constriction of his breath in the chest echoed a feeling of immobility, which was a traumatic reminder. For Dylan, the breath simply wasn’t a neutral anchor. As a remedy, we can encourage survivors to establish stabilizing anchors of attention. This means finding a focus of attention that supports one’s window of tolerance—creating stability in the nervous system as opposed to dysregulation. Each person’s anchor will vary: for some, it could be the sensations of their hands resting on their thighs, or their buttocks on the cushion. Other stabilizing anchors might include another sense altogether, such as hearing or sight. When Dylan and I worked together, it took a while until he could find a part of his body that didn’t make him more agitated. He eventually found that the sense of hearing was a neutral anchor of attention. At my office, he’d listen for the sound of the birds or the traffic outside, which he found to be stabilizing. “It’s subtle,” he said to me, opening his eyes and rubbing the back of his neck with his hand. “But it is a lot less charged. I’m not getting riled up the same way, which is a huge relief.” In sessions together, Dylan’s anchor was a spot he’d rest his attention on at the beginning of a session or a place to return to if he felt overwhelmed. If he practiced meditation at home—I’d recommended short periods if he could stay in his window of tolerance—he used hearing as an anchor, or “home base” as he called it. “I finally feel like I can access a kind of refuge,” he said quietly, placing his hand on his belly. “My body hasn’t felt safe in so long. It’s a relief to finally feel like I’m learning how to be in here.” Anchors of attention you can offer students and clients practicing mindfulness—besides the sensation of the breath in the abdomen or nostrils—include different physical sensations (feet, buttocks, back, hands) and other senses (seeing, smelling, hearing). One client of mine had a soft blanket that she would touch slowly as an anchor. Another used a candle. For some, walking meditation is a great way to develop more stable anchors of attention, such as the feeling of one’s feet on the ground—whatever supports stability and one’s window of tolerance. Experimentation is key. Using subtler anchors does come with benefits and drawbacks. One advantage to working with the breath is that it is dynamic and tends to hold our attention more easily. When we work with a sense that’s less tactile—hearing, for instance—we may be more prone to drifting off into distraction. The more tangible the anchor, the easier it is to return to it when attention wanders.

Adventists urged to study women’s ordination for themselves Adventist Church President Ted N. C. Wilson appealed to members to study the Bible regarding the theology of ordination as the Church continues to examine the matter at Annual Council next month and at General Conference Session next year. Above, Wilson delivers the Sabbath sermon at Annual Council last year. [ANN file photo] President Wilson and TOSC chair Stele also ask for prayers for Holy Spirit to guide proceedings September 24, 2014 | Silver Spring, Maryland, United States | Andrew McChesney/Adventist Review Ted N. C. Wilson, president of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, appealed to church members worldwide to earnestly read what the Bible says about women’s ordination and to pray that he and other church leaders humbly follow the Holy Spirit’s guidance on the matter. Church members wishing to understand what the Bible teaches on women’s ordination have no reason to worry about where to start, said Artur A. Stele, who oversaw an unprecedented, two-year study on women’s ordination as chair of the church-commissioned Theology of Ordination Study Committee. Stele, who echoed Wilson’s call for church members to read the Bible and pray on the issue, recommended reading the study’s three brief “Way Forward Statements,” which cite Bible texts and Adventist Church co-founder Ellen G. White to support each of the three positions on women’s ordination that emerged during the committee’s research. The results of the study will be discussed in October at the Annual Council, a major business meeting of church leaders. The Annual Council will then decide whether to ask the nearly 2,600 delegates of the world church to make a final call on women’s ordination in a vote at the General Conference Session next July. Wilson, speaking in an interview, urged each of the church’s 18 million members to prayerfully read the study materials, available on the website of the church’s Office of Archives, Statistics, and Research. "Look to see how the papers and presentations were based on an understanding of a clear reading of Scripture,” Wilson said in his office at General Conference headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland. “The Spirit of Prophecy tells us that we are to take the Bible just as it reads,” he said. “And I would encourage each church member, and certainly each representative at the Annual Council and those who will be delegates to the General Conference Session, to prayerfully review those presentations and then ask the Holy Spirit to help them know God’s will.” The Spirit of Prophecy refers to the writings of White, who among her statements on how to read the Bible wrote in The Great Controversy (p. 598), “The language of the Bible should be explained according to its obvious meaning, unless a symbol or figure is employed.” “We don’t have the luxury of having the Urim and the Thummim,” Wilson said, in a nod to the stones that the Israelite high priest used in Old Testament times to learn God’s will. “Nor do we have a living prophet with us. So we must rely upon the Holy Spirit’s leading in our own Bible study as we review the plain teachings of Scripture.” He said world church leadership was committed to “a very open, fair, and careful process” on the issue of women’s ordination. Wilson added that the crucial question facing the church wasn’t whether women should be ordained but whether church members who disagreed with the final decision on ordination, whatever it might be, would be willing to set aside their differences to focus on the church’s 151-year mission: proclaiming Revelation 14 and the three angels’ messages that Jesus is coming soon. 3 Views on Women’s Ordination In an effort to better understand the Bible’s teaching on ordination, the church established the Theology of Ordination Study Committee, a group of 106 members commonly referred to by church leaders as TOSC. It was not organized

