How Do You Analyze Quotes

Hey," he said smiling at me pulling off his sunglasses. "Did you get me something good?" "I think so," I said trying to ignore how hard my heart was beating. Then before I could think about it or analyze or consider what I was doing I leaned over and kissed him.

Gemma talking to Charley... "Got it. Have you seen my pants?" "Speaking of which, how did you get home without them?" "I borrowed a pair of you sweats. I ran into a convenience store with them on. I talked to neighbors out in their yard when I pulled up. And only after I got inside did I realize the had 'Exit Only' written across the back." "You stole my favorite sweats?" "I wanted to die." "It's weird that sweats would make you suicidal. I'd analyze the crap out of that if I were you." "Do you actually wear those in public?" "Only when I go out in them

The central attitudes driving Mr. Sensitive are: I’m against the macho men, so I couldn’t be abusive. As long as I use a lot of “psychobabble,” no one is going to believe that I am mistreating you. I can control you by analyzing how your mind and emotions work, and what your issues are from childhood. I can get inside your head whether you want me there or not. Nothing in the world is more important than my feelings. Women should be grateful to me for not being like those other men.

He pulled back, barely a fraction, but I knew he was hurt. Why was it so easy to do that these days? For both of us. He wouldn't want to talk about something, and I'de be hurt. Or I wouldn't want to talk about something, and he'd be hurt. Or he'd invite me along with the guys, and I'd analyze every nuance of his voice and expression, worrying that he really didn't want me along, was only being polite. Or, like the other night, I'd want to comfort him, but would be worried about how he might misinterpret that. It never used to be like this. Maybe that's just part of having a close friend of the opposite sex. As a kid, you don't think anything about it. Then you're a teenager, and you can't help but think about it.

When you win, you don't examine it very much, except to congratulate yourself. You easily, and wrongly, assume it has something to do with your rare qualities as a person. But winning only measures how hard you've worked and how physically talented you are; it doesn't particularly define you beyond those characteristics. Losing on the other hand, really does say something about who you are. Among other things it measures are: do you blame others, or do you own the loss? Do you analyze your failure, or just complain about bad luck? If you're willing to examine failure, and to look not just at your outward physical performance, but your internal workings, too, losing can be valuable. How you behave in those moments can perhaps be more self-defining than winning could ever be. Sometimes losing shows you for who you really are.

If you found yourself upset at some other society’s customs, Boas argued, the truly scientific thing to do was to analyze your own reaction. It was probably a good clue to the things that your own culture held dear. The best data generator was your own sense of disgust.

She stared into the dark, motionless, envisioning again the reaction she’d seen when Madame Hasard told René that the money was gone. The way his fists had clenched on the back of his neck, the roughness of his voice that had not been from the rope. It had taken her a little time to analyze, but now she knew. What she had seen was more than shock or the loss of money. More than just pain. What she had seen was the loss of hope. And to lose hope, you must have had hope in the first place. René had been hoping to pay the fee. He’d been hoping to have her. And without the money, he thought he’d lost her. How ridiculous. What could the money have to do with it? How could René Hasard think any such thing, when it was perfectly clear that he belonged to no one but her?

Some children can tell you why they’re frightened, angry, or unhappy. For many, however, the question “Why?” only adds to their problem. In addition to their original distress, they must now analyze the cause and come up with a reasonable explanation. Very often children don’t know why they feel as they do. At other times they’re reluctant to tell because they fear that in the adult’s eyes their reason won’t seem good enough. (“For that you’re crying?”) It’s much more helpful for an unhappy youngster to hear, “I see something is making you sad,” rather than to be interrogated with “What happened?” or “Why do you feel that way?” It’s easier to talk to a grown-up who accepts what you’re feeling rather than one who presses you for explanations.

If you notice a person blinking more than six to ten times every minute while speaking with you, there is a chance that they are attracted to you.

I first met Winston Churchill in the early summer of 1906 at a dinner party to which I went as a very young girl. Our hostess was Lady Wemyss and I remember that Arthur Balfour, George Wyndman, Hilaire Belloc and Charles Whibley were among the guests… I found myself sitting next to this young man who seemed to me quite different from any other young man I had ever met. For a long time he seemed sunk in abstraction. Then he appeared to become suddenly aware of my existence. He turned on me a lowering gaze and asked me abruptly how old I was. I replied that I was nineteen. “And I,” he said despairingly, “am thirty-two already. Younger than anyone else who counts, though, “he added, as if to comfort himself. Then savagely: “Curse ruthless time! Curse our mortality. How cruelly short is this allotted span for all we must cram into it!” And he burst forth into an eloquent diatribe on the shortness of human life, the immensity of possible human accomplishment—a theme so well exploited by the poets, prophets, and philosophers of all ages that it might seem difficult to invest it with new and startling significance. Yet for me he did so, in a torrent of magnificent language which appeared to be both effortless and inexhaustible and ended up with the words I shall always remember: “We are all worms. But I do believe that I am a glow worm.” By this time I was convinced of it—and my conviction remained unshaken throughout the years that followed. Later he asked me whether I thought that words had a magic and music quite independent of their meaning. I said I certainly thought so, and I quoted as a classic though familiar instance the first lines that came into my head. Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. His eyes blazed with excitement. “Say that again,” he said, “say it again—it is marvelous!” “But I objected, “You know these lines. You know the ‘Ode to a Nightengale.’ ” He had apparently never read or heard of it before (I must, however, add that next time I met him he had not learned not merely this but all of the odes to Keats by heart—and he recited them quite mercilessly from start to finish, not sparing me a syllable). Finding that he liked poetry, I quoted to him from one of my own favorite poets, Blake. He listened avidly, repeating some lines to himself with varying emphases and stresses, then added meditatively: “I never knew that old Admiral had found so much time to write such good poetry.” I was astounded that he, with his acute susceptibility to words and power of using them, should have left such tracts of English literature entirely unexplored. But however it happened he had lost nothing by it, when he approached books it was “with a hungry, empty mind and with fairly srong jaws, and what I got I *bit*.” And his ear for the beauty of language needed no tuning fork. Until the end of dinner I listened to him spellbound. I can remember thinking: This is what people mean when they talk of seeing stars. That is what I am doing now. I do not to this day know who was on my other side. Good manners, social obligation, duty—all had gone with the wind. I was transfixed, transported into a new element. I knew only that I had seen a great light. I recognized it as the light of genius… I cannot attempt to analyze, still less transmit, the light of genius. But I will try to set down, as I remember them, some of the differences which struck me between him and all the others, young and old, whom I have known. First and foremost he was incalculable. He ran true to no form. There lurked in his every thought and world the ambush of the unexpected. I felt also that the impact of life, ideas and even words upon his mind, was not only vivid and immediate, but direct. Between him and them there was no shock absorber of vicarious thought or precedent gleaned either from books or other minds. His relationship wit

Life is a series of problems to be analyzed and addressed. How do we fix our failing schools? How do we reduce violence? These problem-centered questions are usually the wrong ones to ask. They focus on deficits, not gifts. A problem conversation tends to focus on one moment in time—the moment when a student didn’t graduate from high school, the moment when a young person commits a crime, the moment when a person is homeless. But actual lives are lived cumulatively. It takes a whole series of shocks before a person becomes homeless—loss of a job, breakdown in family relationship, maybe car problems or some transportation issue. It takes a whole series of shocks before a kid drops out of school. If you abstract away from the cumulative nature of life and define the problem as one episode, you are abstracting away from how life is lived. All conversations are either humanizing or dehumanizing, and problem-centered conversations tend to be impersonal and dehumanizing. The better community-building conversations focus on possibilities, not problems. They are questions such as, What crossroads do we stand at right now? What can we build together? How can we improve our lives together? What talents do we have here that haven’t been fully expressed?

Why would you do that? Why would you act like you didn’t know how to drive?” “Isn’t it obvious, Sage? No, of course it isn’t. I did it so I’d have a reason to be around you—one I knew you couldn’t refuse.” “But… why? Why would you want to do that?” “Why?” he asked. “Because it was the closest I could get to doing this.” He reached out and pulled me to him, one hand on my waist and the other behind my neck. He tipped my head up and lowered his lips to mine. I closed my eyes and melted as my whole body was consumed in that kiss. I was nothing. I was everything. Chills ran over my skin, and fire burned inside me. His body pressed closer to mine, and I wrapped my arms around his neck. His lips were warmer and softer than anything I could have ever imagined, yet fierce and powerful at the same time. Mine responded hungrily, and I tightened my hold on him. His fingers slid down the back of my neck, tracing its shape, and every place they touched was electric. But perhaps the best part of all was that I, Sydney Katherine Sage, guilty of constantly analyzing the world around me, well, I stopped thinking. And it was glorious.

You can’t apply academic rules to art of any kind. As soon as you begin to have rules, you begin to say, “Well, it works like this: A plus B equals C,” and then you’re absolutely, perfectly lost. You have to take the chance! You’re gambling all the time, sometimes with no idea if a story works. But the alarming thing is in the teaching of literature, laying down what the writer was doing. If you can see through it like that, the writing is no good. You can’t see through Dickens and Conrad. It’s a mystery how it’s done, even to the person doing it. If you think you know, you’re in deep, deep trouble. It’s rather like a born athlete analyzing: if you have a baseball player who can tell you exactly how he does it, then he’s not telling the truth; he doesn’t know. And I think once you lose touch with that, and believe you’re in charge, you could lose touch with the whole business of writing fiction. It’s an endless struggle to fool yourself. Just get going, that’s the important thing.

You have to get into the habit of forcing yourself to analyze, at the time you accept a task, the costs and benefits of doing a less-than-perfect job. You must ask yourself some questions: How useful would a perfect job be here? How much more useful would it be than a merely adequate job? Or even a half-assed job? And you’ve got to ask yourself: What is the probability that I will really do anything like a remotely perfect job on this? And: What difference will it make to me, and to others, whether I do or not?

People do not want to confront the existential mess that is life. They want to check things off--OK, you're OK. And just because you can talk about your grief, you know," she said, looking sharply at me, "doesn't mean you are in control of it, or that you know what's going on. You are in the ocean. And what you think, what you analyze, that is just the descanting of that ocean. Your mind is an ocean and it has scary things in it. While you may be able to analyze your grief at three p.m., that has nothing to do with how you feel at three a.m., in the dark center of night.

I dreamt that I took William Burrough’s penis and tied it up with piano wire. I hung him like a Chagall painting…In the next part J.G. Ballard swam through streets of female urine. The girls read his book Crash and then mowed him down with their Volkswagen, crushing his chest slowly against a brick wall. As he screamed in agony larger than representation can accommodate, they referred to his text and had orgasms. Later, they jumped up and down yelling, ‘You’re not a hero. You’re not a hero. You’re not. You’re not. You’re not.’ “ “How do you analyze that part of the dream, Anna?” …”I guess I’m nervous about my birthday.

1. A deep question asks about someone’s values, beliefs, judgments, or experiences—rather than just facts. Don’t ask “Where do you work?” Instead, draw out feelings or experiences: “What’s the best part of your job?” (One 2021 study found a simple approach to generating deep questions: Before speaking, imagine you’re talking to a close friend. What question would you ask?) 2. A deep question asks people to talk about how they feel. Sometimes this is easy: “How do you feel about …?” Or, we can prompt people to describe specific emotions: “Did it make you happy when …?” Or ask someone to analyze a situation’s emotions: “Why do you think he got angry?” Or empathize: “How would you feel if that happened to you?” 3. Asking a deep question should feel like sharing. It should feel, a bit, like we’re revealing something about ourselves when we ask a deep question. This feeling might give us pause. But studies show people are nearly always happy to have been asked, and to have answered, a deep question.

