Grind Yourself Quotes

Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it's a feather bed.

If you want to help her, you need to help yourself first. No one serves their friends by grinding themselves into dust on the altar of compassion.

Be authentic to your dreams. Be authentic to your own idea about yourself. Grind away at your own minds and bodies until you become your own invention. Be Mad Scientists.

Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency. Hope should shove you out the door, because it will take everything you have to steer the future away from endless war, from the annihilation of the earth's treasures and the grinding down of the poor and marginal... To hope is to give yourself to the future - and that commitment to the future is what makes the present inhabitable.

[F]or when you get in love you are made all over again. The person who loves you has picked you out of the great mass of uncreated clay which is humanity to make something out of, and the poor lumpish clay which is you wants to find out what it has been made into. But at the same time, you, in the act of loving somebody, become real, cease to be a part of the continuum of the uncreated clay and get the breath of life in you and rise up. So you create yourself by creating another person, who, however, has also created you, picked up the you-chunk of clay out of the mass. So there are two you's, the one you create by loving and the one the beloved creates by loving you. The farther those two you's are apart the more the world grinds and grudges on its axis. But if you loved and were loved perfectly then there wouldn't be any difference between the two you's or any distance between them. They would coincide perfectly, there would be perfect focus, as when a stereoscope gets the twin images on the card into perfect alignment.

How beautiful it is to grind yourself into sand, offer the grain of you to anyone willing to listen. Hoping they will carry your debris into places you’ll never go.

You'll jigsaw [the broken pieces of yourself] together however you can, caulk in the odd bits with willpower wherever they don't quite fit, ignore the occasional sounds of grinding and cracking. As long as nothing important breaks, right? You'll get by. You have to.

These moments of nocturnal prowling leave an indelible impression. Eyes and ears are tensed to the maximum, the rustling approach of strange feet in the tall grass in an unutterably menacing thing. Your breath comes in shallow bursts; you have to force yourself to stifle any panting or wheezing. There is a little mechanical click as the safety-catch of your pistol is taken off; the sound cuts straight through your nerves. Your teeth are grinding on the fuse-pin of the hand-grenade. The encounter will be short and murderous. You tremble with two contradictory impulses: the heightened awareness of the huntsmen, and the terror of the quarry. You are a world to yourself, saturated with the appalling aura of the savage landscape. p. 71

For Black people who are descendants of enslaved Africans via the Transatlantic Slave Trade and chattel slavery, consider the fact that your Ancestors built this entire nation for free with their stolen labor. Use this knowledge to tap into what they have already done, so you don’t have to grind yourself into oblivion now.

If you cling to the axe you’re grinding, eventually you’ll only hurt yourself.

Take a leap of faith on your dreams, not for me and not for the society, just for yourself.

If we could talk to our younger selves now, eh? Dust yourself off, don’t let the bastards grind you down, and always make your mum proud.

I shot him an arch look over my shoulder. “Are you always hard?” He gave a little shrug. “I can’t watch you straddle something and grind yourself against it and not get turned on. So sue me.” He gripped my h*ps tight, grinding against me from behind.

After Sunday sunset comes the days outside of the usual grind. Days when you can just be yourself. No one is breathing down your neck, telling you what to do. I don't know, something like that.

Love can be a hell of a draw, the emotional holy grail. But love also exposes our flaws, can even draw out the worst in us. People want to perform heroic deeds, commit flagrantly dramatic acts for love. What they don't realize is that the daily grind is what is required. Instead of a single extraordinary act--slaying the dragon, throwing yourself in front of a bus--it is the repetition of small gestures over a course of years that makes love work.

Do you remember what I said last night?” “That I needed to feed myself before I tried to buy Moon’s debt,” said Lundy. Her jaw set stubbornly. “That doesn’t seem fair.” “Doesn’t it? Hunger makes us foolish, causes us to make poor decisions without realizing how poor they are. If you want to help her, you need to help yourself first. No one serves their friends by grinding themselves into dust on the altar of compassion.

Sure...the boy was precocious. But having been precocious himself, Lowell was never wowed by teenagers who could recite the periodic table of elements or whatever. He was on to them. Precocious was not the same as smart, much less the same as wise, and the perfect opposite of informed - since the more you prided yourself on knowing the less you listened and the less you learned. Worse, with application less glibly gifted peers often caught up with or overtook prodigies by early adulthood, and meanwhile the kid to whom everything came so effortlessly never mastered the grind of sheer hard work.

I want us to understand that nuance is freeing and freedom. There is no such thing as cookie-cutter healing. Everyone brings with them an origin story, a history, and identities that are interconnected. There is room to rest in the freedom of managing your own deprogramming journey. It is never either/or and always both/and. You don’t have to grind, hustle, accept burnout as normal, and be in a constant state of exhaustion and sleep deprivation. You don’t have to kill yourself spiritually or physically to live a fruitful life.

Never accept yourself as a finished product. Be a finished product when you die. As long as you have breath in your lungs, expand yourself.

If you ever find yourself in the wrong story, leave. —Mo Willems, Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs

Now before going to a party, I just tell myself to listen with affection to anyone who talks to me, to be in their shoes when they talk, to try to know them without my mind pressing against theirs, or arguing, or changing the subject. No. My attitude is: 'Tell me more.' This person is showing me his soul. It is a little dry and meager and full of grinding talk just now, but presently he will begin to think, not just automatically to talk. He will show his true self. Then he will be wonderfully alive.' ...Creative listeners are those who want you to be recklessly yourself, even at your very worst, even vituperative, bad-tempered. They are laughing and just delighted with any manifestation of yourself, bad or good. For true listeners know that if you are bad-tempered it does not mean that you are always so. They don't love you just when you are nice; they love all of you.

Successes are those highlights of life we look back on with a smile. But it's the day to day grind of getting them that defines the laugh lines etched until the end of time. Enjoy each moment along the way

There's no sense forcing yourself if you don't feel like it. Tell you the truth, I've had sex with lots of guys, but I think I did it mostly out of fear. I was scared not to have somebody putting his arms around me, so I could never say no. That's all. Nothing good ever came of sex like that. All it does is grind down the meaning of life a piece at a time.

The way I see it, there’s work and then there’s work. And there’s a big difference between your work and your job. A job is a task done for an agreed-upon price, and work is the effort directed toward accomplishing a goal. See what I mean? A job is something you do for money. Your life’s work is done for a bigger purpose, to fulfill a calling or a dream. And when you manage to find that work—that’s when it starts feeling like play. I want that for you and for me too. Don’t allow yourself to get stuck grinding away on the job piece and lose sight of the work piece, the one that truly matters. There’s nothing admirable or respectable about laying yourself down, day in and day out, for a job you hate—not if you have a choice. Maybe you can’t up and quit the job you hate. I understand that there are extenuating circumstances that can prevent you from being able to take that leap. But if you are sticking it out because of fear or passivity, there’s nothing heroic about that. Do work that matters . . . to you.

Dear Young Black Males, You’ve got so much raw talent that’s within you. Utilize it and make your money! Don’t allow your gifts to go to waste. You don’t have to just sit back and watch other celebrities come up, get focused and get yours, too! Grind and make your dreams a reality. Put in the hard work. Be dedicated to yourself. Create an online presence and put yourself out there where people from all over the world can witness your talents. There are so many platforms online that will help propel you to where you want to be. Get busy! You know that you’ve got something special! Why not allow the world to see it? Don’t be afraid of success! Stop talking about it and be about it. Don’t doubt yourself! Just go for it! GO HARD.

To me, it seems unspeakably shabby to make a fuss over charity. You're walking along the street one day, the weather is so and so and you see such and such people, all of which builds up a certain mood in you. Suddenly you catch sight of a face, a child's face, a beggar's face----let's say a beggar's face---which makes you tremble. A strange sensation vibrates through your soul, and you stamp your foot and come to a halt. This face has struck an exceptionally sensitive chord in you, and you lure the beggar into an entranceway and press a ten-krone bill into his hand. If you give me away by as much as a world, I'll kill you! you whisper, and you fairly grind your teeth and shed tears of anger saying it. That's how important it is to you to remain undiscovered. And this can happen repeatedly, day after day, so that often you end up in the worst kind of scrape yourself, without a penny in your pocket...

But, Cass, ask yourself, look out and ask yourself – wouldn’t you hate all white people if they kept you in prison here?’ They were rolling up startling Seventh Avenue. The entire population seemed to be in the streets, draped, almost, from lamp-posts, stoops, and hydrants, and walking through the traffic as though it were not there. ‘Kept you here, and stunted you and starved you, and made you watch your mother and father and sister and lover and brother and son and daughter die or go mad or go under, before your very eyes? And not in a hurry, like from one day to the next, but, every day, every day, for years, for generations? Shit. They keep you here because you’re black, while they go around jerking themselves off with all the jazz about the land of the free and the home of the brave. And they want you to jerk yourself off with the same music, too, only keep your distance. Some days, honey, I wish I could turn myself into one big fist and grind this miserable country to powder. Some days, I don’t believe it has a right to exist. Now, you’ve never felt like that, and Vivaldo’s never felt like that. Vivaldo didn’t want to know my brother was dying because he doesn’t want to know that my brother would still be alive if he hadn’t been born black.