• No matter how open we as a society are about formerly private matters, the stigma around our emotional struggles remains formidable. We will talk about almost anyone about our physical health, even our sex lives, but bring depression, anxiety or grief , and the expression on the other person would probably be "get me out of this conversation" • We can distract our feelings with too much wine, food or surfing the internet, • Therapy is far from one-sided; it happens in a parallel process. Everyday patients are opening up questions that we have to think about for ourselves, • "The only way out is through" the only way to get out of the tunnel is to go through, not around it • Study after study shows that the most important factor in the success of your treatment is your relationship with the therapist, your experience of "feeling felt" • Attachment styles are formed early in childhood based on our interactions with our caregivers. Attachment styles are significant because they play out in peoples relationships too, influencing the kind of partners they pick, (stable or less stable), how they behave in a relationship (needy, distant, or volatile) and how the relationship tend to end (wistfully, amiably, or with an explosion) • The presenting problem, the issue somebody comes with, is often just one aspect of a larger problem, if not a red herring entirely. • "Help me understand more about the relationship" Here, here's trying to establish what’s known as a therapeutic alliance, trust that has to develop before any work can get done. • In early sessions is always more important for patients to feel understood than it is for them to gain any insight or make changes. • We can complain for free with a friend or family member, People make faulty narratives to make themselves feel better or look better in the moment, even thought it makes them feel worse over time, and that sometimes they need somebody else to read between the lines. • Here-and-now, it is when we work on what’s happening in the room, rather than focusing on patient's stories. • She didn't call him on his bullshit, which this makes patients feel unsafe, like children's whose parent's don’t hold them accountable • What is this going to feel like to the person I’m speaking to? • Neuroscientists discovered that humans have brain cells called mirror neurons, that cause them to mimic others, and when people are in a heightened state of emotion, a soothing voice can calm their nervous system and help them stay present • Don’t judge your feelings; notice them. Use them as your map. Don’t be afraid of the truth. • The things we protest against the most are often the very things we need to look at • How easy it is, I thought, to break someone’s heart, even when you take great care not to. • The purpose on inquiring about people's parent s is not to join them in blaming, judging or criticizing their parents. In fact it is not about their parents at all. It is solely about understanding how their early experiences informed who they are as adults so that they can separate the past from the present (and not wear psychological clothing that no longer fits) • But personality disorders lie on a spectrum. People with borderline personality disorder are terrified of abandonment, but for some that might mean feeling anxious when their partners don’t respond to texts right away; for others that may mean choosing to stay in volatile, dysfunctional relationships rather than being alone. • In therapy we aim for self compassion (am I a human?) versus self esteem (Am I good or bad: a judgment) • The techniques we use are a bit like the type of brain surgery in which the patient remains awake throughout the procedure, as the surgeons operate, they keep checking in with the patient: can you feel this? can you say this words? They are constantly calibrating how close they are to sensitive regions of the brain, and if they hit one, they back up so as not to damage it.

Set aside time on a regular basis to immerse yourself in books, films, magazines, and other resources that stoke the fire of your curiosity. Keep a list of resources that strike you as interesting, and set aside time to experience them each day. I keep a “Stimulus Queue,” which is a list of all of the interesting books, films, or articles that I come across throughout my day and I want to revisit later, during my study time. I also use a variety of Web-based tools to stockpile articles I come across for later viewing. I then work through them systemically, take notes, and consider how they may apply to my work. Always leave time at the end of any reading/study session to reflect on what you’ve read and to consider how it is relevant to your work. The next great idea for your work will probably not come from watching your competitors, but from taking an insight from an unrelated industry and applying it to your own. Read and experience broadly, and with focus on your deeper questions.

Braintrust meetings require giving candid notes, but they do a great deal more than that. The most productive creative sessions allow for the exploration of myriad trains of thought.

Remember to write continuously the entire twenty minutes. And never forget that this writing is for you and you alone. At the conclusion of your twenty minutes of writing, read the section “Post-writing thoughts” and complete the post-writing questionnaire. Post-Writing Thoughts Following the Day One Writing Session Congratulations! You have completed the first day of writing. After each writing exercise, it can be helpful to make objective assessments about how the writing felt. In this way, you can go back and determine which writing methods are most effective for you. For this and for all future writing exercises, respond to each of the five following questions either at the end of your writing or in a separate place. Put a number between 0 and 10 by each question. 0 — Not at all 1 2 3 4 5— Somewhat 6 7 8 9 10— A great deal ____ A. To what degree did you express your deepest thoughts and feelings? ____ B. To what degree do you currently feel sad or upset? ____ C. To what degree do you currently feel happy? ____ D. To what degree was today’s writing valuable and meaningful for you? E. Briefly describe how your writing went today so you may refer to this later. For many people, the first day of writing is the most difficult. This kind of writing can bring up emotions and thoughts that you may not have known that you had. It may also have flowed much more easily than you expected — especially if you wrote about something that you have been keeping to yourself for a long time. If you don’t want anyone to see your writing, keep the pages in a secure place or destroy them. If keeping them is not a problem, you can go back and analyze the pages at the end of the four days of writing. Now, take some time for yourself. Until tomorrow.