Many of us have become habitual overthinkers because it gives us the illusion that we’re doing something about the problem we’re overthinking about. So, if James is worried about his health, it’s natural that him overthinking endlessly about the various causes and solutions makes it seem like he’s trying to get to the bottom of the issue. But the truth is that overthinking often doesn’t lead anywhere, because the overthinker gets trapped in the cycle of analyzing, rejecting, and reconsidering different possibilities. It’s like scratching an itch that just won’t go away. You can scratch it to feel some momentary relief, but it won’t make the itching stop despite how good scratching might feel.

Cheat propped his elbows on his knees and gazed up at Kestrel. He scrutinized her: the long, loosely clasped hands, the folds of her dress. Kestrel’s clothes had mysteriously appeared in the suite’s wardrobe, probably while she had slept, and she was glad. The dueling ensemble had served well enough, but wearing a dress fit for society made Kestrel feel ready for different kinds of battle. “Where is Arin?” Cheat said. “In the mountains.” “Doing what?” “I don’t know. I imagine that, since the Valorian reinforcements will come through the mountain pass, he is analyzing its values and drawbacks as a battleground.” Cheat gave her a gleeful smirk. “Does it bother you, being a traitor?” “I don’t see how I am.” “You just confirmed that the reinforcements will come through the pass. Thank you.” “It’s hardly worth thanking me,” she said. “Almost every useful ship in the empire has been sent east, which means there is no other way into the city. Anyone with brains could figure that out, which is why Arin is in the mountains, and you are here.” A flush began to build under Cheat’s skin.

Who then is to judge what is good, true, and beautiful? You are. Plato says it is the soul: the proper dimensions and proportions are already stored in our minds, and when we recognize the good, true, and beautiful-- how is it that we do it? It is by anamnesis, the act of recalling what we have seen somewhere before. You must have received an impression of what is right somewhere else, because you recognize it instantly; you don't have to have it analyzed; you don't have to say, "That is beautiful," or "That is ugly"; you welcome it as an old acquaintance. We recognize what is lovely because we have seen it somewhere else, and as we walk through the world, we are constantly on the watch for it with a kind of nostalgia, so that when we see an object or a person that pleases us, it is like recognizing an old friend.

You think far too much.” “Excuse me? You don’t know me.” “I can see the wheels turning, babe. You’re analyzing everything I say, filtering yourself. I can tell by your answers to my questions. You’re so guarded.” “I--” “Sorry, not guarded. I meant: uptight. You’re uptight. You need to get laid.” “How dare you? How do you even know that I haven’t--?” “Oh, trust me, I know. It’s blatantly obvious. You’re wound so tight.

People should want to do things for you just because they want to and not what they can get out of it. This is one of the most common forms of manipulation. You feel like someone is being nice to you and doing things for you when you need them. But there always seems to be a catch or something involved. If you don’t adhere to those stipulations, then they make you feel ungrateful, like you are taking advantage of their kindness.

The label “jack-of-all-trades but master of none” is normally meant to be derogatory, implying that the labelee lacks the focus to really dive into a subject and master it. But, when your online shopping application is on the fritz and you’re losing orders by the hundreds as each hour passes, it’s the jack-of-all-trades who not only knows how the application’s code works but can also do low-level UNIX debugging of your web server processes, analyze your RDBMS’s configuration for potential performance bottlenecks, and check your network’s router configuration for hard-to-find problems. And, more important, after finding the problem, the jack-of-all-trades can quickly make architecture and design decisions, implement code fixes, and deploy a new fixed system to production. In this scenario, the manufacturing scenario seems quaint at best and critically flawed at worst.

When the unexpected gets dumped on you, don’t waste time. Don’t figure out how or why it happened. Don’t recriminate. Don’t figure out whose fault it is. Don’t work out how to avoid the same mistake next time. All of that you do later. If you survive. First of all you evaluate. Analyze the situation. Identify the downside. Assess the upside. Plan accordingly. Do all that and you give yourself a better chance of getting through to the other stuff later.

Women often make communication mistakes that undermine their irresistibility and send men running faster than you can say, “Marriage and kids!” First of all, most of us don’t really listen. What we do is judge whether we like or dislike what a man is saying to us, decide whether we agree or disagree with what he’s saying, or determine whether we know it already. We also listen to see if what he is saying fits our agenda (like our agenda to have a boyfriend, get married, or have kids). This is not true listening. True listening happens when you drop those internal conversations in your mind and simply hear what a man is saying to you from his perspective, as though what he is saying is the most important thing on earth and you need to hear every single word. You don’t interpret, analyze, or read into it. You don’t say, “In other words . . .,” and go on to put into words what you think he means. You just take it in. When you truly listen, you become instantly attractive. By really hearing a man, you make him feel special and cared for in a very powerful way. If there’s genuine chemistry between you, he’ll continue to share more and more of himself because of how open and receptive you are to who he actually is (not who you are trying to get him to be). I cannot emphasize this point enough. If you really want to make every man want you, become a masterful listener.

Leading Questions This involves the dark persuader questions that trigger some response from the victim. A persuader may ask a question like, “do you really think so-and-so is that mean?” This question implies that the person being referred to is bad in one way or another. An example of a non-leading question is, “what do you think about so-and-so?” When using leading questions, dark persuaders ensure that they are carefully worded. Dark persuaders know that once the victim feels like they are being led in order to trigger a certain response from them, they will become more resistant to being persuaded. When the manipulator gets a feeling that the victim appears to be catching on, they will immediately change tactics and return to asking the leading questions only when the victim has dropped their guard. This is a tactic commonly used in interviews or during interrogation, such as when police is questioning a suspect.

There are three things you must remember about a woman. Never take her for granted. Never think you know what she is thinking. And never think you know what she will do in a given situation. A woman is like smoke. She will curl seductively around you one moment, burn your eyes the next, tickle your throat until you cough, and then poof! She is gone. She is a mirage. She is a thunderstorm. She is a sailboat on a sunny mirrored lake. She will run when you reach for her, and come to you when you wish her away. You can solve a problem. You can analyze logic. You can explain how vapor turns into water. But you cannot understand the mind of a woman. And do you know why? Because she does not understand herself." "Then what do you do?" "You love her and deal with her in all honesty. You earn her trust. And then you trust the Almighty, who made women the way they are, believing that He knew what He was doing." "What if that doesn't help?" "Blame Him.

will hear this advice over and over again. Repeated ad nauseam from the pulpit and prestige publications, like The Atlantic, where Arthur Brooks chides couples to see marriage not as a “me” but a “we” and not to get all caught up on who is doing more of the work, because sometimes marriage is like that. You just have to work. But whose work? Who is responsible for the repair and maintenance of a marriage? Who buys the self-help books? Who goes to the conferences and pushes their partner into therapy? In a 2019 study, sociologist Allison Daminger found that women carry the majority of the cognitive load in their relationships. Meaning women are the ones noticing, analyzing, and monitoring the issues in a marriage. Daminger broke down the concept of mental load into four parts: anticipating, identifying, deciding, and monitoring. The aspects of cognitive load where Daminger noticed that women do most of the work was in anticipation and monitoring. Women are thinking of the problems, working to solve them, and monitoring them for success.

Michael Stelzner, founder of Social Media Examiner, says it best:     It’s hard work. I’m not going to lie. Anyone who tells you that it’s really easy to build a content business is not telling you the truth. You have to accept the fact that this is going to be grueling, difficult, time consuming, and laborious work. But if you’re willing to roll up your sleeves and get dirty, and are willing to constantly analyze what you’re doing and scrap what doesn’t work and continue what does work, and keep at it, you can be very, very successful.

You think too much," Lucas said to me on the banks of the White River the next day. "I think too much?" I asked, my voice raised. "Yeah. You can't just sit back and relax without analyzing every little thing," he said. "That's what you do, Lucas!" I said. "Only sometimes," he said back. "Just as much as I do, I'd say." "Whatever. That's not the point. The point is, you - sorry, we need to learn how to just calm down and take everything in before trying to pick it all apart." "Why?" I asked. "Because we always end up ruinin' it before it begins.

I looked through her phone a couple of times when she was in the shower, searching for text messages, but found nothing. If she’d received any incriminating texts, she had deleted them. She wasn’t stupid, apparently, just occasionally careless. It was possible I’d never know the truth. I might never find out. In a way, I hoped I wouldn’t. Kathy peered at me as we sat on the couch after the walk. “Are you all right?” “What do you mean?” “I don’t know. You seem a bit flat.” “Today?” “Not just today. Recently.” I evaded her eyes. “Just work. I’ve got a lot on my mind.” Kathy nodded. A sympathetic squeeze of my hand. She was a good actress. I could almost believe she cared. “How are rehearsals going?” “Better. Tony came up with some good ideas. We’re going to work late next week to go over them.” “Right.” I no longer believed a word she said. I analyzed every sentence, the way I would with a patient. I was looking for subtext, reading between the lines for nonverbal clues—subtle inflections, evasions, omissions. Lies. “How is Tony?” “Fine.” She shrugged, as if to indicate she couldn’t care less. I didn’t believe that.

Are you bothered because he says he could see us together? Or is there something else?” Sam's voice had grown quieter with that last question. Devin looked up from the board to see something he'd never thought he'd see from Sam. An expression that, on anyone else, would've been more than curious. It was open, vulnerable. A naked longing that disappeared as soon as Devin was sure he knew what it was, to be replaced by Sam pressing his lips together and looking down at the board again. Wow. Okay. That made this conversation a hell of a lot more interesting. Maybe Sam had spent so much time analyzing Devin because he wanted to know if he had a chance. Devin wasn't sure how he felt about that. “I'm not in love with the idea that you guys have talked about me,” Devin said. “It's strange.” “I'm sorry our conversation made you feel that way,” Sam said. “I honestly wouldn't have said anything if you didn't want to know.” “I know, I asked for it,” Devin responded. “About...us.” Dev looked up in time to see Sam's expression change before the mask slid back into place. “You don't think it's weird?” Sam's lips trembled as he fought down a smile. “I think,” he began, reaching across the table, “life is full of possibilities.” He touched the back of Devin's hand with the tips of his fingers, gently stroking the skin. “If this isn't one you want to take advantage of, then you shouldn't feel pressured to do so.” It wasn't Devin's imagination that the temperature in the room had risen. It was one thing when Sam was getting into his head on a purely academic level. It was another thing when Sam looked at him from beneath thick lashes as if he could unravel Devin from the inside out if given half the chance. And he so wanted that chance. Holy hell. The little nerd was trying to seduce him.

In summary, listen to your “gut feeling,” especially in potentially dangerous situations. If you are a woman and have been asked out on a date or approached by a man who causes a sense something is wrong -don’t do it! If you are with your family and are driving or walking through a neighborhood and you sense something is wrong, don’t go there. If you are in a business deal and you sense your contact is deceiving you, listen to your intuition. Practice listening to this lightning fast retrieval of data, learn how to analyze it for accuracy and how to appropriately act on it. It could save your life.

One day, Carmona had an idea. Axcom had been employing various approaches to using their pricing data to trade, including relying on breakout signals. They also used simple linear regressions, a basic forecasting tool relied upon by many investors that analyzes the relationships between two sets of data or variables under the assumption those relationships will remain linear. Plot crude-oil prices on the x-axis and the price of gasoline on the y-axis, place a straight regression line through the points on the graph, extend that line, and you usually can do a pretty good job predicting prices at the pump for a given level of oil price.