The finish line comes into view and you will yourself toward it, but the wind pushes you back, and your body begs you to give up, and the whole world seems to grind into slow motion. Your determination is all that's left. It forces your muscles to fire. Forces you to stay in the race. Forces you to survive the pain of this moment.

There’s not one positive thing about being broke. The worst of it is the day-to-day grind of it all. You never know when that treadmill is finally going to buckle and hurl you into the wall. So you find yourself having to run faster and faster, just to keep from falling off. You can adjust to the hunger and the tiredness for the most part, having to choose between feeding yourself and feeding your electric meter; but one thing you can’t adjust to is the nagging anxiety. Whoever designed this loathsome system must think we’re all living these wonderful lives where money grows in the palms of our hands. There’s never any reassurance that everything is going to be okay; a promise that tomorrow will be slightly more bearable than today. Every minute of your life is consumed by a relentless feeling that time will only ever lead you to the worst possible outcome. And why—when you haven’t eaten a decent meal in two weeks and you’ve spent the last four days lying on a mattress just to conserve energy— should you believe any differently?

She was fifty-three years old and lonely and oppressed; why couldn't he let her have her illusions? That was what her wounded, half-drunken eyes had seemed to be saying throughout his interrogation: Why can't I have my illusions? Because they're lies, he told her silently in his mind as he champed his jaws and swallowed the cheap food. Everything you say is a lie.(...) Everything you live by is a lie, and you want to know what the truth is? He watched her with murderous distaste as she fumbled with her spoon. They had ordered ice cream, and some of it clung to her lips as she rolled a cold mouthful on her tongue. Do you want to know what the truth is? The truth is that your fingernails are all broken and black because you're working as a laborer and God knows how we're ever going to get you out of that lens-grinding shop. The truth is that I'm a private in the infantry and I'm probably going to get my head blown off. The truth is, I don't really want to be sitting here at all, eating this goddam ice cream and letting you talk yourself drunk while all my time runs out. The truth is, I wish I'd taken my pass to Lynchburg today and gone to a whorehouse. That's the truth.

Of all the books on the shelf, just look what you’ve gone and bought. Give yourself a round of applause, even if you’re in public. I dare you. Actually I tell you what, as this would make me very happy: if you’re in public and see someone else reading this book, why don’t you applaud each other? What a lovely moment that would be. I advocate that as much as I advocate adults galloping, or people randomly wandering into an optician to try on the most unflattering and amusing glasses for no good reason. It’s what I call ‘making your own fun’. Because you have to, really, don’t you? As, let’s face it; life does have a tendency to throw up difficulties, depressions, moments of boredom, loneliness or grind. I don’t know. Life, eh?

Buy the best you can afford • Extra-virgin Olive Oil, pressed in the last calendar year • Whole chunks of Parmigiano-Reggiano from Italy • Chocolate and Cocoa Powder Buy whole and prepare yourself • Pick and chop fresh herbs (and always use Italian or flat-leaf parsley). • Juice lemons and limes • Peel, chop, and pound garlic • Grind spices • Soak, rinse, filet, and chop salt-packed anchovies • Make chicken stock when you can (see for a recipe). Or buy fresh or frozen stock from your butcher, rather than the boxed or canned stuff

truth is we feel like everyone is always watching and judging us. Nope. People just care about themselves. You’ve likely seen someone really botch a presentation or be really nervous speaking in public and never given it a second thought once it was done. Return the favor to yourself.

it’s easy to feel ashamed when you fail at a basic adult task like paying the cable bill, meeting a friend for coffee, or acknowledging that all the rooms in your house exist. It’s easy to get personal, call yourself mean names, and throw in the towel. But you still have to fix it, just like you have to take the car to the mechanic.

She needs to think you're still a couple. And you'll need to be convincing about it, too. Lots of kissing and stuff in case your mother tries to spy on you." Emma stops chewing. Galen drops his fork. "Uh, I don't think we need to take it that far-" Emma starts. "Oh, no? Teenagers don't kiss their sweethearts anymore?" Rachel crosses her arms, wagging the spatula to the beat of her tapping foot. "They do, but-" "No buts. Come on, sweetie. You think your mom's going to believe you keep your hands off Galen?" "Probably not, but-" "I said no buts. Look at you two. You're not even sitting next to each other! You need some practice, I'd say. Galen, go sit beside her. Hold her hand." "Rachel," he says, shaking his head, "this can wait-" "Fine," Emma grinds out. They both turn to her. Still frowning, she nods. "We'll make it a point to kiss and hold hands when she's around." Galen almost drops his fork again. No way. Kissing Emma is the last thing I need to do. Especially when her lips turn that red. "Emma, we don't have to kiss. She already knows I want to sleep with you." He cringes as soon as he says it. He doesn't have to look up to know the sizzling sound in the kitchen is from Rachel spitting her pineapple juice into the hot skillet. "What I mean is, I already told her I want to sleep with you. I mean, I told her I wanted to sleep with you because she already thinks I do. Want to, I mean-" If a Syrena could drown, this is what it would feel like. Emma holds up her hand. "I get it, Galen. It's fine. I told her the same thing." Rachel plops down beside Emma, wiping the juice spittle from her face with a napkin. "So you're telling me your mom thinks you two want to sleep with each other, but you don't think she'll be expecting you to kiss." Emma shakes her head and shovels a forkful of omelet into her mouth, then chases it with some juice. She says, "You're right, Rachel. We'll let her catch us making out or something." Rachel nods. "That should work." "What does that mean? Making out?" Galen says between bites. Emma puts her fork down. "It means, Galen, that you'll need to force yourself to kiss me. Like you mean it. For a long time. Think you can do that? Do Syrena kiss?" He tries to swallow the bite he forgot to chew. Force myself? I'll be lucky if I can stop myself. It had never occurred to him to kiss anyone-before he met Emma. These days, it's all he can think about, her lips on his. He decides it was better for both of them when Emma kept rejecting him. Now she's ordering him to kiss her-for a long time. Great. "Yes, they kiss. I mean, we kiss. I mean, I can force myself, if I have to." He doesn't meet Rachel's eyes as she plunks more fish onto his plate, but he can almost feel her smirking down at him. "We'll just have to plan it, that's all. Give you time to prepare," Emma tells him. "Prepare for what?" Rachel scoffs. "Kissing isn't supposed to be planned. That's why it's so fun." "Yeah, but this isn't for fun, remember?" Emma says. "This is just for show." "You don't think kissing Galen would be fun?" Emma sighs, putting her hands on her cheeks. "You know, I appreciate that you're trying to help us, Rachel. But I can't talk about this anymore. Seriously, I'm going to break out into hives. We'll make it work when the time comes." Rachel laughs and removes Emma's plate after she declines a second helping. "If you say so. But I still think you should practice.

I called the Keep, introduced myself to the disembodied female voice on the phone, and asked for the Beast Lord. In less than fifteen seconds Curran came on the line. “I’m going into hiding with Jim.” The silence on the other side of the phone had a distinctly sinister undertone. Perhaps he thought that his kissing superpowers had derailed me. Fat chance. I would keep him from having to kill Derek. That was a burden he didn’t need. “I thought about this morning,” I said, doing my best to sound calm and reasonable. “I’ve instructed the super to change the locks. If I ever catch you in my apartment again, I will file a formal complaint. I’ve taken your food, under duress, but I did take it. You rescued me once or twice, and you’ve seen me near naked. I realize that you’re judging this situation by shapeshifter standards, and you expect me to fall on my back with my legs spread.” “Not necessarily.” His voice matched mine in calmness. “You can fall on your hands and knees if you prefer. Or against the wall. Or on the kitchen counter. I suppose I might let you be on top, if you make it worth my while.” I didn’t grind my teeth—he would’ve heard it. I had to be calm and reasonable. “My point is this: no.” “No?” “There will be no falling, no sex, no you and me.” “I wanted to kiss you when you were in your house. In Savannah.” Why the hell was my heart pounding? “And?” “You looked afraid. That wasn’t the reaction I was hoping for.” Be calm and reasonable. “You flatter yourself. You’re not that scary.” “After I kissed you this morning, you were afraid again. Right after you looked like you were about to melt.” Melt? “You’re scared there might be something there, between you and me.” Wow. I struggled to swallow that little tidbit. “Every time I think you’ve reached the limits of arrogance, you show me new heights. Truly, your egotism is like the Universe—ever expanding.” “You thought about dragging me into your bed this morning.” “I thought about stabbing you and running away screaming. You broke into my house without permission and slobbered all over me. You’re a damn lunatic! And don’t give me that line about smelling my desire; I know it’s bullshit.” “I didn’t need to smell you. I could tell by the dreamy look in your eyes and the way your tongue licked the inside of my mouth.” “Enjoy the memory,” I ground out. “That’s the last time it will ever happen.” “Go play your games with Jim. I’ll find you both when I need you.” Arrogant asshole. “I tell you what, if you find us before those three days run out, I’ll cook you a damn dinner and serve it to you naked.” “Is that a promise?” “Yes. Go fuck yourself.” I slammed the phone down. Well, then. That was perfectly reasonable. On the other side of the counter an older, heavyset man stared at me like I had sprouted horns. Glenda handed me the money I’d given her. “That was some conversation. It was worth ten bucks.