There’s a great story that Roger Hawkins tells. He’s the drummer on some of Aretha Franklin’s most iconic songs, like “Respect” and “Chain of Fools.” As part of a group of studio musicians in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, he was drumming on hugely important R&B songs when he was just a teenager, far too young to have any sense of, or ego about, his talent. So one day Hawkins was playing on a session that Jerry Wexler from Atlantic Records was producing. Out of the blue, Hawkins claims, Wexler walked down from the control room and into the studio and told him, “Roger, you are a great drummer.” Wexler wasn’t involved in some larger conversation with Hawkins. He just wanted to tell him. Hawkins’s reaction to it, in his own words: “So I became one.” That story always made sense to me. I’ve had that same moment of feeling like everything’s changed because of one compliment, one tiny bit of encouragement. That, in a nutshell, is what Peter Buck did for me. Not that he ever walked into the studio just to tell me how great I was. No, but he made me feel like an equal.

Smart Acupuncture Pointers That Will Boost Your Knowledge How much have you learned in the past about acupuncture? Acupuncture is often symbolized by the patient, face-down, with needles protruding from their bodies in various locations. Perhaps it would surprise you to know that acupuncture is really very beneficial; although, you must be informed to make a wise choice regarding treatment. Read this post to learn all that you can about it. There is a lot more to acupuncture than the treatments involving needles. This medicinal practice is associated with a philosophy. You should learn more about the philosophy of acupuncture to adopt a healthier lifestyle. There are plenty of meditation exercises, home remedies and other practices you can use to introduce acupuncture in the different aspects of your life. Keep in mind that it may take some time for you to feel the full benefits from your acupuncture treatments. It may take more than one or two visits to find relief from pain or improvement in your conditions. Make sure you are ready to commit to the full program recommended. If you want to know more about acupuncture, but fear needles, see if your practitioner is familiar with laser treatments. This type of acupuncture uses lasers instead of needles. This does not hurt at all, and lots of people claim that it works really well in relieving their conditions. You should drink plenty of water before you attend your scheduled acupuncture session. It has been shown that people who are well hydrated respond better to treatments. While you should not consume a lot of food before a session, it is a great idea for you to drink a good amount of water. Herbs Talk to a doctor about anything you are taking if you plan on having acupuncture treatments. If you are currently taking medication, herbs, or supplements, you need to speak to your doctor about what you can continue to take. They may have to make changes to what you're taking before or in between your acupuncture treatments. Ask your acupuncturist if there are certain herbs you should consume in between sessions. Remember, this is a holistic practice. There are many different things to it compared to Western medicine. Herbs are a big part of it. They can help relax your body and remove any sort of pain left over from your session. Before your procedure, the acupuncturist may recommend herbal treatments. Such herbs can be helpful, but they may result in undesirable side effects or harmful drug interactions. Therefore, talk with your doctor before starting any herbal regimen. Are you currently taking any medications, vitamins, or herbs? If so, get in touch with your doctor and ask him whether or not you can continue to take these things before and during your acupuncture sessions. You would hate for your acupuncture sessions to be less effective because you did not know you weren't supposed to take any of these things. Hopefully, you are more comfortable with the idea of scheduling an acupuncture appointment. Acupuncture can be very beneficial. Follow the tips presented here to make the most of your therapy by visiting rosholistic.com

Get Educated About Acupuncture With These Simple To Follow Tips Acupuncture can be a great experience for people that are informed about the process and the benefits that can result. Rather than assuming that acupuncture will be very uncomfortable or painful, keep reading on to find out the truth. The tips in this article should give you some clarity about the process! Make sure you contact your insurance company prior to scheduling acupuncture appointments. There may be some treatments or specific programs that are covered and others that your insurance company might not pay for. Prior to treatment, check out insurance issues with both your insurance company and the acupuncturist. If you are nervous about acupuncture, and you are not sure if it is right for you, do not be afraid to ask questions. Believe it or not, one of the most common inquiries is whether or not the acupuncturist practices a painless style of treatment. Your fears may be eased when you hear some of the answers. Some vitamins or supplements should be stopped if you are starting acupuncture treatments. Ask your specialist if there should be any certain medications or vitamins that you stop taking before the treatments begin. You don't want to inadvertently stall your progress. It is always important that you feel comfortable with the person preforming acupuncture on you. Being uncomfortable and remaining tense through the treatments can end up being counterproductive to your therapy. Find an acupuncturist that you feel totally comfortable with and once you do, stick with that person. You can even give other people referrals. Herbs Talk to a doctor about anything you are taking if you plan on having acupuncture treatments. If you are currently taking medication, herbs, or supplements, you need to speak to your doctor about what you can continue to take. They may have to make changes to what you're taking before or in between your acupuncture treatments. Ask your acupuncturist if there are certain herbs you should consume in between sessions. Remember, this is a holistic practice. There are many different things to it compared to Western medicine. Herbs are a big part of it. They can help relax your body and remove any sort of pain left over from your session. Acupuncturists often recommend herbal treatments prior to a session. These herbs can benefit you, but they may either have side effects or wreak havoc with your current medication. Speak to your main doctor prior to taking herbal supplements so as not to cause problems. Are you currently taking any medications, vitamins, or herbs? If so, get in touch with your doctor and ask him whether or not you can continue to take these things before and during your acupuncture sessions. You would hate for your acupuncture sessions to be less effective because you did not know you weren't supposed to take any of these things. If you want to try acupuncture and you have not heard that much about it, you can learn more about the process by reading about it or asking friends. However, the tips in this article should have given you some idea on how it works. Now you can make the decision about going through with it, if it's right for you!