Here’s a simple definition of ideology: “A set of beliefs about the proper order of society and how it can be achieved.”8 And here’s the most basic of all ideological questions: Preserve the present order, or change it? At the French Assembly of 1789, the delegates who favored preservation sat on the right side of the chamber, while those who favored change sat on the left. The terms right and left have stood for conservatism and liberalism ever since. Political theorists since Marx had long assumed that people chose ideologies to further their self-interest. The rich and powerful want to preserve and conserve; the peasants and workers want to change things (or at least they would if their consciousness could be raised and they could see their self-interest properly, said the Marxists). But even though social class may once have been a good predictor of ideology, that link has been largely broken in modern times, when the rich go both ways (industrialists mostly right, tech billionaires mostly left) and so do the poor (rural poor mostly right, urban poor mostly left). And when political scientists looked into it, they found that self-interest does a remarkably poor job of predicting political attitudes.9 So for most of the late twentieth century, political scientists embraced blank-slate theories in which people soaked up the ideology of their parents or the TV programs they watched.10 Some political scientists even said that most people were so confused about political issues that they had no real ideology at all.11 But then came the studies of twins. In the 1980s, when scientists began analyzing large databases that allowed them to compare identical twins (who share all of their genes, plus, usually, their prenatal and childhood environments) to same-sex fraternal twins (who share half of their genes, plus their prenatal and childhood environments), they found that the identical twins were more similar on just about everything.12 And what’s more, identical twins reared in separate households (because of adoption) usually turn out to be very similar, whereas unrelated children reared together (because of adoption) rarely turn out similar to each other, or to their adoptive parents; they tend to be more similar to their genetic parents. Genes contribute, somehow, to just about every aspect of our personalities.13 We’re not just talking about IQ, mental illness, and basic personality traits such as shyness. We’re talking about the degree to which you like jazz, spicy foods, and abstract art; your likelihood of getting a divorce or dying in a car crash; your degree of religiosity, and your political orientation as an adult. Whether you end up on the right or the left of the political spectrum turns out to be just as heritable as most other traits: genetics explains between a third and a half of the variability among people on their political attitudes.14 Being raised in a liberal or conservative household accounts for much less. How can that be? How can there be a genetic basis for attitudes about nuclear power, progressive taxation, and foreign aid when these issues only emerged in the last century or two? And how can there be a genetic basis for ideology when people sometimes change their political parties as adults? To answer these questions it helps to return to the definition of innate that I gave in chapter 7. Innate does not mean unmalleable; it means organized in advance of experience. The genes guide the construction of the brain in the uterus, but that’s only the first draft, so to speak. The draft gets revised by childhood experiences. To understand the origins of ideology you have to take a developmental perspective, starting with the genes and ending with an adult voting for a particular candidate or joining a political protest. There are three major steps in the process. Step

The happiest person on earth isn’t always happy. In fact, the happiest people all have their fair share of low moods, problems, disappointments, and heartache. Often the difference between a person who is happy and someone who is unhappy isn’t how often they get low, or even how low they drop, but instead, it’s what they do with their low moods. How do they relate to their changing feelings? Most people have it backward. When they are feeling down, they roll up their sleeves and get to work. They take their low moods very seriously and try to figure out and analyze what’s wrong. They try to force themselves out of their low state, which tends to compound the problem rather than solve it. When you observe peaceful, relaxed people, you find that when they are feeling good, they are very grateful. They understand that both positive and negative feelings come and go, and that there will come a time when they won’t be feeling so good. To happy people, this is okay, it’s the way of things. They accept the inevitability of passing feelings. So, when they are feeling depressed, angry, or stressed out, they relate to these feelings with the same openness and wisdom. Rather than fight their feelings and panic simply because they are feeling bad, they accept their feelings, knowing that this too shall pass. Rather than stumbling and fighting against their negative feelings, they are graceful in their acceptance of them. This allows them to come gently and gracefully out of negative feeling states into more positive states of mind. One of the happiest people I know is someone who also gets quite low from time to time. The difference, it seems, is that he has become comfortable with his low moods. It’s almost as though he doesn’t really care because he knows that, in due time, he will be happy again. To him, it’s no big deal. The next time you’re feeling bad, rather than fight it, try to relax. See if, instead of panicking, you can be graceful and calm. Know that if you don’t fight your negative feelings, if you are graceful, they will pass away just as surely as the sun sets in the evening.

Gentlemen, it is not my place to tell you how to do your jobs. I am a scientist, not a congressman. My task is to raise questions, carefully record observations, and vigorously analyze the dat, in hopes that others might raise more questions after me. There cannot be science the interrogation of closely held beliefs, as well as the demolition of personal aversions and biases, There cannot be science without free and unfettered dissemination of the truth. When you, as the creators of policy, seek to use your power to curtail understanding and thwart free exchange of knowledge and ideas, it is not I who will suffer the consequences of this, but rather the whole nation, and, indeed, the the entire world.

A tender fan of white threads surfaced up through the dirt, speaking in a hundred tiny whispers. 'It's true. My god, your ignorance about the flora and fauna of the Amazon -- staggering. Do you know there are four thousand species of trees alone that none of your scientists have even named, much less analyzed? You have any idea how many fungi? I heard you finally 'found' a few new species of electric eels, that cobalt-blue tarantula, a couple of new river dolphins. I think also a tree that's a hundred feet taller than the tallest tree you thought you knew of. At what point do you rethink your whole idea that these are 'discoveries?' How does that word even have any meaning for you? Something exists just because you finally 'found' it? You 'discovered' it?

I use this method with just about every choice I make these days, including deciding which speaking engagement to accept if the dates overlap, or even whether to accept a new project. Before I commit to anything, I imagine myself in each situation, and then I accept only the ones that bring me a feeling of joy, passion, or purpose—the ones that make me happiest. “Most of us are taught to evaluate choices by analyzing with our minds, like making lists of the pros and cons for each choice, and then choosing the option with the longest list of pros. But even if you go with that, how do you feel doing it? Does it make your heart sing? Does it fill you with passion? Or are you filled instead with anxiety, waiting for it to be over, instead of looking forward to doing it?

Cheat propped his elbows on his knees and gazed up at Kestrel. He scrutinized her: the long, loosely clasped hands, the folds of her dress. Kestrel’s clothes had mysteriously appeared in the suite’s wardrobe, probably while she had slept, and she was glad. The dueling ensemble had served well enough, but wearing a dress fit for society made Kestrel feel ready for different kinds of battle. “Where is Arin?” Cheat said. “In the mountains.” “Doing what?” “I don’t know. I imagine that, since the Valorian reinforcements will come through the mountain pass, he is analyzing its values and drawbacks as a battleground.” Cheat gave her a gleeful smirk. “Does it bother you, being a traitor?” “I don’t see how I am.” “You just confirmed that the reinforcements will come through the pass. Thank you.” “It’s hardly worth thanking me,” she said. “Almost every useful ship in the empire has been sent east, which means there is no other way into the city. Anyone with brains could figure that out, which is why Arin is in the mountains, and you are here.” A flush began to build under Cheat’s skin. He said, “My feet are dusty.” Kestrel had no idea how to respond to that. “Wash them,” he said. “What?” He took off his boots, stretched out his legs, and leaned back against the bench. Kestrel, who had been quite still, became stone. “It’s Herrani custom for the lady of the house to wash the feet of special guests,” said Cheat. “Even if such a custom existed, it died ten years ago. And I’m not the lady of the house.” “No, you’re a slave. You’ll do as I command.

In their book American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us, political scientists Robert Putnam and David Campbell analyzed a variety of data sources to describe how religious and nonreligious Americans differ. Common sense would tell you that the more time and money people give to their religious groups, the less they have left over for everything else. But common sense turns out to be wrong. Putnam and Campbell found that the more frequently people attend religious services, the more generous and charitable they become across the board.58 Of course religious people give a lot to religious charities, but they also give as much as or more than secular folk to secular charities such as the American Cancer Society.59 They spend a lot of time in service to their churches and synagogues, but they also spend more time than secular folk serving in neighborhood and civic associations of all sorts. Putnam and Campbell put their findings bluntly: By many different measures religiously observant Americans are better neighbors and better citizens than secular Americans—they are more generous with their time and money, especially in helping the needy, and they are more active in community life.60 Why are religious people better neighbors and citizens? To find out, Putnam and Campbell included on one of their surveys a long list of questions about religious beliefs (e.g., “Do you believe in hell? Do you agree that we will all be called before God to answer for our sins?”) as well as questions about religious practices (e.g., “How often do you read holy scriptures? How often do you pray?”). These beliefs and practices turned out to matter very little. Whether you believe in hell, whether you pray daily, whether you are a Catholic, Protestant, Jew, or Mormon … none of these things correlated with generosity. The only thing that was reliably and powerfully associated with the moral benefits of religion was how enmeshed people were in relationships with their co-religionists. It’s the friendships and group activities, carried out within a moral matrix that emphasizes selflessness. That’s what brings out the best in people. Putnam and Campbell reject the New Atheist emphasis on belief and reach a conclusion straight out of Durkheim: “It is religious belongingness that matters for neighborliness, not religious believing.”61

Noelle, stop.” I nudge her with my shoulder. “You are a fucking delight. Of course we want you here.” “What Quinn said,” Julia adds. She visibly exhales. “Okay. Excellent. Sorry. I have really bad social anxiety. Like… do you ever get home from hanging out with people and immediately start analyzing everything you did and convincing yourself all of it was completely wrong? I’m positive at any given time that eighty percent of my friends don’t actually like me.” “Try ninety percent,” I counter, and she laughs. “I have anxiety too. I take medication for it, actually, and I’ve been in therapy, too. I don’t go as often anymore, but it helps.” Noelle nods like talking about therapy is the most normal thing in the world, and it should be. “Me too!” And she holds her hand out for a therapy high five. “I’m not even going to stress about how dorky it was to do a therapy high five.

Imagine yourself having a fight with your romantic partner. The tension of the situation makes your limbic system run at full throttle and you become flooded with stress hormones like cortisol and adrenalin. The high levels of these chemicals suddenly make you so damn angry, that you burst out in front of your partner saying, “I wish you die, so that I can have some peace in my life”. Given the stress of the situation through highly active limbic system, your PFC loses its freedom to take the right decision and you burst out with foul language in front of your partner, that may ruin your relationship. In simple terms due to your mental instability, you lost your free will to make the right decision. But when the conversation is over, and you relax for a while, your stress hormone levels come down to normal, and you regain your usual cheerful state of mind. Immediately, your PFC starts analyzing the explosive conversation you had with your partner. Healthy activity of the entire frontal lobes, especially the PFC suddenly overwhelms you with a feeling of guilt. Your brain makes you realize, that you have done something devilish. As a result, now you find yourself making the willful decision of apologizing to your partner and making up to him or her, no matter how much effort it takes, because your PFC comes up the solution that it is the healthiest thing to do for your personal life. From this you can see, that what you call free will is something that is not consistent. It changes based on your mental health. Mental instability or illness, truly cripples your free will. And the healthier your frontal lobes are, the better you can take good decisions. And the most effective way to keep your frontal lobes healthy is to practice some kind of meditation.