Still, if you've got to bring yourself within inches of your life just to cry for help, something's wrong somewhere. Either you weren't yelling loud enough to begin with, or the people around you are deaf, dumb, and blind. Which makes me think it isn't just a cry for help - it's more a cry to be taken seriously. A cry that says "I'm hurting so badly, the world must, for once, come to a grinding halt for me." The question is, what do you do next?

Put yourself in his place and let the white man ask himself this question: What would I do if threatened as the Indian has been and is? Suppose a race superior to mine were to land upon the shores of this great continent, trade or cheat us out of our land foot by foot, gradually encroach upon our domain until we were finally driven, a degraded, demoralized band into a small corner of the continent, where to live at all it was necessary to steal, perhaps to do worse? Suppose that in a spirit of justice, this superior race should recognize the fact that it was in duty bound to place food in our mouths and blankets on our backs, what would we do in the premises? I have seen one who hates an Indian as he does a snake, and thinks there is no good Indian but a dead one, on having the proposition put to him in this way, grind his teeth in rage and exclaim, “I would cut the heart out of everyone I could lay my hand on,” and so he would; and so we all would.

But it’s a class-divided society. It’s a rich cultural environment, full of galleries and incredible restaurants and museums and shows. But unless you’re wealthy, the city requires sacrifice to enjoy those things. Unless you are rich, you struggle every day. You grind. You ride the subway for two hours just to work at Starbucks. But there’s also nowhere else to be for professional networking. You can access the movers and shakers. You can be a mover and a shaker if you work hard enough. Just plug yourself into the scene, whatever your scene is. But what ends up happening— or what ended up happening to me— is an unplugging form family life, an unplugging from the things that make you feel whole and rooted. While living in New York, I eventually came to realize that for every good thing about the city, there was also a dark side. We go to New York to make our careers, but we end up stepping over homeless people on the sidewalk on our way to work. Successful New Yorkers can ignore those dark sides, but I could not.

For when you get in love you are made all over again. The person who loves you has picked you out of the great mass of uncreated clay which is humanity to make something out of, and the poor lumpish clay which is you wants to find out what it has been made into. But at the same time, you, in the act of loving somebody, become real, cease to be part of the continuum of the uncreated clay and get the breath of life in you and rise up. So you create yourself by creating another person, who, however, has also created you, picked up the you-chunk of clay out of the mass. So there are two you's, the one you yourself create by loving and the one the beloved creates by loving you. The farther these two you's are apart the more the world grinds and grudges on its axis. But if you loved and were loved perfectly then there wouldn't be any difference between the two you's or any distance between them. They would coincide perfectly, there would be perfect focus, as when a stereoscope gets the twin images on the card into perfect alignment.

Some relationships are like glass its better to leave them broken than to hurt yourself trying to put the pieces back together again. When you start reading the Bunna Man, most of my readers hate Dre and then they realize that Dre doesn't really have any power. The only power he has is the one Saf gave him. What happens now is that by you reach the middle of the story, your anger turns from Dre to Saf cause you realize that Saf is the catalyst behind her own misery. If she'd leave Dre alone. Her suffering would end

Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it’s a feather bed. —Terence McKenna

Lots of nights I would go to bed early, too. Sometimes sleep gets to be a serious and complete thing. You stop going to sleep in order that you may be able to get up, but get up in order that you may be able to go back to sleep. You get so during the day you catch yourself suddenly standing still and waiting and listening. You are like a little boy at the railroad station, ready to go away on the train, which hasn't come yet. You look way up the track, but can't see the little patch of black smoke yet. You fidget around, but all at once you stop in the middle of your fidgeting, and listen. You can't hear it yet. Then you go and kneel down in your Sunday clothes in the cinders, for which your mother is going to snatch you bald-headed, and put your ear to the rail and listen for the first soundless rustle which will come in the rail long before the little black patch begins to grow on the sky. You get so you listen for night, long before it comes over the horizon, and long, long before it comes charging and stewing and thundering to you like a big black locomotive and the black cars grind to a momentary stop and the porter with the black, shining face helps you up the steps, and says, "Yassuh, little boss, yassuh.

All this to say, ADHD isn’t your fault. You aren’t selfish, reckless, or irresponsible by nature. Most people seem to have a double standard for chemical imbalances in the brain, as opposed to elsewhere in the body. One would not — we hope! — tell a person with Type I Diabetes to try harder because everyone’s blood sugar gets out of whack sometimes. We’d expect this person to maintain their condition with insulin and a healthy diet so they could live a normal life. Why would we expect someone with a chemical imbalance in the brain to correct it by sheer force of will when we don’t expect them to do it with their pancreas? The sooner you accept your ADHD as a part of your unique biology, not as a personal failing, the sooner you can begin to build a better life for yourself

We must do the impossible and start before we begin. Before making that first phone call or visit, freewrite (see Elbow, 1981): Write fast and furiously without worrying about spelling or grammar or coherence. Ask yourself, What images do I hold of the people and the place I am about to study and how do I feel about those images? How did I come to study this setting at this time? Ask yourself about the needs you expect this setting to fulfill: Do I have an axe to grind? Do I have a mission? Am I looking for a cause or a community? Do I expect this study to help me resolve personal problems? Am I hoping to create a different self? What political assumptions do I have? What kinds of setting activities or subgroups might I avoid or discount because of who I am or what I believe?

meditation is not about sitting quietly in the shade of a tree and relaxing in a moment of respite from the daily grind; it is about familiarizing yourself with a new vision of things, a new way to manage your thoughts, of perceiving people and experiencing the world. Buddhism teaches various ways of making this “familiarization” work. The three principal ways are antidotes, liberation, and utilization. The first consists of applying a specific antidote to each negative emotion. The second allows us to unravel, or “liberate,” the emotion by looking straight at it and letting it dissolve as it arises. The third uses the raw power of emotion as a catalyst for inner change. The choice of one method over another will depend on the moment, the circumstances, and the capacities of the person using them. All share a common aspect and the same goal: to help us stop being victims of conflicting emotions.

You're serious." "As serious as an accountant at an IRS audit." His face closed off, reminding her of the ruthlessness she had first noticed about him on the front steps. "You have no business opening a restaurant." "Says who?" "Says the guy who watched you try to extricate yourself from a burger suit with a knife." Her mouth fell open. "Burger suits and restaurants are two different kettles of fish." "Kettles of fish? Now there's great business terminology." "Yep, Texas style." "You're in New York, sweetheart." "I am not your sweetheart, thank my lucky stars." "Another of your quaint Texas sayings? What was the last one I heard you use? 'Bless your heart'?" She sliced him a tooth-grinding smile. "While you might not like them, you can bet your backside that a cafe that serves the kind of fare we create in Texas would have people lined up around the corner. Or, as we say in Texas, till the cows come home.