Get Educated About Acupuncture With These Simple To Follow Tips Acupuncture can be a great experience for people that are informed about the process and the benefits that can result. Rather than assuming that acupuncture will be very uncomfortable or painful, keep reading on to find out the truth. The tips in this article should give you some clarity about the process! Make sure you contact your insurance company prior to scheduling acupuncture appointments. There may be some treatments or specific programs that are covered and others that your insurance company might not pay for. Prior to treatment, check out insurance issues with both your insurance company and the acupuncturist. If you are nervous about acupuncture, and you are not sure if it is right for you, do not be afraid to ask questions. Believe it or not, one of the most common inquiries is whether or not the acupuncturist practices a painless style of treatment. Your fears may be eased when you hear some of the answers. Some vitamins or supplements should be stopped if you are starting acupuncture treatments. Ask your specialist if there should be any certain medications or vitamins that you stop taking before the treatments begin. You don't want to inadvertently stall your progress. It is always important that you feel comfortable with the person preforming acupuncture on you. Being uncomfortable and remaining tense through the treatments can end up being counterproductive to your therapy. Find an acupuncturist that you feel totally comfortable with and once you do, stick with that person. You can even give other people referrals. Herbs Talk to a doctor about anything you are taking if you plan on having acupuncture treatments. If you are currently taking medication, herbs, or supplements, you need to speak to your doctor about what you can continue to take. They may have to make changes to what you're taking before or in between your acupuncture treatments. Ask your acupuncturist if there are certain herbs you should consume in between sessions. Remember, this is a holistic practice. There are many different things to it compared to Western medicine. Herbs are a big part of it. They can help relax your body and remove any sort of pain left over from your session. Acupuncturists often recommend herbal treatments prior to a session. These herbs can benefit you, but they may either have side effects or wreak havoc with your current medication. Speak to your main doctor prior to taking herbal supplements so as not to cause problems. Are you currently taking any medications, vitamins, or herbs? If so, get in touch with your doctor and ask him whether or not you can continue to take these things before and during your acupuncture sessions. You would hate for your acupuncture sessions to be less effective because you did not know you weren't supposed to take any of these things. If you want to try acupuncture and you have not heard that much about it, you can learn more about the process by reading about it or asking friends. However, the tips in this article should have given you some idea on how it works by visit rosholistic.com

Organisations that are consistently successful have strong systems and a framework to enforce those systems. In the course of our corporate sessions we often ask people, and the larger teams they represent, what their one per cent things are and how much time they spend practicing working on them. Doing the one per cent things is a sign of humility, while on the other hand ignoring them would be a mark of arrogance. It is also a great indicator of work ethic, the one factor more than any other that contributes to winning consistently. I fear not the man who practiced 10,000 kicks once. I fear the man who practiced one kick 10,000 times. —Bruce Lee

There are many reasons why girls should not travel alone, and I won’t list them, because none of them are original reasons. Besides, there are more reasons why girls should. I have the utmost respect for girls who travel alone, because it’s hard work sometimes. But girls, we just want adventures. We want international best friends and hold-your-breath vistas out of crappy hostel windows. We want to discover moving works of art, sometimes in museums and sometimes in side-street graffiti. We want to hear soul-restoring jam sessions at beach bonfires and to watch celestial dawns spill over villages that haven’t changed since the Middle Ages. We want to fall in love with boys with say-that-again accents. We want sore feet from stay-up-all-night dance parties at just-one-more-drink bars. We want to be on our own even as we sketch and photograph the Piazza San Marco covered in pigeons and beautiful Italian lovers intertwined so that we’ll never forget what it feels like to be twenty-three and absolutely purposeless and single, but in love with every city we visit next. We want to be struck dumb by the baritone echoes of church bells in Vatican City and the rich, heaven-bound calls to prayer in Istanbul and to know that no matter what, there just has to be some greater power or holy magic responsible for all this bursting, delirious, overwhelming beauty in the great, wide, sprawling world. I tucked my passport into my bag. Girls, we don’t just want to have fun; we want a whole lot more out of life than that.

It was on July 2, 1776 that the Second Continental Congress voted for the legal separation of the Thirteen Colonies from Great Britain. On July 1, 1776, in anticipation of this great day, John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail that Independence Day, would be the most memorable day in the history of America. He wrote “I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival.” He was right about the day; however he was off regarding the actual signing by two days. Americans now celebrate Independence Day on July 4th, since the resolution of independence was debated on in a closed session of Congress and the Congressional Vote didn’t take place until July 4, 1776. Independence Day has become a National Day to be celebrated with friends enjoying barbecues, picnics and patriotic concerts. So it will be on this day with me. Yesterday I learned that my book “Suppressed I Rise” had been selected for two awards by the Florida Authors & Publishers Association, to be conferred next month at the Hilton Hotel in Disney World. Although July 4th is our nations “Independence Day” it will have additional meaning for me and my friends who have contributed so much of themselves to make these awards a reality. This year the 4th of July will certainly have a special significance to me.

