Hector Garcia Quotes

essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.

Life is not a problem to be solved. Just remember to have something that keeps you busy doing what you love while being surrounded by the people who love you.

Walk slowly and you’ll go far.

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

Concentrating on one thing at a time may be the single most important factor in achieving flow.

there is nothing wrong with enjoying life’s pleasures as long as they do not take control of your life as you enjoy them

He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit. —Aristotle

Our ikigai is different for all of us, but one thing we have in common is that we are all searching for meaning.

It’s not what happens to you, but how you react that matters.

There is no future, no past. There is only the present.

Getting back to Albert Einstein, “a happy man is too satisfied with the present to dwell on the future.”4

We have to learn to turn off the autopilot that’s steering us in an endless loop. We all know people who snack while talking on the phone or watching the news. You ask them if the omelet they just ate had onion in it, and they can’t tell you,

The happiest people are not the ones who achieve the most. They are the ones who spend more time than others in a state of flow.

We’re all going to die. Some people are scared of dying. Never be afraid to die. Because you’re born to die.

We don't create our feelings; they simply come to us, and we have to accept them. The trick is, to welcome them.

Be led by your curiosity, and keep busy by doing things that fill you with meaning and happiness.

Metabolism slows down 90 percent after 30 minutes of sitting.

Stop regretting the past and fearing the future. Today is all you have. Make the most of it. Make it worth remembering.

There is a tension between what is good for someone and what they want to do. This is because people, especially older people, like to do things as they've always done them. The problem is that when the brain develops ingrained habits, it doesn't need to think anymore. Things get done very quickly and efficiently on automatic pilot, often in a very advantageous way. This creates a tendency to stick to routines, and the only way of breaking these is to confront the brain with new information.

It is much more important to have a compass pointing to a concrete objective than to have a map.

When confronted with a big goal, try to break it down into parts and then attack each part one by one.

simply interacting with others—playing a game, for example—offers new stimuli and helps prevent the depression that can come with solitude.

To be able to concentrate for a considerable amount of time is essential to difficult achievement

Spend no more than twenty minutes on Facebook per day

a happy man is too satisfied with the present to dwell on the future.

Presented with new information, the brain creates new connections and is revitalized. This is why it is so important to expose yourself to change, even if stepping outside your comfort zone means feeling a bit of anxiety.

I think she wanted nothing from me," Hector added, "nothing at all but to let her love me.

to focus on a task we need: 1. To be in a distraction-free environment 2. To have control over what we are doing at every moment

The grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.

appreciate the beauty of imperfection as an opportunity for growth.

We don’t create the meaning of our life, as Sartre claimed—we discover it.

Being in a hurry is inversely proportional to quality of

As the quip attributed to Einstein goes, “Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That is relativity.

the people who live the longest have two dispositional traits in common: a positive attitude and a high degree of emotional awareness. In other words, those who face challenges with a positive outlook and are able to manage their emotions are already well on their way toward longevity.

If you don’t like reality, create another where you can live.

Instead of worrying about the past or the future, we should appreciate things just as they are in the moment, in the now.

Instead of searching for beauty in perfection, we should look for it in things that are flawed, incomplete.

God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, Courage to change the things which should be changed, and the Wisdom to distinguish the one from the other." - Reinhold Niebuhr

Stoicism, which centers on the idea that there is nothing wrong with enjoying life’s pleasures as long as they do not take control of your life as you enjoy them. You have to be prepared for those pleasures to disappear.

Avoid spending time doing things we don’t enjoy

Only things that are imperfect, incomplete, and ephemeral can truly be beautiful, because only those things resemble the natural world.

七転び八起き Fall seven times, rise eight. — Japanese proverb

Morita explained the idea of letting go of negative feelings with the following fable: A donkey that is tied to a post by a rope will keep walking around the post in an attempt to free itself, only to become more immobilized and attached to the post. The same thing applies to people with obsessive thinking who become more trapped in their own suffering when they try to escape from their fears and discomfort.5

His experiences as a prisoner at Auschwitz showed him that “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

The grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love and something to hope for.