You Are What You Eat Take food for example. We all assume that our craving or disgust is due to something about the food itself - as opposed to being an often arbitrary response preprogrammed by our culture. We understand that Australians prefer cricket to baseball, or that the French somehow find Gerard Depardieu sexy, but how hungry would you have to be before you would consider plucking a moth from the night air and popping it, frantic and dusty, into your mouth? Flap, crunch, ooze. You could wash it down with some saliva beer.How does a plate of sheep brain's sound? Broiled puppy with gravy? May we interest you in pig ears or shrimp heads? Perhaps a deep-fried songbird that you chew up, bones, beak, and all? A game of cricket on a field of grass is one thing, but pan-fried crickets over lemongrass? That's revolting. Or is it? If lamb chops are fine, what makes lamb brains horrible? A pig's shoulder, haunch, and belly are damn fine eatin', but the ears, snout, and feet are gross? How is lobster so different from grasshopper? Who distinguishes delectable from disgusting, and what's their rationale? And what about all the expectations? Grind up those leftover pig parts, stuff 'em in an intestine, and you've got yourself respectable sausage or hot dogs. You may think bacon and eggs just go together, like French fries and ketchup or salt and pepper. But the combination of bacon and eggs for breakfast was dreamed up about a hundred years aqo by an advertising hired to sell more bacon, and the Dutch eat their fries with mayonnaise, not ketchup. Think it's rational to be grossed out by eating bugs? Think again. A hundred grams of dehydrated cricket contains 1,550 milligrams of iron, 340 milligrams of calcium, and 25 milligrams of zinc - three minerals often missing in the diets of the chronic poor. Insects are richer in minerals and healthy fats than beef or pork. Freaked out by the exoskeleton, antennae, and the way too many legs? Then stick to the Turf and forget the Surf because shrimps, crabs, and lobsters are all anthropods, just like grasshoppers. And they eat the nastiest of what sinks to the bottom of the ocean, so don't talk about bugs' disgusting diets. Anyway, you may have bug parts stuck between your teeth right now. The Food and Drug Administration tells its inspectors to ignore insect parts in black pepper unless they find more than 475 of them per 50 grams, on average. A fact sheet from Ohio State University estimates that Americans unknowingly eat an average of between one and two pounds of insects per year. An Italian professor recently published Ecological Implications of Mini-livestock: Potential of Insects, Rodents, Frogs and Snails. (Minicowpokes sold separately.) Writing in Slate.com, William Saletan tells us about a company by the name of Sunrise Land Shrimp. The company's logo: "Mmm. That's good Land Shrimp!" Three guesses what Land Shrimp is. (20-21)

How much better it is to understand it all, to recognise it all, all the impossibilities and the stone wall; not to be reconciled to one of those impossibilities and stone walls if it disgusts you to be reconciled to it; by the way of the most inevitable, logical combinations to reach the most revolting conclusions on the everlasting theme, that even for the stone wall you are yourself somehow to blame, though again it is as clear as day you are not to blame in the least, and therefore grinding your teeth in silent impotence to sink into luxurious inertia, brooding on the fact that there is no one even for you to feel vindictive against, that you have not, and perhaps never will have, an object for your spite, that it is a sleight of hand, a bit of juggling, a card-sharper's trick, that it is simply a mess, no knowing what and no knowing who, but in spite of all these uncertainties and jugglings, still there is an ache in you, and the more you do not know, the worse the ache.

If you take a close look at an object, with your eyes closed to avoid being deceived by the appearances that things exude around themselves, if you allow yourself to be mistrustful, you can see their true faces, at least for a moment. Things are beings steeped in another reality, where there is no time or motion. Only their surface can be seen. The rest, hidden elsewhere, defines the significance and meaning of each material object. A coffee grinder, for example. The grinder is just such a piece of material infused with the concept of grinding. Grinders grind, and that is why they exist. But no one knows what the grinder means in general. Perhaps the grinder is a splinter off some total, fundamental law of transformation, a law without which this world could not go round or would be completely different. Perhaps coffee grinders are the axis of reality, around which everything turns and unwinds, perhaps they are more important for the world than people. And perhaps Misia’s one single grinder is the pillar of what is called Primeval.

[F]or when you get in love you are made all over again. The person who loves you has picked you out of the great mass of uncreated clay which is humanity to make something out of, and the poor lumpish clay which is you wants to find out what it has been made into. But at the same time, you, in the act of loving somebody, become real, cease to be a part of the continuum of the uncreated clay and get the breath of life in you and rise up. So you create yourself by creating another person, who, however, has also created you, picked up the you-chunk of clay out of the mass. So there are two you's, the one you create by loving and the one the beloved creates by loving you. The farther those two you's are apart the more the world grinds and grudges on its axis. But if you loved and were loved perfectly then there wouldn't be any difference between the two you's or any distance between them. They would coincide perfectly, there would be perfect focus, as when a stereoscope gets the twin images on the card into perfect alignment.” ― Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men

He looked up at her and saw that she wore the face of Everyone. It was the face of the two women who talked in the seat behind him on the bus; it was the face of Mrs. Leslie, saying to him, "Some of us are going to organize a Pretentionist Club ..." It was the face of those who did not dare sit down and talk with themselves, the people who could not be alone a minute, the people who were tired without knowing they were tired and afraid without knowing that they were afraid. And, yes, it was the face of Mrs. Leslie's husband, crowding drink and women into a barren life. It was the grinding anxiety that had become commonplace, that sent people fleeing for psychological shelters against the bombs of uncertainty. Gaiety no longer was sufficient, cynicism had run out, and flippancy had never been more than a temporary shield. So now the people fled to the drug of pretense, identifying themselves with another life and another time and place--at the movie theater or on the television screen or in the Pretentionist movement. For so long as you were someone else you need not be yourself. Clifford D. Simak. Ring Around the Sun (Kindle Locations 1207-1215). Avon. Kindle Edition.

But, Cass, ask yourself, look out and ask yourself— wouldn’t you hate all white people if they kept you in prison here?” They were rolling up startling Seventh Avenue. The entire population seemed to be in the streets, draped, almost, from lampposts, stoops, and hydrants, and walking through the traffic as though it were not there. “Kept you here, and stunted you and starved you, and made you watch your mother and father and sister and lover and brother and son and daughter die or go mad or go under, before your very eyes? And not in a hurry, like from one day to the next, but, every day, every day, for years, for generations? Shit. They keep you here because you’re black, the filthy, white cock suckers, while they go around jerking themselves off with all that jazz about the land of the free and the home of the brave. And they want you to jerk yourself off with that same music, too, only, keep your distance. Some days, honey, I wish I could turn myself into one big fist and grind this miserable country to powder. Some days, I don’t believe it has a right to exist. Now, you’ve never felt like that, and Vivaldo’s never felt like that. Vivaldo didn’t want to know my brother was dying because he doesn’t want to know that my brother would still be alive if he hadn’t been born black.

Are you angry when someone’s armpits stink or when their breath is bad? What would be the point? Having such a mouth and such armpits, there’s going to be a smell emanating. You say, they must have sense, can’t they tell how they are offending others? Well, you have sense too, congratulations! So, use your natural reason to awaken theirs, show them, call it out. If the person will listen, you will have cured them without useless anger. No drama nor unseemly show required.” —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 5.28 The person sitting next to you on the plane, the one who is loudly chattering and knocking around in your space? The one you’re grinding your teeth about, hating from the depth of your soul because they’re rude, ignorant, obnoxious? In these situations, you might feel it takes everything you have to restrain yourself from murdering them. It’s funny how that thought comes into our heads before, you know, politely asking them to stop, or making the minor scene of asking for a different seat. We’d rather be pissed off, bitter, raging inside than risk an awkward conversation that might actually help this person and make the world a better place. We don’t just want people to be better, we expect it to magically happen—that we can simply will other people to change, burning holes into their skull with our angry stare. Although when you think about it that way, it makes you wonder who the rude one actually is.

Despite the rise of the mental health profession, people are becoming increasingly vulnerable to depression. Why? Martin Seligman, a brilliant psychologist with no religious ax to grind, has a theory that it’s because we have replaced church, faith, and community with a tiny little unit that cannot bear the weight of meaning. That’s the self. We’re all about the self. We revolve our lives around ourselves. Ironically, the more obsessed we are with our selves, the more we neglect our souls. All of our language reflects this. If you’re empty, you need to fulfill yourself. If you’re stressed, learn how to take care of yourself. If you’re on a job interview, you have to believe in yourself. If you’re at the tattoo parlor, you must learn to express yourself. If someone dares to criticize you, you have to love yourself. If you’re not getting your own way, you have to stand up for yourself. What should you do on a date? You ought to be yourself. What if your self is a train wreck? What do you do then? Self is a stand-alone, do-it-yourself unit, while the soul reminds us we were not made for ourselves. The soul always exists before God. So soul is needed for deep art, poetry, and music. Former opera singer Scott Flaherty said it best: “I mean, when you sing you’re giving voice to your soul.” Imagine singing, “Then sings my self, my Savior God to thee,” or “Jesus, lover of my self.” Innately we know that the self is not the soul, even as we do everything we can to preserve it.

Fifty miles out of Prague, the halved carcass of a freshly killed hog hangs, still steaming in the cold, from what looks like a child’s swing set. It’s a wet, drizzling morning and your feet are sopping and you’ve been warming yourself against the chill by huddling around the small fire over which a pot of pig parts boils. The butcher’s family and friends are drinking slivovitz and beer, and though noon is still a few hours off, you’ve had quite a few of both. Someone calls you inside to the tiled workspace, where the butcher has mixed the pig’s blood with cooked onions and spices and crumbs of country bread, and he’s ready to fill the casings. Usually, they slip the casing over a metal tube, turn on the grinding machine, cram in the forcemeat or filling, and the sausages fill like magic. This guy does it differently. He chops everything by hand. A wet mesa of black filling covers his cutting board, barely retaining its shape—yet he grabs the casing in one hand, puts two fingers in one open end, makes the “V” sign, stretching it disturbingly, and reaches with the other—then buries both his hands in the mix. A whirlwind of movement as he squeezes with his right hand, using his palm like a funnel, somehow squirting the bloody, barely containable stuff straight into the opening. He does this again and again with breathtaking speed, mowing his way across the wooden table, like a thresher cutting a row through a cornfield, a long, plump, rapidly growing, glistening, fully filled length of sausage engorging to his left as he moves. It’s a dark, purplish color through the translucent membrane. An assistant pinches off links, pins them with broken bits of wooden skewer. In moments, they are done.