He insisted on getting "back to the basics of great products, great marketing, and great distribution.”11 At a product strategy session early after his return to Apple, Jobs’s bewilderment and frustration at a plethora of redundant products reached a climax. He drew a two-by-two chart that divided the market into four segments—Consumer and Pro on one axis, Desktop and Portable on the other—and declared that Apple was to make one great product for each quadrant.

The Guiding Light is the longest-running serial in broadcast history. Still seen on CBS television, its roots go back almost 60 years, to radio’s pioneering soaps. Though its original characters have been swallowed and eclipsed by time, it still has faint ties to the show that was first simulcast July 20, 1952, and in time replaced its radio counterpart with a daily one-hour TV show. Its creator, Irna Phillips, was often called “the queen of soaps.” She was so influential in the field that she was compared with Frank and Anne Hummert, though the comparison was weak. While the Hummerts employed a huge stable of writers and turned out dozens of serials, Phillips wrote her own—two million words of it each year. Using a large month-by-month work chart, Phillips plotted up to half a dozen serials at once, dictating the action to a secretary. Mentally juggling the fates of scores of characters, she churned out quarter-hour slices of life in sessions filled with high drama, acting the parts and changing her voice for the various speaking roles, while secretaries scribbled the dialogue that flowed from her lips. She gave up teaching early in life to enter radio as an actress at Chicago’s WGN. She was 25 that year, 1930. In 1932 she began to write. She discovered that cliffhanger endings were surefire for bringing those early audiences back to their sets each day, but that slow and skillful character development was what kept the audience for years. She decided that the organ was the ideal musical instrument for those little shows and that the instrument should be played with pomp and power, with all the authority of a religious service in a great European cathedral. The music gave weight to the dialogue, which was usually focused and intense.

Great growth firms are a lot like great jazz bands. While jazz is improvisational and entrepreneurial-like, the discipline underlying it allows even musicians who have never played together before to perform a rocking jam session.

The process could produce a great sense of cathartic relief. Here was a problem I wasn’t even aware of, that I may have created for myself, and after much back-and-forth, I was able to overcome that problem. So while in session I would feel the euphoria of self-discovery and growth, back in the real world I was still angry, depressed, and judgmental

The best thing you can do for yourself is spend time getting to know who you are, what you like, and what you dislike

By always using the same notebook for making quick notes, always extracting the main ideas from a text in the same way and always turning them into the same kind of permanent notes, which are always dealt with in the same manner, the number of decisions during a work session can be greatly reduced. That leaves us with much more

After the CCP gained power, it sealed China off from information beyond its borders, and imposed a wholesale negation of China’s traditional moral standards. The government’s monopoly on information gave it a monopoly on truth. As the center of power, the party Center was also the heart of truth and information. All social science research organs endorsed the validity of the Communist regime; every cultural and arts group lavished praise on the CCP, while news organs daily verified its wisdom and might. From nursery school to university, the chief mission was to inculcate a Communist worldview in the minds of all students. The social science research institutes, cultural groups, news organs, and schools all became tools for the party’s monopoly on thought, spirit, and opinion, and were continuously engaged in molding China’s youth. People employed in this work were proud to be considered “engineers of the human soul.” In this thought and information vacuum, the central government used its monopoly apparatus to instill Communist values while criticizing and eradicating all other values. In this way, young people developed distinct and intense feelings of right and wrong, love and hate, which took the shape of a violent longing to realize Communist ideals. Any words or deeds that diverged from these ideals would be met with a concerted attack. The party organization was even more effective at instilling values than the social science research institutes, news and cultural organs, and schools. Each level of the party had a core surrounded by a group of stalwarts, with each layer controlling the one below it and loyal to the one above. Successive political movements, hundreds and thousands of large and small group meetings, commendation ceremonies and struggle sessions, rewards and penalties, all served to draw young people onto a single trajectory. All views diverging from those of the party were nipped in the bud.

Consider using a three-level goal system to determine your achievement levels at a training session, during the next competition, or in your upcoming season: 1) bronze, 2) silver, and 3) gold. In this system, bronze symbolizes a desired result that would be a good outcome based on a reasonable assessment of past performances and current capabilities. Silver refers to a significant improvement. Finally, gold is equivalent to achieving a best time or delivering a major performance breakthrough.

What will your life look like when you have become your own champion? This is the key champion question. Take some time right now to imagine that a major performance breakthrough in your game and life has just occurred and that you have become a champion all day, every day. In your mind’s eye, work your way through a regular weekday, a practice or training session, and a future competition. Draw together as much detail as possible about what it will look like to be at a gold level, to be the best version of yourself consistently. What specific actions or behaviors do you see yourself doing better or differently?

Looking at my sleeping husband, I feel a sliver of fear run through me for how little we actually know of another person, how little we can ever know of what goes on inside their head. Life, and love, are like therapy sessions at the end of the day - we only know what someone says and shows.  But what about the things they choose to hide, and go to great lengths to keep hidden?

three-level goal system to determine your achievement levels at a training session, during the next competition, or in your upcoming season: 1) bronze, 2) silver, and 3) gold. In this system, bronze symbolizes a desired result that would be a good outcome based on a reasonable assessment of past performances and current capabilities. Silver refers to a significant improvement. Finally, gold is equivalent to achieving a best time or delivering a major performance breakthrough.