There is, in fact, no word in Japanese that means retire in the sense of “leaving the workforce for good

Have a clear, concrete objective

Even those who claim to be good at multitasking are not very productive. In fact, they are some of the least productive people.

When doing business in Japan, process, manners, and how you work on something is more important than the final results

Hara hachi bu,” which is repeated before or after eating and means something like “Fill your belly to 80 percent.

What we are experiencing right now will never happen again. And therefore, we must value each moment like a beautiful treasure.

the keys to longevity are diet, exercise, finding a purpose in life (an ikigai), and forming strong social ties—

you have to accept that the world—like the people who live in it—is imperfect, but that it is still full of opportunities for growth and achievement.

Morita likened emotions to the weather: We can’t predict or control them; we can only observe them.

Getting back to Albert Einstein, “a happy man is too satisfied with the present to dwell on the future.

when you have a clear purpose, no one can stop you.

Keep going; don’t change your path.” そのままでいいがな

Just as worry often brings about precisely the thing that was feared, excessive attention to a desire (or “hyper-intention”) can keep that desire from being fulfilled.

As a rule of thumb, remind yourself: “Rituals over goals.” The happiest people are not the ones who achieve the most. They are the ones who spend more time than others in a state of flow.

One way to reach a state of mindfulness is through meditation, which helps filter the information that reaches us from the outside world. It can also be achieved through breathing exercises, yoga, and body scans.

We often think that combining tasks will save us time, but scientific evidence shows that it has the opposite effect. Even those who claim to be good at multitasking are not very productive. In fact, they are some of the least productive people. Our brains can take million bits of information but can only actually process of few dozen per second. When we say we're multitasking, what we're really doing is switching back and forth between tasks very quickly. Unfortunately, we're not computers adept at parallel processing. We end up spending all our energy alternative between tasks, instead of focusing on doing one of them well. Concentrating on one thing at a time may be the single most important factor in achieving flow.

Okinawans live by the principle of ichariba chode, a local expression that means “treat everyone like a brother, even if you’ve never met them before.” It turns out that one of the secrets to happiness of Ogimi’s residents is feeling like part of a community.

Life is pure imperfection, as the philosophy of wabi-sabi teaches us, and the passage of time shows us that everything is fleeting, but if you have a clear sense of your ikigai, each moment will hold so many possibilities that it will seem almost like an eternity.

The question to ask, as much to write a story as to write—or reinvent—the script of your life, is What if . . . ?

if you’re brave enough to do what you love, every day could be the best day of your life.

Concentrating on one thing at a time may be the single most important factor in achieving flow

Morita therapy focuses on teaching patients to accept their emotions without trying to control them, since their feelings will change as a result of their actions.

Stress: Accused of killing longevity

Sunday neurosis, for example, is what happens when, without the obligations and commitments of the workweek, the individual realizes how empty he is inside.

You are a miracle, and there has never been-- nor will there ever be--anyone like you - Pau (Pablo) Casals

Happiness is in the doing, not in the result.

komorebi—the play of sunbeams filtering through tree branches,

Happiness is always determined by your heart.” しあわせはいつも自分の心がきめる.

Can someone really retire if he is passionate about what he does?

We should never forget that everything we have and all the people we love will disappear at some point. This is something we should keep in mind, but without giving in to pessimism.

Vida sana y ordenada La comida, moderada No abusar de los remedios Buscar por todos los medios No alterarse por nada Ejercicio y diversión No tener nunca aprehensión Poco encierro, mucho trato Y continua ocupación.

the things we love are like the leaves of a tree: They can fall at any moment with a gust of wind. He also said that changes in the world around us are not accidental but rather form part of the essence of the universe

Even an elderly person can decide to wipe the slate clean and reinvent themselves, because they, too, have their whole life ahead of them. What matters isn’t how many more years we might live but what we will do with the time we have left.