What is ADHD, anyway? For those still wondering what ADHD is, here’s the briefest summary I can muster: ADHD shows up in two areas of our brain function: working memory and executive functioning.[7] Working memory allows us to hold more than one thing in our brains at once. If you’ve ever run up the stairs, only to find yourself standing in your bedroom wondering what you came for, you’ve experienced a failure of working memory. Again, everyone experiences this from time to time. People with ADHD experience it nonstop, to the point where it impairs our ability to function normally. Working memory holds onto information until we’re able to use it.[8] In addition to forgetting why we opened the refrigerator, having a leaky working memory means we lose information before our brains can move it to long-term storage. We forget a lot of things before we have a chance to act on them or write them down. Our executive functions, on the other hand, give us the power to delay gratification, strategize, plan ahead, and identify and respond to others’ feelings.[9] That’s some list, isn’t it? In the same way a diabetic’s body cannot effectively regulate insulin, imagine your brain being unable to control these behaviors. This explains why ADHDers’ behavior so often defies norms and expectations for their age group — and this persists throughout their lifespan, not just grade school. ADHD isn’t a gift. It isn’t a sign of creativity or intelligence, nor is it a simple character flaw. And it’s more than eccentric distractibility, forgetfulness, and impulsivity. ADHD is a far-reaching disorder that touches every aspect of our lives. If we leave it unchecked, it will generate chaos at home, at work, and everywhere in between.

It all just makes you feel insignificant, doesn’t it? You spend your life barely surviving the grind, living in an endless cycle, doing the same thing over and over again, depending on drugs and the numbness they bring to see another day… and it’s all for nothing. In the grand scheme of things, you’re nothing.' He thinks on it for a while. ‘It makes a lot of things insignificant, true,’ he finally says. ‘The things we spend our lives worrying about, the pressure society puts on us… it suddenly seems like nothing in the face of the infinity of the universe or the endlessness of time. But look at yourself,’ he says. She scrunches up her face, half frowning, half smiling. ‘Myself?’ ‘Where did you come from?’ ‘The city?’ ‘Before that.’ ‘Eh, my parents?’ He nods. ‘And where did your parents come from?’ ‘Their parents,’ she says, smiling now but still confused. ‘Right. And we all come from this planet, which as far as we know, is the only place in the universe where life can naturally form and exist. The slightest change in temperature or pressure of the atmosphere, and that’ll be the end of us. But it’s not just that. For us to even have the smallest of chances to exist, Earth had to be just the right distance from the Sun, which had to be just the right temperature. Stars had to be born in the first place, atoms had to exist just the way they do. The Big Bang had to happen. For you to even be a possibility, the universe had to be born in just the right way.’ He turns to face her, and she returns his gaze. ‘We’re just two out of billions of people, on a rock orbiting a ball of fire, alive at a point in time that allows us to witness humanity make the biggest, most bewildering discoveries. Two people who could have been anywhere in the world, separated by time, space, circumstances. Yet after all we’ve been through, all that’s happened to us, here we are, now. Sharing this moment together. We’re not insignificant. We’re miracles.

Take the famous slogan on the atheist bus in London … “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” … The word that offends against realism here is “enjoy.” I’m sorry—enjoy your life? Enjoy your life? I’m not making some kind of neo-puritan objection to enjoyment. Enjoyment is lovely. Enjoyment is great. The more enjoyment the better. But enjoyment is one emotion … Only sometimes, when you’re being lucky, will you stand in a relationship to what’s happening to you where you’ll gaze at it with warm, approving satisfaction. The rest of the time, you’ll be busy feeling hope, boredom, curiosity, anxiety, irritation, fear, joy, bewilderment, hate, tenderness, despair, relief, exhaustion … This really is a bizarre category error. But not necessarily an innocent one … The implication of the bus slogan is that enjoyment would be your natural state if you weren’t being “worried” by us believer … Take away the malignant threat of God-talk, and you would revert to continuous pleasure, under cloudless skies. What’s so wrong with this, apart from it being total bollocks? … Suppose, as the atheist bus goes by, that you are the fifty-something woman with the Tesco bags, trudging home to find out whether your dementing lover has smeared the walls of the flat with her own shit again. Yesterday when she did it, you hit her, and she mewled till her face was a mess of tears and mucus which you also had to clean up. The only thing that would ease the weight on your heart would be to tell the funniest, sharpest-tongued person you know about it: but that person no longer inhabits the creature who will meet you when you unlock the door. Respite care would help, but nothing will restore your sweetheart, your true love, your darling, your joy. Or suppose you’re that boy in the wheelchair, the one with the spasming corkscrew limbs and the funny-looking head. You’ve never been able to talk, but one of your hands has been enough under your control to tap out messages. Now the electrical storm in your nervous system is spreading there too, and your fingers tap more errors than readable words. Soon your narrow channel to the world will close altogether, and you’ll be left all alone in the hulk of your body. Research into the genetics of your disease may abolish it altogether in later generations, but it won’t rescue you. Or suppose you’re that skanky-looking woman in the doorway, the one with the rat’s nest of dreadlocks. Two days ago you skedaddled from rehab. The first couple of hits were great: your tolerance had gone right down, over two weeks of abstinence and square meals, and the rush of bliss was the way it used to be when you began. But now you’re back in the grind, and the news is trickling through you that you’ve fucked up big time. Always before you’ve had this story you tell yourself about getting clean, but now you see it isn’t true, now you know you haven’t the strength. Social services will be keeping your little boy. And in about half an hour you’ll be giving someone a blowjob for a fiver behind the bus station. Better drugs policy might help, but it won’t ease the need, and the shame over the need, and the need to wipe away the shame. So when the atheist bus comes by, and tells you that there’s probably no God so you should stop worrying and enjoy your life, the slogan is not just bitterly inappropriate in mood. What it means, if it’s true, is that anyone who isn’t enjoying themselves is entirely on their own. The three of you are, for instance; you’re all three locked in your unshareable situations, banged up for good in cells no other human being can enter. What the atheist bus says is: there’s no help coming … But let’s be clear about the emotional logic of the bus’s message. It amounts to a denial of hope or consolation, on any but the most chirpy, squeaky, bubble-gummy reading of the human situation. St Augustine called this kind of thing “cruel optimism” fifteen hundred years ago, and it’s still cruel.

Staying motivated when circumstances get difficult or when progress toward the goal is slow, mundane or tedious, you can find yourself grinding to a halt.   Sometimes working toward a goal isn’t glamorous. It’s dirty, it’s sweaty, and it causes you to stay up until all hours of the night, hammering away at a project until it’s done.   If you find yourself bogged down with discouragement, depression or even just plain boredom, consider taking the focus off your task for a moment.

It is a long time,' repeated his wife; 'and when is it not a long time? Vengeance and retribution require a long time; it is the rule. 'It does not take a long time to strike a man with lightning,' said Defarge. 'How long,' demanded madame, composedly, 'does it take to make and store the lightning? Tell me?' Defarge raised his forehead thoughtfully, as if there were something in that, too. 'It does not take a long time,' said madame, 'for an earthquake to swallow a town. Eh well! Tell me how long it takes to prepare the earthquake?' 'A long time, I suppose,' said Defarge. 'But when it is ready, it takes place, and grinds to pieces everything before it. In the mean time, it is always preparing, thought it is not seen or heard. That is your consolation. Keep it.' She tied a knot with flashing eyes, as if it throttled a foe. 'I tell thee,' said madame, extending her right hand, for emphasis, 'that although it is a long time on the road, it is on the road and coming. I tell thee it never retreats, and never stops. I tell thee it is always advancing. Look around and consider the lives of all the world that we know, consider the faces of all the world that we know, consider the rage and discontent to which the Jacquerie addresses itself with more and more of certainty every hour. Can such things last? Bah! I mock you.' 'My brave wife,' returned Defarge, standing before her with his head a little bent, and his hands clasped at his back, like a docile and attentive pupil before his catechist, 'I do not question all this. But it has lasted a long time, and it is possible - you now well, my wife, it is possible - that is may not come, during out lives,' 'Eh well! How then? demanded madame, tying another knot, as if there were another enemy strangled. 'Well' said Defarge, with a half complaining and half apologetic shrug. 'We shall not see the triumph.' 'We shall have helped it,' returned madame, with her extended hand in strong action. "Nothing that we do, is done in vain. I believe, with all my soul, that we shall see the triumph. But even if not, even if I knew certainly not, show me the neck of an aristocrat and tyrant, and still I would -' There madame, with her teeth set, tied a very terrible knot indeed. 'Hold!' cried Defarge, reddening a little as if he felt charged with cowardice; 'I too, my dear, will stop at nothing.' 'Yes! But it is your weakness that you sometimes need to see your victims and your opportunity, to sustain you. Sustain yourself without that. When the time comes, let loose a tiger and a devil; but wait for the time with the tiger and the devil chained - not shown -yet always ready.