I need a word with you, Miss Vega.” He pointed back into the room as the girls disappeared into the men’s locker room across the hall. I backed up with my heart pounding madly against my chest and as the door swung closed, he whipped me around to crowd me in against it and cast a silencing bubble around us. “Nervous?” he asked with a smirk and I nodded. He pressed his mouth to mine, kissing me deeply and making my heart pound for a whole different reason. He released me, resting one hand above me on the door which made his bicep flex. “You’ll do great. You’ve been killing it in your practise sessions. You’re the best Pit Keeper we’ve had in years.” “Are you just saying that to get into my pants, Coach?” I teased and he chuckled darkly. “No, Blue. I’m saying it because it’s true.” He smiled and my heart started to slow as I drew comfort from his confidence in me. “Thanks. So are you wearing a cheer ribbon for me today?” I taunted and he leaned in closer with mischief in his eyes. “Yes, but I had to wear it somewhere no one would see. So it’s tied in a very special place.” I burst out laughing, gripping his waistband. “Are you telling me it’s tied to your-” “You can find out exactly where it’s tied after the game, but only if you do well.” He plucked my hand off of him with a stern stare that sent a shiver through me. “Okay, sir,” I said breathily. “Let’s go beat Aurora then.” I pushed away from the door and he disbanded the silencing bubble with a chuckle before we exited and headed across the hall into the men’s locker room. (Darcy)

As we continued to meet with Jeff, we tried various kinds of spreadsheets and PowerPoint slides to present and explore our ideas, none of which seemed to be particularly effective. At some point, I don’t remember exactly when, Jeff suggested a different approach for the next meeting. Forget the spreadsheets and slides, he said. Instead, each team member would write a narrative document. In it, they would describe their best idea for a device or service for the digital media business. The next meeting arrived, and we all showed up with our narratives. (As mentioned, ours was one of several teams involved in the early experimentation with narratives at the company. They were not yet official Amazon policy.) We distributed them and read them to ourselves and then discussed them, one after another. One proposed an e-book reader that would use new E Ink screen technology. Another described a new take on the MP3 player. Jeff wrote his own narrative about a device he called the Amazon Puck. It would sit on your countertop and could respond to voice commands like, “Puck. Please order a gallon of milk.” Puck would then place the order with Amazon. The great revelation of this process was not any one of the product ideas. As we’ve described in chapter four, the breakthrough was the document itself. We had freed ourselves of the quantitative demands of Excel, the visual seduction of PowerPoint, and the distracting effect of personal performance. The idea had to be in the writing. Writing up our ideas was hard work. It required us to be thorough and precise. We had to describe features, pricing, how the service would work, why consumers would want it. Half-baked thinking was harder to disguise on the written page than in PowerPoint slides. It could not be glossed over through personal charm in the presentation. After we started using the documents, our meetings changed. There was more meat and more detail to discuss, so the sessions were livelier and longer. We weren’t so focused on the pro forma P&L and projected market segment share. We talked at length about the service itself, the experience, and which products and services we thought would appeal most to the customer.

To accomplish eight 90-second kettlebell swing sessions, you need to start early. Ideally, you will have done 4 sessions by noon and 4 more during the rest of the afternoon and evening. Remember, getting up and doing your swings is the price you pay for your great health, outstanding body and high endurance.

Your mobile device also offers apps that chime once an hour (or as set up.) You will find your ability to actually accomplish the swings greatly boosted by having these frequent reminders. It can quickly become a point of pride to do your 90 second kettlebell swing session when you hear the hourly chime. Ignored chimes tend to grate on one, but also motivate to not let another hour pass without quick exercise.

desert kingdom. Given a less fraught time, Dragon decided, he would have loved to bring his easel in here and set up for a long, satisfying session of painting. The fluted arches, delicate frescoes and screens, and gold-leaf decorated treasure chests certainly created a most royal space. As Azania spoke, he returned his attention to her. “Brother, I wish to congratulate you upon your ascension to the throne of T’nagru, despite the grief and difficulty our kingdom faces at this time.” He inclined his head, weighted down with the great crown – it looked terribly uncomfortable, Dragon decided. A statement regarding the weighty nature of leadership. Everyone knew that this Skartun siege had only been a precursor to a much greater invasion later in the season. One Jabiz out of thirty had tested their mettle, and breached the outer gates of the citadel with a monstrous Bloodworm which still lay on the sand outside the gates. Did flesh rot in such a waterless desert climate? Or would it simply shrivel? Unexpected thirst tickled his gravelly throat. He coughed aside, the sound echoing loudly despite the large crowd gathered for the King’s coronation event. The Princess said, “I am sorry that I cannot make the formal genuflections, but my

For that particular session, everyone said they picked it because of the word entitled in the descriptor. They’d all encountered people who acted entitled at Pixar—people who insisted on having their own piece of equipment, even if it could be shared, or who groused that they couldn’t bring their dogs to work. “This is a job,” one animator said. “A great job. We are well paid. These people need to wake up.” What was most striking to those in attendance at the “Great Workplace” session was how much they had in common. The Systems guy told a story about answering a frantic call for tech support. He rushed over to assess the problem, only to be told by the aggrieved artist that the machine should be fixed during lunch—because that’s when it would be most convenient for her. “I need to eat lunch, too,” he told the group, as everyone nodded their heads. The chef told a similar story about a last-minute request to cater a working lunch that came without any acknowledgement of the hassle (and hustle) it would require of her staff.