Buddhist Psychology You can use enlightening Buddhist practices to transform your life. Unfortunately, many people do not know it, but the Buddhist Dharma, or teaching, is actually a scientific system of psychology, developed in India and further refined in Tibet. It is a psychology that works. I call it a „joyous science of the heart“ because it is based on the idea that while unenlightened life is full of suffering, you are completely capable of escaping from that suffering. You can get well. In fact, you already are well; you just need to awaken to that fact. And how do you do this? By analyzing your thought patterns. When you do, you realize that you are full of „misknowledge“ - misunderstandings of yourself and the world that lead to anger, discontent, and fear. The target of Buddhist practice and the constant theme of this book is the primal misconception that you are the center of the universe, that your „self“ is a fixed, constant, and bounded entity. When you meditate on enlightened insights into the true nature of reality and the boundlessness of the self, you develop new habits of thinking. You free yourself from the constraints of your habitual mind. In other words, you teach yourself to think differently. This in turn leads you to act differently. And voila! You are on the path to happiness, fulfillment, and even enlightenment. The battle for happiness is fought and won or lost primarily within the mind. The mind is the absolute key, both to enlightenment and to life. When your mind is peaceful, aware, and under your command, you will be securely happy. When your mind is unaware of its true nature, constantly in turmoil, and in command of you, you will suffer endlessly. This is the whole secret of the Dharma. If you recognize delusion, greed, anger, envy, and pride as the main enemies of your well-being and learn to focus your mind on overcomming them, you can install wisdom, generosity, tolerance, love, and altruism in their place. This is where enlightened psychology can be most useful. Psychology and philosophy are really one entity in Buddhism. They are called the inner science, the science of the human interior. In the flow of Indian history, it is fair to say that the Buddha was a great explorer of the human interior rather than some sort of religious prophet. He came into the world at a time when people were just beginning to experiment with self-exploration, but mostly in an escapist way, using their focus on the inner world to run away from the sufferings of life by entering a supposed realm of absolute quiet far removed from everday existence. The Buddha started out exploring that way too, but then realized the futility of escapism and discovered instead a way of being happier here and now. (pp. 32-33)

How about that. My struggles with C-PTSD made me more empathetic. They made me more attuned to what people needed and uniquely skilled in comforting them. Even the negative parts of my C-PTSD had a silver lining. It was true that when Joey was angry or upset, I had a hard time sitting with his pain and never let him sulk in peace. Instead, I'd nag and badger him until he told me exactly what was up. Once, fed up with me pawing at him like a squirrel analyzing a nut, he yelled, "Can't you just say, 'Hear you, that sucks' instead of trying to solve all of my problems? Not everything needs solving!" But days afterward, once he was feeling better, Joey often thanked me. "In the end, because you pester me, I tell you things I don't tell anyone else. And then the talks we have about my feelings change me for the better," he told me. "Nobody makes me feel cared for as much as you do." I wasn't loved in spite of my C-PTSD--but in part, because of it.

It has been noted in various quarters that the half-illiterate Italian violin maker Antonio Stradivari never recorded the exact plans or dimensions for how to make one of his famous instruments. This might have been a commercial decision (during the earliest years of the 1700s, Stradivari’s violins were in high demand and open to being copied by other luthiers). But it might also have been because, well, Stradivari didn’t know exactly how to record its dimensions, its weight, and its balance. I mean, he knew how to create a violin with his hands and his fingers but maybe not in figures he kept in his head. Today, those violins, named after the Latinized form of his name, Stradivarius, are considered priceless. It is believed there are only around five hundred of them still in existence, some of which have been submitted to the most intense scientific examination in an attempt to reproduce their extraordinary sound quality. But no one has been able to replicate Stradivari’s craftsmanship. They’ve worked out that he used spruce for the top, willow for the internal blocks and linings, and maple for the back, ribs, and neck. They’ve figured out that he also treated the wood with several types of minerals, including potassium borate, sodium and potassium silicate, as well as a handmade varnish that appears to have been composed of gum arabic, honey, and egg white. But they still can’t replicate a Stradivarius. The genius craftsman never once recorded his technique for posterity. Instead, he passed on his knowledge to a number of his apprentices through what the philosopher Michael Polyani called “elbow learning.” This is the process where a protégé is trained in a new art or skill by sitting at the elbow of a master and by learning the craft through doing it, copying it, not simply by reading about it. The apprentices of the great Stradivari didn’t learn their craft from books or manuals but by sitting at his elbow and feeling the wood as he felt it to assess its length, its balance, and its timbre right there in their fingertips. All the learning happened at his elbow, and all the knowledge was contained in his fingers. In his book Personal Knowledge, Polyani wrote, “Practical wisdom is more truly embodied in action than expressed in rules of action.”1 By that he meant that we learn as Stradivari’s protégés did, by feeling the weight of a piece of wood, not by reading the prescribed measurements in a manual. Polyani continues, To learn by example is to submit to authority. You follow your master because you trust his manner of doing things even when you cannot analyze and account in detail for its effectiveness. By watching the master and emulating his efforts in the presence of his example, the apprentice unconsciously picks up the rules of the art, including those which are not explicitly known to the master himself. These hidden rules can be assimilated only by a person who surrenders himself to that extent uncritically to the imitation of another.

When we live intensely, we run more risks and we become more fragile. We already know that people who do nothing suffer nothing. But avoiding doing things out of fear of getting hurt is not a path to growth. When we mix our fears with reality, we are limiting ourselves. Don’t forget that the decisions we don’t make also cause us pain. Be careful about how you interpret what happens to you. If you don’t have an explanation that brings you peace, don’t make one up. What causes one kind of emotional pain to be more intense than another? Well, it depends on the emotional attachment to the source of the pain. What hurts more intensely is what directly affects us or the people we love. What hurts more is what affects our greatest aspirations and objectives. We are more easily hurt by what affects our desires or fears, and the more intense our desire, the more painful our frustration when we do not achieve it. The emotional involvement determines and explains the intensity of our pain. The greater the emotional involvement, the greater the pain. When pain comes in the door, perspective goes out the window, taking with it our ability to reason properly, to analyze events, and to make good decisions. Each time you remember what happened you transform what happened. None of our experiences is in vain if we are capable of learning from what happened to us and from the suffering and pain it caused us. But we won’t be able to learn from what happened if we don’t look back and review our experiences. Carrying your past is like carrying a huge backpack full of stones that prevents you from walking freely. But to walk through life all you need is a bit of water and food, a dream, and a destination—and, in a pinch, you can probably do without a destination. Let bygones be bygones, learn from what happened, and bring that chapter to a close. Your beliefs feed your decisions, your fears, and your desires. Knowledge will set you free, so make an effort to learn, study, read, travel.

I am against the mass media ‐ CBS, ABC, NBC, UPI and AP being used by Washington D.C. since WWI, and by the CIA wince WWII, as pure propaganda tools. My positive philosophy is very simple. I believe there is in each of us a potential for peace and harmony. A few power‐mad perverts dictate orders that must be challenged. They are going against the laws of nature. A family and society that does not care for its infants with love and affection will create and does produce mad bombers. The source of this peace and harmony is within the family unit, not government agents or law enforcement. Without love in the home there is never quiet in the community, cities or around the world. There are ways to counteract the evil being purposely planned. Study history. Separate fears and prejudices from facts. Recognize facts from propaganda. Invest energy in fighting for what you believe in. Analyze harder where we are going and what you are doing about it. What do you really believe in? How much do we care?

Behavior Rehearsal Behavior rehearsal is practicing your actions until you feel confident about them. The first step is to visualize the ideal situation. Imagine the scenario and see yourself feeling relaxed and comfortable. Imagine others reacting positively and think about what you will say and do. It may also help to write out the scenario in your journal. Sometimes writing down what you want to say “cements” it in your mind. Next, practice what you imagined. It may help to do this with a friend or family member acting as the other characters. For instance, if you are afraid to call about a job opening, rehearse what you want to say with your mom or dad playing the role of the employer. Or, if you are going to an event where you do not know many people, practice with a sibling introducing yourself to a stranger. Pay special attention to the various maladaptive thoughts and expectations you may have regarding the situation. Analyze them and explore how realistic they are. Once you feel you have a handle on the situation, develop a few coping statements for extra support.

1. Get the facts. 2. Analyze the facts. 3. Arrive at a decision—and then act on that decision   Obvious stuff? Yes, Aristotle taught it—and used it. And you and I must use it too if we are going to solve the problems that are harassing us and turning our days and nights into veritable hells. Let’s take the first rule: Get the facts. Why is it so important to get the facts? Because unless we have the facts we can’t possibly even attempt to solve our problem intelligently. Without the facts, all we can do is stew around in confusion. My idea? No, that was the idea of the late Herbert E. Hawkes, Dean of Columbia College, Columbia University, for twenty-two years. He had helped two hundred thousand students solve their worry problems; and he told me that “confusion is the chief cause of worry.” He put it this way—he said: “Half the worry in the world is caused by people trying to make decisions before they have sufficient knowledge on which to base a decision. For example,” he said, “if I have a problem which has to be faced at three o’clock next Tuesday, I refuse to even try to make a decision about it until next Tuesday arrives. In the meantime, I concentrate on getting all the facts that bear on the problem. I don’t worry,” he said. “I don’t agonize over my problem. I don’t lose any sleep. I simply concentrate on getting the facts. And by the time Tuesday rolls around, if I’ve got all the facts the problem usually solves itself!

Rebecca Wallace-Segall, who teaches creative-writing workshops for kids and teens as director of Writopia Lab in New York City, says that the students who sign up for her classes “are often not the kids who are willing to talk for hours about fashion and celebrity. Those kids are less likely to come, perhaps because they’re less inclined to analyze and dig deep—that’s not their comfort zone. The so-called shy kids are often hungry to brainstorm ideas, deconstruct them, and act on them, and, paradoxically, when they’re allowed to interact this way, they’re not shy at all. They’re connecting with each other, but in a deeper zone, in a place that’s considered boring or tiresome by some of their peers.” And these kids do “come out” when they’re ready; most of the Writopia kids read their works at local bookstores, and a staggering number win prestigious national writing competitions. If your child is prone to overstimulation, then it’s also a good idea for her to pick activities like art or long-distance running, that depend less on performing under pressure. If she’s drawn to activities that require performance, though, you can help her thrive. When I was a kid, I loved figure skating. I could spend hours on the rink, tracing figure eights, spinning happily, or flying through the air. But on the day of my competitions, I was a wreck. I hadn’t slept the night before and would often fall during moves that I had sailed through in practice. At first I believed what people told me—that I had the jitters, just like everybody else. But then I saw a TV interview with the Olympic gold medalist Katarina Witt. She said that pre-competition nerves gave her the adrenaline she needed to win the gold. I knew then that Katarina and I were utterly different creatures, but it took me decades to figure out why. Her nerves were so mild that they simply energized her, while mine were constricting enough to make me choke. At the time, my very supportive mother quizzed the other skating moms about how their own daughters handled pre-competition anxiety, and came back with insights that she hoped would make me feel better. Kristen’s nervous too, she reported. Renée’s mom says she’s scared the night before a competition. But I knew Kristen and Renée well, and I was certain that they weren’t as frightened as I was

First experiences in life are very important. I never analyzed you, I always saw you. I never judged you, I always grasped you. When I left, I became lost. I was working, living, performing but you were missing, I don’t know why? I seriously don't understand why you are impacting so much on me? Can you clear in future if you have answer? We never talked too much but why this pain of departure is there? I have tried to forget you a lot, tried to delete the contact, tried to full concentrate on my life, sometime cried but there was not a single day when I didn't think about you. Am I really over thinker? I failed in your case, I failed. I have to accept the reality that to be good with you is the only solution which can make me happy & stable. Wherever I'll be in life, but this connectivity is necessary now. It is a part of life. I have so many questions for you. Have you ever missed me like I do? Everyday? I felt it, was that true? Do you really like to hear me? Or you are also in me? Or you are trying to suggest me some future planning? Are you shy? Less talker? You always tried to be open up with me? I always maintained safe distance? Was I too reserved? Was I egoistic? Yes, I was, but only in your case. Whatever you did for me that all was unsaid, pure, clear, fair. You were always nice to me? You never scold me, is this your part of nature? I heard so many cases of your temper? I never asked about you to people, they used to tell me about you by their own. Can I suggest you something? You are smart thinker but be careful from the people. Never be too kind to anyone, not all people have value of it. People never learn from the mistakes; they don’t want to create; they want to copy. I would say, don’t kind to me too, I have said so many things to you. I never seen so calm person. How? Do you have emotions? neutral? You never think on the things? Are you so productive? Are you innocent (in case of people)? Why can’t you understand that people makes show off in front of you only? Why are you giving so much importance to commerce people? Are they intelligent than engineers? Do you think so? Am I asking you so many questions? I really care for you & your selection of people. What are you actually see in the people? Obviously it’s your choice to answer it or not? At least I can ask my questions. Did I make a mistake according to you? For me, I was right, but I never asked you about you. As you said, I never gave you chance. For me, you are the chance giver & I am chance taker. I was scared by you. Did I hurt you? Hope I never made loss of you in any manner. I want to clear you one thing that apart from all my shit thinking, if you need any kind of assistance then please feel free to share. So what I have confess my love to you? It’s fine? Right? It’s natural, I had tried to control it a lot. Now I am more transparent, shameless & confident. I can face you in any condition. This change has changed my life.