Want to be a success? You Have to Do the Hard Things. You have to make the call you’re afraid to make. You have to get up earlier than you want to get up. You have to give more than you get in return right away. You have to care more about others than they care about you. You have to fight when you are already injured, bloody, and sore. You have to feel unsure and insecure when playing it safe seems smarter. You have to lead when no one else is following you yet. You have to invest in yourself even though no one else is. You have to look like a fool while you’re looking for answers you don’t have. You have to grind out the details when it’s easier to shrug them off. You have to deliver results when making excuses is an option. You have to search for your own explanations even when you’re told to accept the “facts.” You have to make mistakes and look like an idiot. You have to try and fail and try again. You have to run faster even though you’re out of breath. You have to be kind to people who have been cruel to you. You have to meet deadlines that are unreasonable and deliver results that are unparalleled. You have to keep moving towards where you want to be no matter what’s in front of you.

You have to make the call you’re afraid to make. You have to get up earlier than you want to get up. You have to give more than you get in return right away. You have to care more about others than they care about you. You have to fight when you are already injured, bloody, and sore. You have to feel unsure and insecure when playing it safe seems smarter. You have to lead when no one else is following you yet. You have to invest in yourself even though no one else is. You have to look like a fool while you’re looking for answers you don’t have. You have to grind out the details when it’s easier to shrug them off. You have to deliver results when making excuses is an option. You have to search for your own explanations even when you’re told to accept the “facts”. You have to make mistakes and look like an idiot. You have try and fail and try again. You have to run faster even though you’re out of breath. You have to be kind to people who have been cruel to you. You have to meet deadlines that are unreasonable and deliver results that are unparalleled. You have to be accountable for your actions even when things go wrong. You have to keep moving towards where you want to be no matter what’s in front of you. You have to do the hard things. The things that no one else is doing. The things that scare you. The things that make you wonder how much longer you can hold on. Those are the things that define you. Those are the things that make the difference between living a life of mediocrity or outrageous success. The hard things are the easiest things to avoid. To excuse away. To pretend like they don’t apply to you. The simple truth about how ordinary people accomplish outrageous feats of success is that they do the hard things that smarter, wealthier, more qualified people don’t have the courage — or desperation — to do. Do the hard things. You might be surprised at how amazing you really are

The reason you’re in that wheelchair is because of what you’re doing right now; always thinking about yourself! You put yourself in that wheelchair. You were the one who wanted to be grimy and fuck people over, remember? You were the one who couldn’t keep it one hundred with people, remember?

You can scare yourself into stuckness by assuming you have to make radical life changes in order to make progress. You don’t. Real change is practically invisible as it’s happening. No trumpets sound. A marching band will not play at your door. Meaningful progress doesn’t feel particularly exciting. Most days, it feels like work. You show up, grind it out (sometimes joyfully, sometimes not), and repeat.

Burnout is real. If you want success without the hustle and grind, plan for breaks and set boundaries for yourself.

So maybe she was up in the room trying to discover what her new self was, for when you get in love you are made all over again. The person who loves you has picked you out of the great mass of uncreated clay which is humanity to make something out of, and the poor lumpish clay which is you wants to find out what it has been made into. But at the same time, you, in the act of loving somebody, become real, cease to be a part of the continuum of the uncreated clay and get the breath of life in you and rise up. So you create yourself by creating another person, who, however, has also created you, picked up the you-chunk of clay out of the mass. So there are two you’s, the one you yourself create by loving and the one the beloved creates by loving you. The farther those two you’s are apart the more the world grinds and grudges on its axis. But if you loved and were loved perfectly then there wouldn’t be any difference between the two you’s or any distance between them. They would coincide perfectly, there would be a perfect focus, as when a stereoscope gets the twin images on the card into perfect alignment.

Life is given to all of us and everything that you want to become depends now on your preparation, hard work, and dedication. Only if you are willing to put yourself in process of grinding, hustle, and hard work then there will be a point in life where the opportunity KNOCKS on your door to give you a chance. A chance you always waited for and an opportunity you always wanted to have for yourself so you take yourself on to the path of greatness. You are close to success and succeeding in yourself only when you take charge, take action and make decisions for yourself. No one in this world has become great just by doing average things and being average. The people who go the extra mile, extra effort, and that extra one thing in their life makes them successful and lets them avail themselves of the opportunity that knocks on the door. If you are blind to yourself then you can't see opportunities. You are one opportunity away from success and the life you are dreaming but the question is, are you prepared?

Some people think they can have “down time” for protracted periods. But you can’t take your foot off the pedal. Winners don’t “chillax”. They work all the time. They win precisely because they can keep going when others have tired and given up. If you get into the habit of relaxing, freewheeling and treating yourself, you will definitely lose when you come up against someone who does none of those things. A theory states that winners have higher natural levels of pain-killing chemicals in their systems. They can keep going because they are more pain resistant. They don’t need to take time off, to recuperate, to recharge their batteries. They just keep going, and that gives them an unbeatable competitive advantage. If you want to be a winner, you should train yourself to keep going even when you’re desperate to stop. If you master that skill, you will definitely succeed. Never let up. Keep grinding out work day in and day out. Eventually it will be second nature to you, and you will be able to produce good work in all circumstances. Of course, you must be engaged in an activity you love. You can’t keep putting in excessive effort if every moment is like torture, if you hate what you’re doing.

Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it’s a feather bed.

Healing doesn't have to make sense to anyone else, it just needs to make sense to you. Sometimes healing takes a bit more...blood than most are willing to give or take. Find your limit and do everything in your power to push past that. If the only way to leave the ashes is for you to drown them in blood, do that. If the only way to leave them is to grind them so far into the depths of the Underworld, they have no other choice but to suffocate, do that, but do not allow yourself to be locked in a cage they created simply because they don't understand.

Because you never know exactly what you’ll find inside that black box until you open it, there is a temptation to hope—perhaps not quite consciously—that your next race won’t be one of those grinding affairs. This hope is a poor coping skill. Bracing yourself—always expecting your next race to be your hardest yet—is a much more mature and effective way to prepare mentally for competition.

Life with ADHD tends toward chaos, leaving us in a near-constant state of course correction. From now on, you’ll define yourself not by your success this week or next, but by how you manage to claw your way out of the chaos and back onto the organizing wagon.

Don’t set yourself up to fail by watering down your calendar. Make sure it contains only items that are time-sensitive, and only on the day they are most important.

How to prepare your spirit and body for a nap. STARTING POINTS TO JUMP-START YOUR CURIOSITY AND EXPERIMENTATION: We cannot wait for the perfect space or opportunity to rest. Rest now. In Part One: Rest!, I share the need for seeing rest as not an extra treat that we must run to but more of a lifelong, consistent, and meticulous love practice. We must snatch rest. We must believe we are worthy of rest. We don’t have to earn it. It is our birthright. It is one of our most ancient and primal needs. Our bodies are a site of liberation; therefore, wherever our bodies are, we can embody rest. This second tenet of The Nap Ministry is a mantra and a meditation. Productivity should not look like exhaustion. The concept of laziness is a tool of the oppressor. A large part of your unraveling from capitalism will include becoming less attached to the idea of productivity and more committed to the idea of rest as a portal to just be. Your early understanding of “productivity” is most likely tainted by the toxic socialization we all received growing up. It must be examined. Deprogramming our minds and hearts from our toxic brainwashing around naps and rest will increase our ability to craft a rest practice. Our slumber and opportunities for community care will be deeper because of our work in this area. Go slow and realize you have been brainwashed by a system that attaches your inherent worth to how much you can labor and produce. Grind culture is violence. Resist participating in it. This must be flexible so please also resist the desire to become rigid. I have gone months consistently experimenting with a rest practice daily or weekly. The next week I am caught up in an all-nighter to finish a deadline. We are moving in and out of worlds all the time so give beautiful grace to yourself. Start again

The words appear that way on a Utah food-handler testing and certification site. The threat they refer to is not jequirity beans or castor beans. (The castor bean isn’t actually a legume. It’s a spurge.) The threats are kidney beans, red or white, broad beans, and lima beans. Fail to boil these common edibles for at least ten minutes, and you may find yourself in significant gastrointestinal distress. As did a thousand-plus viewers of a Japanese TV show that recommended grinding white kidney beans in a coffee mill, toasting for three minutes, and sprinkling on rice. According to the journal article “The ‘White Kidney Bean Incident’ in Japan,” a hundred people were hospitalized.