Sports teams conduct practice sessions and call time-outs mid-game to quickly review what’s going wrong and introduce modified approaches. This is true even in sports that don’t allow breaks. In rowing, for instance, a coxswain might call on a crew to focus on a particular aspect of their technique for five or ten strokes to recover their timing. A basketball point guard might dribble a few seconds off the shot clock while shouting directions to her teammates so they can regroup. Similarly, leaders must reserve time for slowification. Toyota, studied for their organizational learning and outstanding performance, routinely puts breaks between shifts so leaders can run problem-solving and improvement activities before production resumes. When production is interrupted, downtime is often used as a slowification opportunity.

in The Didache: “There are two ways, one of life and one of death; and great is the difference between the two ways” (opening words). The way of life is simply the way of the Gospel and in summarizing it the author repeats and summarizes the main moral teachings of Jesus, quoted from the Gospel. For instance:

Bucket list,” Julie said in session as we tried to envision her Holland. “It’s such a funny term, isn’t it?” I had to agree. What do we want to do before we kick the bucket? Often people think about bucket lists when somebody close to them dies. That’s what happened for Candy Chang, an artist who, in 2009, created a space on a public wall in New Orleans with the prompt Before I die _____. Within days the wall was completely filled. People wrote things like Before I die, I want to straddle the international dateline. Before I die, I want to sing for millions. Before I die, I want to be completely myself. Soon the idea spawned over a thousand such walls all over the world: Before I die, I would like to have a relationship with my sister. Be a great dad. Go skydiving. Make a difference in someone’s life. I don’t know if people followed through, but based on what I’ve seen in my office, a good number may have had momentary awakenings, done a little soul-searching, added more to their lists—and then neglected to tick things off. People tend to dream without doing, death remaining theoretical.

Sometimes life comes to us as a miracle, That we have the great pleasure to communicate with the universe in questions and answers sessions for our education, and the driving source of that energy we participate in has a key to unlock that universe and its called belief

Knowing what you're going to write, making sure you're rested and ready to go, having enough time blocked off to do the writing, and having everything you need at hand to get things done. If you've taken care of these things ahead of time, you are far more likely to be productive than if you have to make up a plan on the spot for that day's writing session. If you're feeling that your writing sessions aren't as productive as they could be, my strong guess is that one of the four planning factors is the issue. To put yourself in a position to have a great writing session requires four steps: Make sure that your Model Week and Weekly Plan create a writing schedule that allows you to be productive. This requires that you know when you are alert and creative enough to write well, but also to understand how long a session needs to be so that you have enough time to get into a rhythm while not going so long that your focus and productivity fall off a cliff. Identify a clear set of tactics to work on during each writing session. This starts with your 12 Week Plan when you identify your 12 Week goals and associated tactics, and it takes concrete form in your Weekly

Another young actor in Charlie’s class with me was a guy by the name of Martin Sheen. In one session Marty did a monologue from The Iceman Cometh, and he blew the roof off—I said, this is it, this is a great actor we are witnessing. He was the next James Dean as far as I was concerned. I got to be friends with Marty Sheen, and one day he said to me, “You know what my real name is, don’t you? Estevez.” He was half Spanish and he came from Ohio, out there in the Midwest, where he had a tough upbringing. He was one of ten kids in a working-class family that was always struggling for money. He had tenacity and grit and I could tell he was one of the best people I’d ever know, all grace and humility. I loved him. I still do. Marty Sheen moved in with me in the South Bronx so we could split the rent. We worked together at the Living Theatre in Greenwich Village, where we cleaned toilets and laid down rugs for the sets of the plays they put on.

Robert Farrar Capon: Why do we marry, why take friends and lovers, why give ourselves to music, painting, chemistry, or cooking? Out of simple delight in the resident goodness of creation, of course; but out of more than that, too. Half of earth’s gorgeousness lies hidden in the glimpsed city it longs to become. For all its rooted loveliness, the world has no continuing city here; it is an outlandish place, a foreign home, a session in via to a better version of itself—and it is our glory to see it so and thirst until Jerusalem comes home at last. We are given appetites, not to consume the world and forget it, but to taste its goodness and hunger to make it great.

A client that had clarified its 10-Year Target in the first session was a partnership, and the two partners realized they had two completely different goals. One wanted rapid growth, and the other was content.

Joe McCarthy possessed something like a photographic memory—his mind was like a “sponge,” or a “blotter,” his college classmates said—that enabled him to spew forth answers “lightning quick” in cram sessions and on exams. From the beginning of his career, he demonstrated a kind of instinctive political genius that owed nothing to campaign consultants or image makers. He was not interested in ideas, except in appropriating the thoughts or opinions of others if they helped him exploit an issue like Communism. His law degree and native intelligence notwithstanding, he was ill educated, had no sense of history, and was incurious and carelessly ill-informed about the great public questions—again, like Communism—that he addressed with such assurance. He did not read books, with one fascinating exception: Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

The meditation session divides into three—preparatory practices, the main practice, and the concluding practice.