As the subject watches the movies, the MRI machine creates a 3-D image of the blood flow within the brain. The MRI image looks like a vast collection of thirty thousand dots, or voxels. Each voxel represents a pinpoint of neural energy, and the color of the dot corresponds to the intensity of the signal and blood flow. Red dots represent points of large neural activity, while blue dots represent points of less activity. (The final image looks very much like thousands of Christmas lights in the shape of the brain. Immediately you can see that the brain is concentrating most of its mental energy in the visual cortex, which is located at the back of the brain, while watching these videos.) Gallant’s MRI machine is so powerful it can identify two to three hundred distinct regions of the brain and, on average, can take snapshots that have one hundred dots per region of the brain. (One goal for future generations of MRI technology is to provide an even sharper resolution by increasing the number of dots per region of the brain.) At first, this 3-D collection of colored dots looks like gibberish. But after years of research, Dr. Gallant and his colleagues have developed a mathematical formula that begins to find relationships between certain features of a picture (edges, textures, intensity, etc.) and the MRI voxels. For example, if you look at a boundary, you’ll notice it’s a region separating lighter and darker areas, and hence the edge generates a certain pattern of voxels. By having subject after subject view such a large library of movie clips, this mathematical formula is refined, allowing the computer to analyze how all sorts of images are converted into MRI voxels. Eventually the scientists were able to ascertain a direct correlation between certain MRI patterns of voxels and features within each picture. At this point, the subject is then shown another movie trailer. The computer analyzes the voxels generated during this viewing and re-creates a rough approximation of the original image. (The computer selects images from one hundred movie clips that most closely resemble the one that the subject just saw and then merges images to create a close approximation.) In this way, the computer is able to create a fuzzy video of the visual imagery going through your mind. Dr. Gallant’s mathematical formula is so versatile that it can take a collection of MRI voxels and convert it into a picture, or it can do the reverse, taking a picture and then converting it to MRI voxels. I had a chance to view the video created by Dr. Gallant’s group, and it was very impressive. Watching it was like viewing a movie with faces, animals, street scenes, and buildings through dark glasses. Although you could not see the details within each face or animal, you could clearly identify the kind of object you were seeing. Not only can this program decode what you are looking at, it can also decode imaginary images circulating in your head.

This was not an academic matter. Biology, as George Wald had said, was a unique science because it could not define its subject matter. Nobody had a definition for life. Nobody knew what it was, really. The old definitions-- an organism that showed ingestion, excretion, metabolism, reproduction, and so on-- were worthless. One could always find exceptions.   The group had finally concluded that energy conversion was the hallmark of life. All living organisms in some way took in energy-- as food, or sunlight-- and converted it to another form of energy, and put it to use. (Viruses were the exception to this rule, but the group was prepared to define viruses as nonliving.)   For the next meeting, Leavitt was asked to prepare a rebuttal to the definition. He pondered it for a week, and returned with three objects: a swatch of black cloth, a watch, and a piece of granite. He set them down before the group and said, "Gentleman, I give you three living things."   He then challenged the team to prove that they were not living. He placed the black cloth in the sunlight; it became warm. This, he announced, was an example of energy conversion-radiant energy to heat.   It was objected that this was merely passive energy absorption, not conversion. It was also objected that the conversion, if it could be called that, was not purposeful. It served no function.   "How do you know it is not purposeful?" Leavitt had demanded.   They then turned to the watch. Leavitt pointed to the radium dial, which glowed in the dark. Decay was taking place, and light was being produced.   The men argued that this was merely release of potential energy held in unstable electron levels. But there was growing confusion; Leavitt was making his point.   Finally, they came to the granite. "This is alive," Leavitt said. "It is living, breathing, walking, and talking. Only we cannot see it, because it is happening too slowly. Rock has a lifespan of three billion years. We have a lifespan of sixty or seventy years. We cannot see what is happening to this rock for the same reason that we cannot make out the tune on a record being played at the rate of one revolution every century. And the rock, for its part, is not even aware of our existence because we are alive for only a brief instant of its lifespan. To it, we are like flashes in the dark."   He held up his watch.   His point was clear enough, and they revised their thinking in one important respect. They conceded that it was possible that they might not be able to analyze certain life forms. It was possible that they might not be able to make the slightest headway, the least beginning, in such an analysis. ==========

There are ways to counteract the evil being purposely planned. Study history. Separate fears and prejudices from facts. Recognize facts from propaganda. Invest energy in fighting for what you believe in. Analyze harder where we are going and what you are doing about it. What do you really believe in? How much do we care?

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

The Singaporean study also identified three specific conditions that promoted productive failure. First, failure is best when it promotes a sense of challenge and engagement versus frustration. Frustration, of course, is the feeling that you are going nowhere at top speed, so there has to be a sense of progress and achievement. You can’t just hand a child a calculus equation and expect productive failure. It has to be within their capabilities and they have to be able to see improvement.  Second, failure is best when learners have the opportunity to elaborate on what they are doing and thinking, as was done in a group setting during the study. When you can narrate what you’re doing, instead of toiling away in silence, it can help shed light on your efforts because you’re actively thinking about what you’re doing and analyzing it. Often, thinking out loud leads to solutions that wouldn’t have appeared otherwise. Third, failure is best when learners have the chance to compare solutions that work, and solutions that don’t. This is what happens when you aren’t shown the exact path every single time. You recognize the red flags of failure and gain intuition when something seems right or wrong.

yourself.” “Maybe we should analyze it. Maybe a little discovery is in order.” “Maybe a little getting under the covers is in order. Baby?” “Yes?” “Are you going to take off your overcoat? Feels like making it with a flasher.” “Good point. Jesus, Pep,” he sighed soulfully. “Keep taking off the coat. That’s it. Now how about the jacket? There you go. . . .” “Six months ago I was happily married.” Pepper rolled her eyes. “Married, okay. Happily? Let’s look at it. But could we maybe be in the now instead of the then?” “Sorry, I’m so damned awkward sometimes. Do you like the top or the bottom?” Pepper stared. “This ain’t summer camp, and I ain’t a bunk bed. Now look here, Chiefy, we are two grown adults, we are colleagues, we have discovered a mutual attraction. We are neither of us cheating on anyone, inasmuch as our spouses filed for divorce. We are both heterosexual—” “What’s that supposed to mean?” “It’s a statement of fact intended to differentiate myself from your prior partner for the purpose of putting you at ease so as to . . . oh, c’mere . . . initiate foreplay . . .

How to choose a guitar for beginners? Choose a guitar will depend on the music project that you have in your mind. If you are searching for a guitar which is economical as well as helps in delivering a power packed performance, then you must read out relevant and well-researched reviews. A good beginner guitar is the one which comes with multiple features and is easy on the pocket. Here are some general but highly essential guidelines that you must follow while thinking about purchasing a new and best beginner guitar. One of the best things to do is to check out guitars with STEEL STRINGS and which is LIGHTWEIGHT. As a beginner, you would need a guitar which is not heavy to carry, and strings offer you maximum endurance. The CLARITY of the SOUND is another crucial thing to keep in mind because it will help you learn the basics of music. As a beginner, it is quite essential that you should learn everything so that in the future you can deliver top-notch performance in front of large crowd of people. Do not go for guitars which have COMPLEX MECHANISMbecause it becomes tough to learn the basics and also it is difficult to clean the guitar on a daily basis. BRAND AWARENESS is also another most important part. You must make yourself aware of the brand of guitars available in the market. It is good because it helps in analyzing the features, quality as well as price and as a result, you can buy the best product for yourself.

based on someone else’s beliefs. Until they wake up. Which is what this book will hopefully help you do. Here’s how it works: We as humans have a conscious mind and a subconscious mind. Most of us are only aware of our conscious minds, however, because that’s where we process all our information. It’s where we figure things out, judge, obsess, analyze,

My analysis work proved that there are thirty major reasons for failure, and thirteen major principles through which people accumulate fortunes. In this chapter, a description of the thirty major causes of failure will be given. As you go over the list, check yourself by it, point by point, for the purpose of discovering how many of these causes-of-failure stand between you and success. 1. UNFAVORABLE HEREDITARY BACKGROUND. There is but little, if anything, which can be done for people who are born with a deficiency in brain power. This philosophy offers but one method of bridging this weakness-through the aid of the Master Mind. Observe with profit, however, that this is the ONLY one of the thirty causes of failure which may not be easily corrected by any individual. 2. LACK OF A WELL-DEFINED PURPOSE IN LIFE. There is no hope of success for the person who does not have a central purpose, or definite goal at which to aim. Ninety-eight out of every hundred of those whom I have analyzed, had no such aim. Perhaps this was the 3. LACK OF AMBITION TO AIM ABOVE MEDIOCRITY. We offer no hope for the person who is so indifferent as not to want to get ahead in life, and who is not willing to pay the price. 4. INSUFFICIENT EDUCATION. This is a handicap which maybe overcome with comparative ease. Experience has proven that the best-educated people are often those who are known as "self-made," or self-educated. It takes more than a college degree to make one a person of education. Any person who is educated is one who has learned to get whatever he wants in life without violating the rights of others. Education consists, not so much of knowledge, but of knowledge effectively and persistently APPLIED. Men are paid, not merely for what they know, but more particularly for WHAT THEY DO WITH THAT WHICH THEY KNOW. 5.LACK OF SELF-DISCIPLINE. Discipline comes through self-control. This means that one must control all negative qualities. Before you can control conditions, you must first control yourself. Self-mastery is the hardest job you will ever tackle. If you do not conquer self, you will be conquered by self. You may see at one and the same time both your best friend and your greatest enemy, by stepping in front of a mirror. 6. ILL HEALTH. No person may enjoy outstanding success without good health. Many of the causes of ill health are subject to mastery and control. These, in the main are: a. Overeating of foods not conducive to health b. Wrong habits of thought; giving expression to negatives. c. Wrong use of, and over indulgence in sex. d. Lack of proper physical exercise e. An inadequate supply of fresh air, due to improper breathing.

A fighter pilot collects data on an enemy pilot by observing. He analyzes by orienting himself to the enemy. He decides what to do, then acts. When Boyd broke thinking into those steps, he discovered something interesting: Whichever pilot goes through the process quickest is the one who usually wins. He called going through the process and repeating it a loop. Boyd’s name for thinking: the OODA Loop. When you get to the end, you start the process again. You gather data on what you just did, analyze that data, and make another decision, followed by another action. Then you do it again. Whoever “loops” most quickly in a dogfight? They usually win. Because of Boyd’s OODA Loop, the U.S. Air Force made a change. They wanted planes to let a pilot go through the OODA Loop as quickly as possible. Planes that moved as quickly as a pilot could think. The process helped the Air Force think more clearly, too. As an organization. Thinking about how a pilot thinks, they made changes. Big changes. They ditched their old way of doing things. Approached the problem differently. Came up with a new plan for more maneuverable, responsive aircraft.

The right approach to any challenge was to get the facts, analyze the facts, and ask yourself if you could live with the worst possible result. And if you thought about it with a clear head, you’d realize that the world wasn’t going to end. The lesson I took home with me is that everything in life involves risk, but to not take risks is to not live. People who don’t take risks seldom succeed. The other thing I learned is that busy people seldom have time to worry. If you’re sitting around doing nothing, your imagination starts running wild, and that’s when the problems start. But if you act, if you keep moving forward, you’ll be fine. Think of a bicycle: If you try to balance it while standing still, it’s not easy. But if you’re moving, it’s a breeze. That’s how I feel about life: Keep moving

And you like doing all this ana-lyzing?' 'I used to, but the thrill is gone. Been gone. It's okay, though. It's a living.' 'And you studied many years to learn to do this?' 'Yep. New York University. Bachelor's and master's.' I don't even want to mention my M.F.A. 'Right.' He sighs as if he's putting this all together and then he looks me in the eye and says, 'Well , it seems to me that if one goes to college for so many years you'd at least end up working in some field that you derive a great deal of pleasure from. Don't you think?' 'Of course I do, Winston, but sometimes your attitude changes, your needs and values change, as you get older, and what used to excite you doesn't anymore.' 'So do you have this same attitude toward people when your attitude changes?' 'What do you mean?' 'I mean when you get bored or someone wears out their welcome do you treat them like you would your job? Do you just kind of settle in or do you look for a new one?' Damn.