Please,” was the only word that I could get out. At that moment, I would have begged for him if I had to. He took a long breath in and exhaled deeply. “Not yet.” His hand slid down my torso. My body was damp with desire. “I don’t want to hurt you, you’re so tight.” He slid one finger into me and I writhed beneath him. Two pumps of his hand and he easily slid a second finger into my slickness. I let out a small moan as his fingers stretched me open and my head relaxed back. As he pushed into me with two fingers, his thumb found my swollen clit. My hips pushed up, begging for more. “That’s it, babe, make yourself feel good.” I lifted my hips and pushed against his fingers, stroking and pushing them in and out of my wet body. His thumb increased the pressure on my clit as his fingers rubbed in and out, finding a sensitive spot inside of me. My body arched to his touch and he withdrew his fingers slowly from me and brought them to my mouth. I licked the juice from his fingers and he let out a feral growl. He positioned himself on top of me and I lifted my hips, desperate to have him inside of me. “Slow and sweet, babe, slow and sweet,” he said with a raspy voice as he slowly pushed into me. His green eyes were dark gray and dilated and I knew he was having as difficult a time going slow as I was, but he wouldn’t allow himself to lose control. I gasped as he pushed deep inside of me. He was so thick and long. His eyes were full of lust and emotion, but he refused to allow them to close. The connection between us was intense and we were lost as we watched each other as he slowly pushed in and out of me, filling me to the hilt and drawing almost all the way out. His rhythm was slow and restrained and I watched his face struggle to keep the control with each deep thrust. A deep moan escaped from my throat as my pleasure ratcheted up to new heights. His face tensed with my sound and I knew he couldn’t hold his control much longer, but it felt so good and I didn’t want it to end. I tilted my hips up as he thrust down and circled into me, penetrating deeper than he had ever been. He buried his face into my neck and kissed his way from my shoulder blade to my ear as he swiveled his hips, grinding his big rock hard cock into me. “Come for me, baby, I want to watch you.” His words pushed me over the edge and my body exploded in pleasure. I climaxed in a relentless spiraling orgasm that had me calling his name over and over as it tore through me. My eyes unconsciously closed as I succumbed to the waves rippling though me. “Eyes.” I opened my eyes to his demand. Jack watched as it took over my body and melted me to the core. He quickened his thrusts and whispered, “Fucking beautiful,” as I felt his body tense and pin me in place when he came long and hard, filling me deeply.

Be like a tree and let the dead leaves drop.—RUMI This month is all about simplicity. When you are committed to simplifying your life, your priorities, desires, and deep needs rise to the surface. When life is cluttered with things and busyness, you become blind to your needs. The complex demands of the day-to-day grind overshadow the more important, simple needs of your life. Sometimes you may hold on to possessions, relationships, people, and ideas long after their expiration date. It’s okay—necessary even—to let the things, people, and feelings that you no longer need fall away. When you remove the old to make way for the new, you are simply acknowledging what is and what isn’t in your life. Simplifying gives you the necessary space to breathe in deeply. It feeds your soul and creativity, and it allows you to lead an empowered life.

Simple movements, performed for seconds at a time over a number of days eliminate the symptoms of TMJ. The TMJ Solution shows you exactly what those movements are so that you can do them for yourself.

How beautiful it is to grind yourself into sand, offer the grain of you to anyone willing to listen, hoping they will carry your debris into places you'll never go.

No, you idiot. You have to live,” I cry, fisting his jersey with both hands. “You may look like a hockey Thor, but you’re not a god, Ilmari. You’re flesh and blood and you’re grinding yourself into that ice. And I won’t allow it.

You will spend 90,000 hours of your life working. That’s more than you will spend doing anything else except sleeping. And you know you owe it to yourself to make those hours the most meaningful that they can possibly be. You know you can’t resign yourself to a listless job. You don’t want to spend your one life grinding out work you care little about, a sad office-humor cliché. You’re here because you want more out of your career, even as you’re facing a stupid-tight and ever-shifting job market, nagging self-doubt, the challenges of rampant sexism and racism in the workplace, a persistent wage gap (particularly for women of color), a lack of precedent for female leadership in most careers, a lack of mentors, and mansplaining men everywhere you look. You’re here because you’re tired of feeling quite so delicate, one professional rejection away from emotional cataclysm, a floor puddle of Chunky Monkey and Netflix. Because you want to get stronger and more sure-footed. Because you don’t want to be tripped up by small things like what to say in an e-mail, and big ones like how to ask for a raise. Because you don’t yet know when you need to stand up for yourself and when you definitely don’t need to stand up for yourself. You’re here because you haven’t realized yet that you’re not alone, that even your heroes think they are impostors, that we all think we don’t deserve to be here, we all believe, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that we are irrelevant, incompetent trash people, and soon THEY ARE ALL GOING TO KNOW. You are here because no matter how nasty the self-talk and shitty programming that’s intermittently popping off in your brain, the voices that tell you you’re lazy, untalented, the worst, you need to find empathy for yourself, you need someone to tell you how you are feeling is normal. That you belong. That you CAN do this. Because you can.

You must first destroy yourself, grind yourself into a paste, before becoming a work of art.

Make it stop,” she begs, rocking her hips even harder, trying her damnedest to grind against me as I feel my resolve melt away. “Are you trying to use my body to get yourself off, principessa?” I dart my tongue out, giving her top lip a hint of a lick, smiling at the whimper she gives.

Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it’s a feather bed.

Paulette awoke with an ache in her heart, a grinding in her gut. If there really was a God, why would He have let anyone put a child through that? … She had survived, but at what cost? She was an itinerant professor, living in her head, not her heart. She had broken away, but abandoned her sister; hadn’t contacted her family in years. Paulette wondered what she was looking for in these weekend workshops. Absolution wasn’t on the curriculum. What could she possibly hope to accomplish? To be a healer you need to connect with people. You need to touch, and let yourself be touched. And not just with your hands. Watching these nurses, she envied them their friendships. Here were real buddies truly caring about each other, taking jabs, sharing private jokes and fears. She’d never had that. Even witnessing it from across a room, or a yard, only made her feel that much more lonely. She got along with people well enough. Agreed with whatever they said, watched their pets, helped them move from one apartment to another. But no one really knew her. Paulette had never been flush with self-confidence. People took that as humility, but humility isn’t painful and crippling. She hadn’t yet learned that humble and self-destructive aren’t the same thing at all. They’re not even on the same team. And now here she was at a workshop for healers. Had she come here to heal; or to be healed? It was one of those warm, charming days that write poems about themselves, and then settle these very softly into your mind. Paulette sensed what felt like a rain-laced breeze stirring her soul; sodden, and yet beautiful; laden with both the dismal, and the promising. - From “The Gardens of Ailana”, a fiction largely based around adults still traumatized by having been abused as children, in the name of their parents’ religion.

The next time you sit down to work, think about what you’re doing. Are you dedicating yourself to a craft? Are you grinding through it and honing your skills? Are you doing truly meaningful work? Hustling isn’t about winning or getting paid. It’s about living for your purpose.

Rich Roll is an inspiring guy. He’s a plant-based nutrition enthusiast, a #1 bestselling author, and according to Men’s Fitness magazine, one of the twenty five most fittest men in the world. One of Rich’s defining qualities is his dedication to dedication itself. He believes we live in a hack culture, where people seek to find the quickest, easiest route to success. And I agree. Hustling isn’t always about hacking. It’s just as much, if not more, about grinding. Here’s Rich:   So if you have a passion and aspire to greatness―if you want to see what you are truly made of, or just how far you can go and what you are truly capable of―forget the hack. Commit to the daily pressure that compels infinitesimal progress over time. Wake up before dawn and apply yourself in silent anonymity. Practice your craft―in whatever shape or form that may be―late into the evening with relentless rigor. Embrace the fear. Let go of perfection. Allow yourself to fail. Welcome the obstacles. Forget the results. Give yourself over to your passion with every fiber of who you are. And live out the rest of your days trying to do better.   I can’t promise that you will succeed in the way our culture inappropriately defines the term. But I can absolutely guarantee that you will become deeply acquainted with who you truly are. You will touch and exude passion. And discover what it means to be truly alive.

What’s that saying? Time flies when you’re grinding yourself against a golden skinned, inked up, badass hottie. Or something like that.