Association of dissimilar ideas “I had earlier devised an arrangement for beam steering on the two-mile accelerator which reduced the amount of hardware necessary by a factor of two…. Two weeks ago it was pointed out to me that this scheme would steer the beam into the wall and therefore was unacceptable. During the session, I looked at the schematic and asked myself how could we retain the factor of two but avoid steering into the wall. Again a flash of inspiration, in which I thought of the word ‘alternate.’ I followed this to its logical conclusion, which was to alternate polarities sector by sector so the steering bias would not add but cancel. I was extremely impressed with this solution and the way it came to me.” “Most of the insights come by association.” “It was the last idea that I thought was remarkable because of the way in which it developed. This idea was the result of a fantasy that occurred during Wagner…. [The participant had earlier listened to Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries.’] I put down a line which seemed to embody this…. I later made the handle which my sketches suggested and it had exactly the quality I was looking for…. I was very amused at the ease with which all of this was done.” 10. Heightened motivation to obtain closure “Had tremendous desire to obtain an elegant solution (the most for the least).” “All known constraints about the problem were simultaneously imposed as I hunted for possible solutions. It was like an analog computer whose output could not deviate from what was desired and whose input was continually perturbed with the inclination toward achieving the output.” “It was almost an awareness of the ‘degree of perfection’ of whatever I was doing.” “In what seemed like ten minutes, I had completed the problem, having what I considered (and still consider) a classic solution.” 11. Visualizing the completed solution “I looked at the paper I was to draw on. I was completely blank. I knew that I would work with a property three hundred feet square. I drew the property lines (at a scale of one inch to forty feet), and I looked at the outlines. I was blank…. Suddenly I saw the finished project. [The project was a shopping center specializing in arts and crafts.] I did some quick calculations …it would fit on the property and not only that …it would meet the cost and income requirements …it would park enough cars …it met all the requirements. It was contemporary architecture with the richness of a cultural heritage …it used history and experience but did not copy it.” “I visualized the result I wanted and subsequently brought the variables into play which could bring that result about. I had great visual (mental) perceptibility; I could imagine what was wanted, needed, or not possible with almost no effort. I was amazed at my idealism, my visual perception, and the rapidity with which I could operate.

Heightened capacity for visual imagery and fantasy “Was able to move imaginary parts in relation to each other.” “It was the non-specific fantasy that triggered the idea.” “The next insight came as an image of an oyster shell, with the mother-of-pearl shining in different colors. I translated that in the idea of an interferometer—two layers separated by a gap equal to the wavelength it is desired to reflect.” “As soon as I began to visualize the problem, one possibility immediately occurred. A few problems with that concept occurred, which seemed to solve themselves rather quickly…. Visualizing the required cross section was instantaneous.” “Somewhere along in here, I began to see an image of the circuit. The gates themselves were little silver cones linked together by lines. I watched the circuit flipping through its paces….” “I began visualizing all the properties known to me that a photon possesses and attempted to make a model for a photon…. The photon was comprised of an electron and a positron cloud moving together in an intermeshed synchronized helical orbit…. This model was reduced for visualizing purposes to a black-and-white ball propagating in a screwlike fashion through space. I kept putting the model through all sorts of known tests.” 5. Increased ability to concentrate “Was able to shut out virtually all distracting influences.” “I was easily able to follow a train of thought to a conclusion where normally I would have been distracted many times.” “I was impressed with the intensity of concentration, the forcefulness and exuberance with which I could proceed toward the solution.” “I considered the process of photoconductivity…. I kept asking myself, ‘What is light? and subsequently, ‘What is a photon?’ The latter question I repeated to myself several hundred times till it was being said automatically in synchronism with each breath. I probably never in my life pressured myself as intently with a question as I did this one.” “It is hard to estimate how long this problem might have taken without the psychedelic agent, but it was the type of problem that might never have been solved. It would have taken a great deal of effort and racking of the brains to arrive at what seemed to come more easily during the session.” 6. Heightened empathy with external processes and objects “…the sense of the problem as a living thing that is growing toward its inherent solution.” “First I somehow considered being the needle and being bounced around in the groove.” “I spent a productive period …climbing down on my retina, walking around and thinking about certain problems relating to the mechanism of vision.” “Ability to grasp the problem in its entirety, to ‘dive’ into it without reservations, almost like becoming the problem.” “Awareness of the problem itself rather than the ‘I’ that is trying to solve it.” 7. Heightened empathy with people “It was also felt that group performance was affected in …subtle ways. This may be evidence that some sort of group action was going on all the time.” “Only at intervals did I become aware of the music. Sometimes, when I felt the other guys listening to it, it was a physical feeling of them listening to it.” “Sometimes we even had the feeling of having the same thoughts or ideas.” 8. Subconscious data more accessible “…brought about almost total recall of a course that I had had in thermodynamics; something that I had never given any thought about in years.” “I was in my early teens and wandering through the gardens where I actually grew up. I felt all my prior emotions in relation to my surroundings.

Here is a great technique - Every day spend 5 minutes in front of the mirror, feeling loved. Love your hair, your face structure, your eyes, your nose, your lips, your smile, your eyebrows, your body, your body structure… Love everything about yourself. For those 5min, refrain from a single criticism. You won’t achieve a perfect 5 min. session on the first day. So don’t feel disappointed. Take your time. Slowly slowly over the days you’ll feel the love and pride in being you!