Do try it on,” Cassandra urged. Despite Kathleen’s refusal, the girls insisted on draping it over her shoulders, just to see how it looked. “How beautiful,” Helen said, beaming. It was the most luxurious fabric she had ever felt, the fleece soft and cushiony. Kathleen ran her hand across the rich hues, and sighed. “I suppose I can’t ruin it with aniline dye,” she muttered. “But I’m going to tell him that I did.” “You’re going to lie?” Cassandra asked, her eyes wide. “That’s not setting a very good example for us.” “He must be discouraged from sending unsuitable gifts,” Kathleen said. “It’s not his fault if he doesn’t know any better,” Pandora pointed out. “He knows the rules,” Kathleen said darkly. “And he enjoys breaking them.” My Lord, It was very kind of you to send the lovely gift which is very useful now that the weather has turned. I am pleased to relate that the cashmere absorbed an application of black dye quite evenly so that it is now appropriate for mourning. Thank you for your thoughtfulness. Lady Trenear “You dyed it?” Devon asked aloud, setting the note on his desk with mixture of amusement and irritation. Reaching for a silver penholder, he inserted a fresh nib and pulled a sheet of writing paper from a nearby stack. That morning he had already written a half-dozen missives to lawyers, his banker, and contractors, and had hired an outside agent to analyze the estate’s finances. He grimaced at the sight of his ink-stained fingers. The lemon-and-salt paste his valet had given him wouldn’t entirely remove the smudges. He was tired of writing, and even more so of numbers, and Kathleen’s letter was a welcome distraction. The challenge could not go unanswered.

My eyes hurt," she said plaintively, as he surveyed the stacks of books they hadn't read yet. "Then by all means, we will save your eyes for a bit," Peri said, with a chuckle that rumbled inside his chest. He put his head down along his folded forelegs and looked up at her with an amused expression. "What are you thinking about?" he asked. "That I've never known anyone it was easier to be- friends with," she said, hesitating a moment over the "friend" part. Because it felt as if their relationship was unfolding into something a great deal warmer than mere friendship. "It's odd, isn't it?" he responded. "Except for my brother, I've never been as comfortable around any dragon as I am around you. I don't quite know how to fathom it." "Then let's not," she said instantly, not wanting to spoil anything. "All right?" He laughed. "One can certainly analyze things until they are no longer enjoyable. I bow to your wisdom. I am just happy to enjoy your company." She felt warm and tingly in a pleasant sort of way as he looked down at her with those glowing dark-emerald eyes. Feeling greatly daring, she reached out and scratched the soft skin under his chin. He sighed. "Oh, glory. That feels lovely. Don't stop doing that for the next thirty years or so. Take more time if you need it." She laughed, but kept scratching. "I wish there was something I could do for you that felt as good," he said, in a voice rich with content. "You already are," she said. "You're very comfortable to sit on." He laughed again, this time with a note of self-mockery. "I shall be sure to add that to my list of virtues. 'Makes a comfortable chair.' I am sure the Great Dragon at the gates of Paradise will find that ample reason to let me in straightaway. And the rest of my clan will surely inscribe it on my memorial wall." She blinked. "Dragons believe in Paradise?" she said, surprised. "Of course they do, silly goose," Peri replied, with another affectionate brush on his nose on her shoulder.

I was now able to logically decipher my behavior and analyze my actions. I understood all the conditioning that the exploitation and disgrace had in creating the different personality parts and behavioral traits that dwelt in my depths. I started to understand how criticism and insults painfully intensified my ignominious impression of myself, causing me to take everything personally. The numb, confused, and skeptic defender parts now made sense to me. I could see how they contributed to the various problems I incurred throughout my life. I comprehended why I mistrusted and did pernicious things to loved ones—for fear they would do them to me first. The need to self-medicate made sense. I began to recognize the urge for porn. The need to commit acts of perversion was a result of my adolescent mind being manipulated and programmed to believe it was acceptable. I perceived that the reason why I wanted to be humiliated sexually was because the shameful part from the humiliation of the maltreatment wanted to be reinforced. The logic of it all—how all the parts fit together, their roles and reasons for being—became apparent to me. I opened my eyes for a brief moment. Keith was leaning forward with his right elbow resting on his leg, his hand supporting his chin, staring at me as if he was trying to analyze my thoughts. I gazed off in a distance, remembering my numerous misbehaviors. I could trace the main contributing factor for why I acted the way I did to the resulting ignominy from the desecration. But the most significant understanding I had was, that even though it wasn’t my fault, I was still responsible for my behavior. My lengthy musings came to a halt when Keith said, “Marco? Where are you now ... tell me what you’re seeing, thinking.” I proceeded to explain to him my current revelation. “Excellent work, Marco,” Keith said, cracking a smile. “Now think about your next step.” My next step was to cleanse and reprogram the inadequate part. I closed my eyes again and began to concentrate. The only way to accomplish this was to create a tangible picture in my mind of the inadequate part being exorcised of all its imperfect characteristics. Once I was able to concentrate on this step, I looked up into his gaze. “I see myself overlooking a canyon during a sunset. As the sun descends, I envision its rays reflecting off the sparse layers of cloud cover, creating a beautiful multi-layer spectrum of blazing colors. I imagine a cool breeze flowing across my body, as a warm illuminating light from above shines on me and creates a white-out effect that is the cleanest, brightest white I can imagine. I picture the whiteness as a soothing cleansing treatment for the blackness within. I’m feeling as pure and clean as the brilliant color itself.” "And now how do you want to orchestrate the inadequate part?" I stood up and puffed out my chest. "I want it to be the exact opposite—confident, strong, and stable. It should be at peace with itself and not paranoid about what other people think.” Sitting back down, I folded my hands over my crossed knees. “I don't want to feel as if I have to worry about working to exhaustion in my personal life. On the job, or in the gym, I shouldn’t feel I have to be perfect in order to be accepted in society. I want to move past that. I want to feel good and proud of myself. But most of all, I want to feel morally acceptable." I now had a better understanding of the inadequate part, its defender parts, and what they wanted. I was able to see the un-blending taking place within me. The unburdening and bearing witness process got me to the point of reprogramming the misconception that the inadequate part thought about itself. I could go straight to the visualization technique of cleansing and reprogramming the part whenever I felt its symptoms coming on. CHAPTER

From everything she’d told me that evening, it was clear that if we were going to move forward, then I was going to have to become a well-functioning, fully autonomous man. Or, as I discovered during our laundry fiasco a few months earlier, I was going to have to become an adult. She had been right after all; this was not going to be easy. Kristen fell asleep not long after we finished talking. I didn’t want to go to bed without a plan for turning things around once and for all, so while she slept, I analyzed my notes in an attempt to extract some kind of strategy:   —Respect Kristen’s personal time and space. —Be more involved with the kids. —Manage yourself and your emotions—Kristen shouldn’t have to do that. —Have fun while we do things rather than making everything a “drama fest.”   The single unifying concept seemed to be: Kristen and the kids need you to be able to manage yourself by yourself. Sitting on the bed, with Kristen sound asleep, I once again found myself with a worthy goal and no idea how to define the first step toward achieving it. I was ready to call it a night when one of my notes leaped out at me from the page: Help lighten her burden by showing initiative once in a while. There it was. I realized that if I could take initiative when it came to things like stabilizing my moods then Kristen would be able to go about her day without having to worry about what might set me off. With a sense of initiative, I might actually vacuum once in a while or take the kids to the grocery store so that Kristen could enjoy some downtime—downtime that would be sweetened by the fact that she didn’t have to ask for it. Initiative could make me seem more empathic.

Passage Five: From Business Manager to Group Manager This is another leadership passage that at first glance doesn’t seem overly arduous. The assumption is that if you can run one business successfully, you can do the same with two or more businesses. The flaw in this reasoning begins with what is valued at each leadership level. A business manager values the success of his own business. A group manager values the success of other people’s businesses. This is a critical distinction because some people only derive satisfaction when they’re the ones receiving the lion’s share of the credit. As you might imagine, a group manager who doesn’t value the success of others will fail to inspire and support the performance of the business managers who report to him. Or his actions might be dictated by his frustration; he’s convinced he could operate the various businesses better than any of his managers and wishes he could be doing so. In either instance, the leadership pipeline becomes clogged with business managers who aren’t operating at peak capacity because they’re not being properly supported or their authority is being usurped. This level also requires a critical shift in four skill sets. First, group managers must become proficient at evaluating strategy for capital allocation and deployment purposes. This is a sophisticated business skill that involves learning to ask the right questions, analyze the right data, and apply the right corporate perspective to understand which strategy has the greatest probability of success and therefore should be funded. The second skill cluster involves development of business managers. As part of this development, group managers need to know which of the function managers are ready to become business managers. Coaching new business managers is also an important role for this level. The third skill set has to do with portfolio strategy. This is quite different from business strategy and demands a perceptual shift. This is the first time managers have to ask these questions: Do I have the right collection of businesses? What businesses should be added, subtracted, or changed to position us properly and ensure current and future earnings? Fourth, group managers must become astute about assessing whether they have the right core capabilities. This means avoiding wishful thinking and instead taking a hard, objective look at their range of resources and making a judgment based on analysis and experience. Leadership becomes more holistic at this level. People may master the required skills, but they won’t perform at full leadership capacity if they don’t begin to see themselves as broad-gauged executives. By broad-gauged, we mean that managers need to factor in the complexities of running multiple businesses, thinking in terms of community, industry, government,

Thought Stopping Thought stopping is a stress management technique designed to interrupt obsessive thought patterns. If you find yourself continually going over and over a stressful situation in your mind, without arriving at a solution, and without determining any course of action, your thoughts may become obsessive. Think of it as “analysis paralysis”: You are analyzing something to the point of being unable to do anything but analyze it. Here’s what you do to end this circuitous thinking: (a) Shout the word “STOP!” to yourself. (b) Visualize a red stop sign. (c) If the thought continues to recur, place a rubber band around your wrist. When the thought pops into your head, snap the rubber hand.

I'd much rather spend all day on the Santa Monica pier playing Asteroids than delve into the murk and analyze myself. And if you think I haven't gone down to the pier to do that recently, well, you'd be wrong. Sometimes you just have to be twelve again.

Jessa was the person I went to whenever I’d been bad,” he said, adding wryly, “after my mother was through with me, that is.” Fire couldn’t help smiling. “And were you often bad?” “At least once a day, Lady, as I remember.” Her smile growing, Fire watched him as he watched the sky. “Perhaps you weren’t very good at following orders?” “Worse than that. I used to set traps for Nash.” “Traps!” “He was five years older than I. The perfect challenge—stealth and cunning, you see, to compensate for my lack of size. I rigged nets to land on him. Closed him inside closets.” Brigan chuckled. “He was a good-natured brother. But whenever our mother learned of it she’d be furious, and when she was done with me I’d go to Jessa, because Jessa’s anger was so much easier to take than Roen’s.” “How do you mean?” Fire asked, feeling a drop of rain, and wishing it away. He thought for a moment. “She’d tell me she was angry, but it didn’t sit like anger. She’d never raise her voice. She’d sit there sewing, or whatever she was doing, and we’d analyze my crimes, and invariably I’d fall asleep in my chair. When I woke it’d be too late to go to dinner and she’d feed me in the nurseries. A bit of a treat for a small boy who usually had to dress for dinner and be serious and quiet around a lot of boring people.” “A wicked boy, from the sound of it.