How do you avoid that trap? The McKinsey way is to take an occasional step back from the continual grind of fact gathering and analysis and to ask yourself what you have learned over the past week (or two weeks, or whatever). How does the new information fit into your initial hypothesis? If it doesn’t, how might it change that hypothesis? Doing these little reality checks now and then could save you from chasing down blind alleys. As a final

Are all your comforts gone, and would you have them fain restored? Then read and read the Scripture much; if you cannot read yourself, get some others for to read them to you. When a man's mind is empty, as in temptation and want of comfort, it is empty of Christ, and full of fear, then it doth grind itself, as a quern or mill when empty of corn, one stone grinds another: the more full a man's mind is, the more free from temptations and fears. Now Scripture matter is the most filling matter, the more ye see Christ walking in the sweet shades of divine love toward poor sinners, the sooner will your faith revive, and your comforts be restored;

Build [systems] around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done. In other words, find your Why and get to know yourself. In your eagerness to get an organizational system up and running, make sure you’re motivated for the long term. Know why you’re doing this work — why it’s important to you. Motivation must come from within.

When you don’t have systems (i.e. habits or routines) in place, the mental and emotional energy required to keep things running is immense. You frantically run from task to task and place to place putting out fires. At the end of the week, you are exhausted, physically, and mentally, yet your company is in no better place than when the week started. You have made zero progress toward scaling up and giving yourself more freedom as an owner. To find relief from this rat race, you need habits in your company. You need standard ways of doing business that move tasks from the conscious to the subconscious mind of your business. Hiring and onboarding should require less and less energy because everyone knows how the system works. Quality control should get easier and easier (and customers should be happier) because everyone is following the same steps to ensure it happens. A company without systems is a company that creates stress and shackles its leaders to the daily grind. A cleaning company without processes is a people dependent company and not a system dependent company. And people dependent companies are less valuable, more stressful, less effective, and more difficult to scale. If you want freedom, more profits, and a chance to grow and scale up, you must have company habits. Freedom awaits, but the door only opens to those who systematize much of what they do. It’s your choice.

Do you think there’s some loss aversion there? Because once you diverge, you’re not sure if you’re diverging toward a positive outcome or a negative outcome? Absolutely. I think that’s why the smartest and the most successful people I know started out as losers. If you view yourself as a loser, as someone who was cast out by society and has no role in normal society, then you will do your own thing and you’re much more likely to find a winning path. It helps to start out by saying, “I’m never going to be popular. I’m never going to be accepted. I’m already a loser. I’m not going to get what all the other kids have. I’ve just got to be happy being me.” For self-improvement without self-discipline, update your self-image. Everyone’s motivated at something. It just depends on the thing. Even the people that we say are unmotivated are suddenly really motivated when they’re playing video games. I think motivation is relative, so you just have to find the thing you’re into. [1] Grind and sweat, toil and bleed, face the abyss. It’s all part of becoming an overnight success.

Every single obstacle can be seen as either a blessing or a curse. It is completely up to you to decide. The trick is not to let it grind you down; roll with the punches and don’t fight against anything that happens to you - adapt to it. The great irony of the trail is that even though it’s so unforgiving and easy to injure yourself, it is without a doubt a place of healing. You just have to slow down and let it work its magic.

I took care not to be ostentatious (I detest snobs), but my style kind of dazzled my staff at the office. They were eager to follow my examples. I stressed the importance of making a good appearance, wearing a nicely pressed suit, well-polished shoes, hair combed, and nails cleaned. “Look sharp and act sharp,” I told them. “The first thing you have to sell is yourself. When you do that, it will be easy to sell paper cups.

Super Mario Bros. hooks newcomers because there are no barriers to playing the game. You can know absolutely nothing about the Nintendo console and still enjoy yourself from the very first minute. There's no need to read motivation-sapping manuals or grind through educational tutorials before you begin. Instead, your avatar, Mario appears on the left-hand side of an almost empty screen. Because the screen is empty, you can push the Nintendo controller's buttons randomly and harmlessly, learning which ones make Mario jump and which ones make him move left and right. You can't move any further left, so you quickly learn to move right. And you aren't reading a guide that tells you which keys are which--instead, you're learning by doing, and enjoying the sense of mastery comes from acquiring knowledge through experience. The first few seconds of gameplay are brilliantly designed to simultaneously do two very difficult things: teach, and preserve the illusion that nothing is being taught at all.

Religion is reassurance. It is community. It is the conductor that helps orchestrate our lives. It allows you to discover who you are, why you’re here, and what you do best. Webster’s Dictionary defines orchestrate as “to arrange or combine so as to achieve a maximum effect.” Orchestration means harmonious organization. Wouldn’t it be nice to know that your life is harmoniously organized…not just what you do or when you do it, but how, where, and why as well? Discover these answers for yourself and you’ll be well on your way to a more meaningful life. Religion is not meant to punish us: it is meant to set us free from guilt, anxiety, and discord. This is what we teach our children in the South. We accommodate changing times through unchanging principles. We embrace the future, without forgetting the past. In the South, life is like a tree. The branches shelter us from the tragedies and sorrows of life, but ultimately we have to grow. Seeds are placed within us: the seeds of hope, love, and forgiveness. Hope never dies, always bringing back joy and keeping peace in our hearts. Grits know that religion is life itself--that quiet escape from the daily grind that has the power to set you free. It is the desire and wherewithal to change the world around you. Your denomination doesn’t matter. Your faith doesn’t matter. It’s the love in your heart that counts.

At first David squealed in annoyance, but Dan grabbed him and brought him onto his lap. “Hey now,” he said, holding him with a firm arm around his waist, bouncing him on his thigh. “Take it easy. Only in a town of six hundred would it be considered normal to have a kid your age right up at the bar. Count your blessings.” Jack shook out some Goldfish crackers into a bowl. “His favorite,” he explained. “Perfect,” Dan said. He turned his attention on David. “So, little man, you want one?” He maneuvered the small cracker into David’s mouth. “Now. Give one to me? Please?” David thought about it a second, then slowly pushed one toward Dan’s open mouth. “Mmm,” Dan said. “Your turn.” And he plucked one out of the bowl and directed it toward David’s mouth, but pulled it back, making the kid laugh. “Oh, you want that? Can you say please?” David shook his head obstinately, stiffening his back, grinding his fists into his eyes, pushing out his lower lip. Dan took the Goldfish for himself and laughed. “Let’s try that again,” he said, picking up another. “Please?” he coached. “Pease,” David said in a pout. “Wonderful,” Dan approved, popping a Goldfish into his mouth. “You’re gifted,” Jack observed. “He’s been a real asshole lately.” “Jack! We were going to try to stop swearing!” “Yeah, I know. I think I’m doing better at that than you are, by the way. But hasn’t he been?” “He can’t help it—he’s at the asshole age. He’ll come around.” “See?” Jack said, grinning at her. “You have a rotten mouth and you can’t help yourself.” She grinned back at him. “I never uttered a single curse until I met you.” Dan focused on David. “Your parents are flirting with each other. You better have another fish. You could be on my lap a long time.” Jack

Any dictatorship takes a psychological toll on its subjects. If you are treated as an untrustworthy person-a potential slacker, drug addict, or thief-you may begin to feel less trust worthy yourself. If you are constantly reminded of your lowly position in the social hierarchy, whether by individual managers or by a plethora of impersonal rules, you begin to accept that unfortunate status. To draw for a moment from an entirely different corner of my life, that part of me still attached to the biological sciences, there is ample evidence that animals-rats and monkeys, for example-that are forced into a subordinate status within their social systems adapt their brain chemistry accordingly, becoming "depressed" in humanlike ways. Their behavior is anxious and withdrawn; the level of serotonin (the neurotransmitter boosted by some antidepressants) declines in their brains. And-what is especially relevant here-they avoid fighting even in self-defense. Humans are, of course, vastly more complicated; even in situations of extreme subordination, we can pump up our self-esteem with thoughts of our families, our religion, our hopes for the future. But as much as any other social animal, and more so than many, we depend for our self-image on the humans immediately around us-to the point of altering our perceptions of the world so as to fit in with theirs. My guess is that the indignities imposed on so many low-wage workers - the drug tests, the constant surveillance, being "reamed out" by managers - are part of what keeps wages low. If you're made to feel unworthy enough, you may come to think that what you're paid is what you are actually worth. It is hard to imagine any other function for workplace authoritarianism. Managers may truly believe that, without their unremitting efforts, all work would quickly grind to a halt. That is not my impression. While I encountered some cynics and plenty of people who had learned to budget their energy, I never met an actual slacker or, for that matter, a drug addict or thief. On the contrary, I was amazed and sometimes saddened by the pride people took in jobs that rewarded them so meagerly, either in wages or in recognition. Often, in fact, these people experienced management as an obstacle to getting the job done as it should be done.