Conservatism, I argue, is a male-centric strategy shaped significantly by the struggle for dominance in within-and-between group mate competitions, while liberalism is a female-centric strategy derived from the protracted demands of rearing human offspring, among other selective pressures.

Imagine that a writer has to finish a novel in three months. The objective is clear; the problem is that the writer can't stop obsessing over it. Every day she wakes up thinking, "I have to write that novel," and every day she sets about reading the newspaper and cleaning the house. Every evening she feels frustrated and promises she'll get to work the next day. Days, weeks, and months pass, and the writer still has't gotten anything down on the page, when all it would have taken was to sit down and get that first word out, then the second . . . to flow with the project, expressing their ikigai. As soon as you take these first small steps, your anxiety will disappear and you will achieve a pleasant flow in the activity you're doing.

If you don't seize the moment, it will be lost forever.

Be water, my friend.

The moment is a jealous lover that demands we give it our all. Every unrepeatable moment is a small oasis of happiness. And many oases together make an ocean of happiness.

The Buddha summed it up with perhaps his most famous saying, “Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional

If you are angry and want to fight, think about it for three days before coming to blows. After three days, the intense desire to fight will pass on its own.

To combat the excess of information, you have to focus on what is key to your project and leave everything else out.

ikigai: discovering something we become passionate about and which also comes easily to us.

Existential frustration arises when our life is without purpose, or when that purpose is skewed.

Why should Valérie be married, sharing the warmth of her bed with her husband while Hector watched the days slip away in the loneliness of his apartment?

Without meaning to, she also thought about him in other terms. Hector was hers. He was always hers, and even if she wouldn’t have him, he should remain so.

However, my wife seems to think you a perfect gentleman, and she is an excellent judge of character.” Hector was surprised to

Hector was like a castaway who had washed up on a room of velvet curtains and marble floors. The revelers might as well have been wild animals ready to tear off a chunk of his flesh.

Indeed. Innocents do not question people’s motives. You’ve come to hurt me, Hector. You’ve come to toy with us. Feel free to toy with her. But you’ll find I am not a piece you can slide across your board.

Researchers at the Heidelberg University Hospital conducted a study in which they subjected a young doctor to a job interview, which they made even more stressful by forcing him to solve complex math problems for thirty minutes. Afterward, they took a blood sample. What they discovered was that his antibodies had reacted to stress the same way they react to pathogens, activating the proteins that trigger an immune response. The problem is that this response not only neutralizes harmful agents, it also damages healthy cells, leading them to age prematurely.

A donkey that is tied to a post by a rope will keep walking around the post in an attempt to free itself, only to become more immobilized and attached to the post. The same thing applies to people with obsessive thinking who become more trapped in their own suffering when they try to escape from their fears and discomfort.

Based on his own experience, Frankl believed that our health depends on that natural tension that comes from comparing what we’ve accomplished so far with what we’d like to achieve in the future. What we need, then, is not a peaceful existence, but a challenge we can strive to meet by applying all the skills at our disposal.

We don’t create our feelings; they simply come to us, and we have to accept them. The trick is welcoming them. Morita likened emotions to the weather: We can’t predict or control them; we can only observe them. To this point, he often quoted the Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh, who would say, “Hello, solitude. How are you today? Come, sit with me, and I will care for you.

Case study: The grief-stricken doctor An elderly doctor, unable to overcome the deep depression into which he’d fallen after the death of his wife two years earlier, went to Frankl for help. Instead of giving him advice or analyzing his condition, Frankl asked him what would have happened if he had been the one who died first. The doctor, horrified, answered that it would have been terrible for his poor wife, that she would have suffered tremendously. To which Frankl responded, “You see, doctor? You have spared her all that suffering, but the price you have to pay for this is to survive, and mourn her.” The doctor didn’t say another word. He left Frankl’s office in peace, after taking the therapist’s hand in his own. He was able to tolerate the pain in place of his beloved wife. His life had been given a purpose.