It’s not enough to figure out how to do something. You must also analyze every possible path to failure. Only then can you be certain of success.

Lessons Learned Our past only exists in our brain and body, where we make and store our memories. If we live in the past, our energy is also trapped in it. We're unable to create new energy and a new future. The key to successfully modifying our future is to understand the different brain wave frequencies. We are capable of reconstructing our genes to allow growth and repair. Issues What are the things you do consistently every day that has turned into habits and an automatic routine? Do you think you're capable of breaking the cycle? Analyze how your life is right now. Do you think you have positive or negative energy? Why? Dr. Joe teaches us that when we create our new future, we can lose a few people only because they have no part in it. Are you willing to accept that? Goals Understand the different brain frequencies and how they affect the energy we have in our bodies. Meditate to forget the anticipated future and known reality. Action Steps Make a list of the things you routinely do daily. The next day, try to do things differently from how you usually do them. Meditate and try to forget reality as you know it. Liberate yourself from things that link you to the present. Checklist While meditating, accept that it's normal to sometimes slip into the known reality. Claim that you're capable of entering the optimal spot of the generous present.

I had a lot of questions about wholeheartedness. What did these folks value? How did they create all of this resilience in their lives? What were their main concerns and how did they resolve or address them? Can anyone create a wholehearted life? What does it take to cultivate what we need? What gets in the way? As I started analyzing the stories and looking for re-occurring themes, I realized that the patterns generally fell into one of two columns; for simplicity’s sake, I first labeled these Do and Don’t. The Do column was brimming with words like worthiness, rest, play, trust, faith, intuition, hope, authenticity, love, belonging, joy, gratitude, and creativity. The Don’t column was dripping with words like perfection, numbing, certainty, exhaustion, self-sufficiency, being cool, fitting in, judgment, and scarcity.

Science author Jonah Lehrer wrote extensively about this division in his book How We Decide. Lehrer sees the two minds as equals who communicate and argue about what to do. Simple problems involving unfamiliar variables are best handled by the rational brain. They must be simple because you can juggle only four to nine bits of information in your conscious, rational mind at one time. For instance, look at this sequence of letters and then recite them out loud without looking: RKFBIIRSCBSUSSR. Unless you’ve caught on, this is a really difficult task. Now chunk these letters into manageable portions like this: RK FBI IRS CBS USSR. Look away now and try to recite them. It should be much easier. You just took fifteen bits and reduced them to five. You chunk all the time to better analyze your world. You reduce the complex rush of inputs into shorthand versions of reality. This is why the invention of written language was such an important step in your history—it allowed you to take notes and preserve data outside the limited capacity of the rational mind. Without tools like pencils, computers, and slide rulers, the rational brain is severely hampered.

Whenever someone criticizes you, view the criticism a growth opportunity. Analyze the criticism. If it's valid, decide what you can do to improve. If you need additional training to correct the problem, ask for it. If the criticisms continue and have no validity, you can continue ignoring the criticizer, continue thanking the person for his or her opinion, or decide to confront the person. Before entering into a conflict resolution discussion, think through the likely conversation. You may catch the criticizer off guard, and the person may respond as Mark did by brushing off the criticisms as jokes. Don't let the person off the hook or the behavior is apt to continue. Make sure the person understands why the criticisms create a problem for you. State specifically how you expect to be treated. Agree on a resolution and offer a phrase of reconciliation.

Always try to get over failure quickly. Learn from it. Study how you contributed to it. If you are responsible for it, own up to it. Though others may have greater responsibility for it than you do, don’t look for that as an escape hatch. Once you have analyzed what went wrong and what you did wrong, internalize the lessons and then move on. As always, drive through life looking through the front windshield and not the rearview mirror. Don’t become one of those pests who can’t stop talking about their by now ancient slights, betrayals, hurts, or disasters. Don’t wallow with your sympathetic friends. Learn and move on.

The computation of partial dependence plots is intuitive: The partial dependence function at a particular feature value represents the average prediction if we force all data points to assume that feature value. In my experience, lay people usually understand the idea of PDPs quickly. If the feature for which you computed the PDP is not correlated with the other features, then the PDPs perfectly represent how the feature influences the prediction on average. In the uncorrelated case, the interpretation is clear: The partial dependence plot shows how the average prediction in your dataset changes when the j-th feature is changed. It is more complicated when features are correlated, see also disadvantages. Partial dependence plots are easy to implement. The calculation for the partial dependence plots has a causal interpretation. We intervene on a feature and measure the changes in the predictions. In doing so, we analyze the causal relationship between the feature and the prediction.3 The relationship is causal for the model – because we explicitly model the outcome as a function of the features – but not necessarily for the real world!

Much of this literature assumes that the world is waiting for biologists to point out what is Normal and Natural, hence worth being adopted as ideal. Attempts to derive ethical norms from nature are highly problematic, however. Biologists may tell us how things are, perhaps even analyze human nature in intricate detail, yet there is no logical connection between the typical form and frequency of a behavior (a statistical measure of what is "normal") and the value we attach to it (a moral decision). Lorenz came close to confusing the two when he was disappointed that the perfect goose marriage, with the partners faithful unto death, was actually quite rare. But perhaps Lorenz was only titillating his readers with his favorite birds' "shortcomings," because he also gave us his student's wonderful retort: "What do you expect? After all, geese are only human!

How to Taste An Apple: I find it mildly irksome to see someone eating an apple while walking down the street, unaware that a body sense event is happening, and perhaps focusing on something else entirely at the time. Ideally, one should select a fruit of known ripeness and take it with a plate and knife to a quiet place. Slice it to mouth-size portions, either all at once or as you eat, and when the slice is in the mouth, concentrate on the mouthfeel and the flavor. It may immediately enliven the taste buds or slowly unfold its complexity. Analyze the sugar, tannin, acid, and aroma of what you taste and if it is elusive do not despair: the magic of the taste of a particular variety may be its elusiveness. If given full attention, the act of eating an apple can become a mind-expanding experience.

Structured methods for learning Method Uses Useful for Organizational climate and employee satisfaction surveys Learning about culture and morale. Many organizations do such surveys regularly, and a database may already be available. If not, consider setting up a regular survey of employee perceptions. Useful for managers at all levels if the analysis is available specifically for your unit or group. Usefulness depends on the granularity of the collection and analysis. This also assumes the survey instrument is a good one and the data have been collected carefully and analyzed rigorously. Structured sets of interviews with slices of the organization or unit Identifying shared and divergent perceptions of opportunities and problems. You can interview people at the same level in different departments (a horizontal slice) or bore down through multiple levels (a vertical slice). Whichever dimension you choose, ask everybody the same questions, and look for similarities and differences in people’s responses. Most useful for managers leading groups of people from different functional backgrounds. Can be useful at lower levels if the unit is experiencing significant problems. Focus groups Probing issues that preoccupy key groups of employees, such as morale issues among frontline production or service workers. Gathering groups of people who work together also lets you see how they interact and identify who displays leadership. Fostering discussion promotes deeper insight. Most useful for managers of large groups of people who perform a similar function, such as sales managers or plant managers. Can be useful for senior managers as a way of getting quick insights into the perceptions of key employee constituencies. Analysis of critical past decisions Illuminating decision-making patterns and sources of power and influence. Select an important recent decision, and look into how it was made. Who exerted influence at each stage? Talk with the people involved, probe their perceptions, and note what is and is not said. Most useful for higher-level managers of business units or project groups. Process analysis Examining interactions among departments or functions and assessing the efficiency of a process. Select an important process, such as delivery of products to customers or distributors, and assign a cross-functional group to chart the process and identify bottlenecks and problems. Most useful for managers of units or groups in which the work of multiple functional specialties must be integrated. Can be useful for lower-level managers as a way of understanding how their groups fit into larger processes. Plant and market tours Learning firsthand from people close to the product. Plant tours let you meet production personnel informally and listen to their concerns. Meetings with sales and production staff help you assess technical capabilities. Market tours can introduce you to customers, whose comments can reveal problems and opportunities. Most useful for managers of business units. Pilot projects Gaining deep insight into technical capabilities, culture, and politics. Although these insights are not the primary purpose of pilot projects, you can learn a lot from how the organization or group responds to your pilot initiatives. Useful for managers at all levels. The size of the pilot projects and their impact will increase as you rise through the organization.

Learning Plan Template Before Entry Find out whatever you can about the organization’s strategy, structure, performance, and people. Look for external assessments of the performance of the organization. You will learn how knowledgeable, fairly unbiased people view it. If you are a manager at a lower level, talk to people who deal with your new group as suppliers or customers. Find external observers who know the organization well, including former employees, recent retirees, and people who have transacted business with the organization. Ask these people open-ended questions about history, politics, and culture. Talk with your predecessor if possible. Talk to your new boss. As you begin to learn about the organization, write down your first impressions and eventually some hypotheses. Compile an initial set of questions to guide your structured inquiry after you arrive. Soon After Entry Review detailed operating plans, performance data, and personnel data. Meet one-on-one with your direct reports and ask them the questions you compiled. You will learn about convergent and divergent views and about your reports as people. Assess how things are going at key interfaces. You will hear how salespeople, purchasing agents, customer service representatives, and others perceive your organization’s dealings with external constituencies. You will also learn about problems they see that others do not. Test strategic alignment from the top down. Ask people at the top what the company’s vision and strategy are. Then see how far down into the organizational hierarchy those beliefs penetrate. You will learn how well the previous leader drove vision and strategy down through the organization. Test awareness of challenges and opportunities from the bottom up. Start by asking frontline people how they view the company’s challenges and opportunities. Then work your way up. You will learn how well the people at the top check the pulse of the organization. Update your questions and hypotheses. Meet with your boss to discuss your hypotheses and findings. By the End of the First Month Gather your team to feed back to them your preliminary findings. You will elicit confirmation and challenges of your assessments and will learn more about the group and its dynamics. Now analyze key interfaces from the outside in. You will learn how people on the outside (suppliers, customers, distributors, and others) perceive your organization and its strengths and weaknesses. Analyze a couple of key processes. Convene representatives of the responsible groups to map out and evaluate the processes you selected. You will learn about productivity, quality, and reliability. Meet with key integrators. You will learn how things work at interfaces among functional areas. What problems do they perceive that others do not? Seek out the natural historians. They can fill you in on the history, culture, and politics of the organization, and they are also potential allies and influencers. Update your questions and hypotheses. Meet with your boss again to discuss your observations.

They’ll adjourn the trial and try to come to a private agreement with me.” “How do you know?” Seldon said, “I’ll be honest. I don’t know. It depends on the Chief Commissioner. I have studied him for years. I have tried to analyze his workings, but you know how risky it is to introduce the vagaries of an individual in the psychohistoric equations. Yet I have hopes.

To be free requires that we are not marionettes whose strings are pulled by physical law. Whether the laws are deterministic (as in classical physics) or probabilistic (as in quantum physics) is of deep significance to how reality evolves and to the kinds of predictions science can make. But for assessing free will, the distinction is irrelevant. If the fundamental laws can continually churn, never grinding to a halt for lack of human input and applying all the same even if particles happen to inhabit bodies and brains, then there is no place for free will. Indeed, as is affirmed by every scientific experiment and observation ever conducted, long before we humans came on the scene the laws ruled without interruption; after we arrived, they continued to rule without interruption. To sum up: We are physical beings made of large collections of particles governed by nature’s laws. Everything we do and everything we think amounts to motions of those particles. Shake my hand and particles constituting your hand push up and down against those constituting mine. Say hello, and particles constituting your vocal cords jostle particles of air in your throat, setting off a chain reaction of colliding particles that ripples through the air, knocking into the particles constituting my eardrums, setting off a surge of yet other particles in my head, which is how I manage to hear what you’re saying. Particles in my brain respond to the stimuli, yielding the thought that’s a strong grip, and sending signals carried by other particles to those in my arm, which drive my hand to move in tandem with yours. And since all observations, experiments, and valid theories confirm that particle motion is fully controlled by mathematical rules, we can no more intercede in this lawful progression of particles than we can change the value of pi. Our choices seem free because we do not witness nature’s laws acting in their most fundamental guise; our senses do not reveal the operation of nature’s laws in the world of particles. Our senses and our reasoning focus on everyday human scales and actions: we think about the future, compare courses of action, and weigh possibilities. As a result, when our particles do act, it seems to us that their collective behaviors emerge from our autonomous choices. However, if we had the superhuman vision invoked earlier and were able to analyze everyday reality at the level of its fundamental constituents, we would recognize that our thoughts and behaviors amount to complex processes of shifting particles that yield a powerful sense of free will but are fully governed by physical law.

How can smart people so often be wrong? They don't do that I'm telling you to do: use a checklist to be sure you get all the main modes and use them together in a multi modular way". -Munger "Charlie draws his confidence from the unusually rigorous process he follows to research, analyze, evaluate and decide. He knows he may not always be right, but that the odds are in his favor because his process is so disciplined and realistic. For this reason, he is never reluctant to make a decision and to act decisively upon it.

I think everything that happened in my life until now was by accident. I was never conscious. So many times I felt like when you are driving, and then you suffer temporary amnesia and you have no idea how you got there. Suddenly, I was here. I barely remember the way. Suddenly, I worked at this hospital. Suddenly, I lived in the suburbs. Suddenly, I was immersed in a million situations that I could not explain. Many like to think that we choose everything. This is an illusion. We do not choose where we are born, the house, the family, the name, the diseases, the intelligence and, the talent. So many things that are outside our zone of choice will influence our lives. To assume that we are on control is hypocrisy. Not that we do not have choices, we have them and we are responsible for them. But they are not an unlimited range. It is strange to analyze where I am today consciously. So I have often avoided doing so, I have preferred to ignore the hows and the whys.

The opposing reactions that Williams and Hupert received reflect the cultural differences between German and American styles of persuasion. The approach taken by the Germans is based on a specific style of reasoning that is deeply ingrained in the cultural psyche. Hupert explains: In Germany, we try to understand the theoretical concept before adapting it to the practical situation. To understand something, we first want to analyze all of the conceptual data before coming to a conclusion. When colleagues from cultures like the U.S. or the U.K. make presentations to us, we don’t realize that they were taught to think differently from us. So when they begin by presenting conclusions and recommendations without setting up the parameters and how they got to those conclusions, it can actually shock us. We may feel insulted. Do they think we are stupid—that we will just swallow anything? Or we may question whether their decision was well thought out. This reaction is based on our deep-seated belief that you cannot come to a conclusion without first defining the parameters.

A third mistaken assumption is that computers couldn’t replace humans in jobs requiring emotional intelligence, from therapists to teachers. This assumption depends, however, on what we mean by emotional intelligence. If it means the ability to correctly identify emotions and react to them in an optimal way, then computers may well outperform humans even in emotional intelligence. Emotions too are patterns. Anger is a biological pattern in our body. Fear is another such pattern. How do I know if you are angry or fearful? I’ve learned over time to recognize human emotional patterns by analyzing not just the content of what you say but also your tone of voice, your facial expression, and your body language. AI doesn’t have any emotions of its own, but it can nevertheless learn to recognize these patterns in humans. Actually, computers may outperform humans in recognizing human emotions, precisely because they have no emotions of their own. We yearn to be understood, but other humans often fail to understand how we feel, because they are too preoccupied with their own feelings. In contrast, computers will have an exquisitely fine-tuned understanding of how we feel, because they will learn to recognize the patterns of our feelings, while they have no distracting feelings of their own.

The intersection of time and space is the unique place for you to be present and alive as you really are. But it’s pretty hard to be there. We don’t really know how to deal with the huge energies arising there. Still, if you seek a calm mind, the important point to learn is the exact, precise point where you manifest your own life and simultaneously the life of the whole universe. That is why we practice zazen. In zazen, as simple as we can, we try to just be present at the intersection where this very moment is functioning. At that time, in that place, there is no way to analyze zazen as something separate from you. All you can do is just be one with zazen as the rhythm of life and communicate directly with zazen using your whole body and mind. Then, through your skin, muscle, and bone, zazen teaches you the pure nature of human activity. Sitting right in the middle of the original, lively quality of human life is called shikantaza. Zazen as shikantaza is nothing but dynamic function and movement. That’s all! There is nothing else. When you see your life in terms of the human world and simultaneously in terms of real reality, many possibilities come up. Each moment is a unique opportunity for you to create your life anew. The time and space of whatever you do—saying “good morning,” having a meal together, or sitting zazen—is the precise point where you digest the life of all sentient beings and create new life. This is our practice every day. It is also the practice of the whole universe.

So forget what other therapies say to do, such as learning how to argue better, analyzing your childhood, making grand romantic gestures, or experimenting with new sexual positions. Instead, recognize and admit that you are emotionally attached to and dependent on your partner in much the same way that a child is dependent on a parent for nurturing, soothing, and protection.

1 = Very important. Do this at once. 2 = Worth doing but takes more time. Start planning it. 3 = Yes and no. Depends on how it’s done. 4 = Not very important. May even be a waste of effort. 5 = No! Don’t do this. Fill in those numbers before you read further, and take your time. This is not a simple situation, and solving it is a complicated undertaking. Possible Actions to Take ____ Explain the changes again in a carefully written memo. ____ Figure out exactly how individuals’ behavior and attitudes will have to change to make teams work. ____ Analyze who stands to lose something under the new system. ____ Redo the compensation system to reward compliance with the changes. ____ “Sell” the problem that is the reason for the change. ____ Bring in a motivational speaker to give employees a powerful talk about teamwork. ____ Design temporary systems to contain the confusion during the cutover from the old way to the new. ____ Use the interim between the old system and the new to improve the way in which services are delivered by the unit—and, where appropriate, create new services. ____ Change the spatial arrangements so that the cubicles are separated only by glass or low partitions. ____ Put team members in contact with disgruntled clients, either by phone or in person. Let them see the problem firsthand. ____ Appoint a “change manager” to be responsible for seeing that the changes go smoothly. ____ Give everyone a badge with a new “teamwork” logo on it. ____ Break the change into smaller stages. Combine the firsts and seconds, then add the thirds later. Change the managers into coordinators last. ____ Talk to individuals. Ask what kinds of problems they have with “teaming.” ____ Change the spatial arrangements from individual cubicles to group spaces. ____ Pull the best people in the unit together as a model team to show everyone else how to do it. ____ Give everyone a training seminar on how to work as a team. ____ Reorganize the general manager’s staff as a team and reconceive the GM’s job as that of a coordinator. ____ Send team representatives to visit other organizations where service teams operate successfully. ____ Turn the whole thing over to the individual contributors as a group and ask them to come up with a plan to change over to teams. ____ Scrap the plan and find one that is less disruptive. If that one doesn’t work, try another. Even if it takes a dozen plans, don’t give up. ____ Tell them to stop dragging their feet or they’ll face disciplinary action. ____ Give bonuses to the first team to process 100 client calls in the new way. ____ Give everyone a copy of the new organization chart. ____ Start holding regular team meetings. ____ Change the annual individual targets to team targets, and adjust bonuses to reward team performance. ____ Talk about transition and what it does to people. Give coordinators a seminar on how to manage people in transition. There are no correct answers in this list, but over time I’ve

The best you can do as a parent is to expose your children to a wide range of religions. Rather than trying to "program them" to dislike religion, give them the tools to analyze it themselves. With the conceptual tools of critical thinking and skepticism, and adequate exposure to many religions, children are very likely eventually to conclude that all religion is crazy.

A person who uses gestures too much and too often sends off the idea that he is impulsive. Likewise, a person who rarely uses gesticulations may come across as distant and impersonal. It could imply that they do not care that much to be in the conversation. The frequency in which a person uses gesticulation may help you gauge their social status. People in authoritative positions are less likely to use gestures except for a few deliberate movements.

1. You might want to perform an audit of the paperwork your sales team is required to fill out to determine whether it is actually needed to produce sales. If it does not directly contribute to sales, get rid of it. If the paperwork is providing the company with necessary information, analyze how you can go about obtaining that information without burdening the sales team. By removing that burden from the sales team, could you see a pickup in selling time that will translate to an increase in sales?   2. Have you had to reduce territories, products, or rep income? What was the effect on your team?   3. Do you allow your team members the right to fail? What constitutes too much failure for an individual, and where do you draw the line? How do you communicate your policy to maintain a consistent message that is seen as fair and reasonable by your sales team?

For example, consider one of Intuit’s flagship products. Because TurboTax does most of its sales around tax season in the United States, it used to have an extremely conservative culture. Over the course of the year, the marketing and product teams would conceive one major initiative that would be rolled out just in time for tax season. Now they test over five hundred different changes in a two-and-a-half-month tax season. They’re running up to seventy different tests per week. The team can make a change live on its website on Thursday, run it over the weekend, read the results on Monday, and come to conclusions starting Tuesday; then they rebuild new tests on Thursday and launch the next set on Thursday night. As Scott put it, “Boy, the amount of learning they get is just immense now. And what it does is develop entrepreneurs, because when you have only one test, you don’t have entrepreneurs, you have politicians, because you have to sell. Out of a hundred good ideas, you’ve got to sell your idea. So you build up a society of politicians and salespeople. When you have five hundred tests you’re running, then everybody’s ideas can run. And then you create entrepreneurs who run and learn and can retest and relearn as opposed to a society of politicians. So we’re trying to drive that throughout our organization, using examples which have nothing to do with high tech, like the website example. Every business today has a website. You don’t have to be high tech to use fast-cycle testing.” This kind of change is hard. After all, the company has a significant number of existing customers who continue to demand exceptional service and investors who expect steady, growing returns. Scott says, It goes against the grain of what people have been taught in business and what leaders have been taught. The problem isn’t with the teams or the entrepreneurs. They love the chance to quickly get their baby out into the market. They love the chance to have the customer vote instead of the suits voting. The real issue is with the leaders and the middle managers. There are many business leaders who have been successful because of analysis. They think they’re analysts, and their job is to do great planning and analyzing and have a plan.

Likewise, when you immediately switch the topic to something that doesn’t interest them, you will see their pupils contract.

Knowing is a vital part of learning and sharing a vision of what we want to create together. But “how” questions are on the doing side of the model. As in playing tennis, we learn how by doing. There is no other way. We can read books on tennis techniques and strategies. We can get a good tennis player to show us how he or she does it. We can watch players on TV for hours and analyze every stroke. But only by doing will we ever be able to learn how to do it. We may make mistakes but mistakes actually teach us more than our successes.

Final checklist To significantly increase the quantity and quality of ideas that you generate, reading this book isn’t enough. You need to make principles from this book a part of your own habits. Below you will find the 7 most fundamental principles of creating successful business ideas. Write them down on a sheet of paper and hang it near the desk where you work or near your bed. Over the next 3 weeks, think for at least 15-30 minutes per day about ideas using these principles. These can be ideas that will help you improve your business, achieve your dreams or make your life more interesting. I promise you that by the end of these 3 weeks you will notice a significant jump in your creative performance. 1. Collect raw materials. Ideas are combinations or modifications of other ideas. The more you know the ideas of other people and the more life experiences you expose yourself to, the more creative raw materials you have. The more creative raw materials you have, the more combinations your subconscious mind will be able to make and the more likely you are to create new valuable and interesting ideas. 2. Set the task for the subconscious mind. Your subconscious mind is a powerful thinking mechanism, but it remains idle if you haven’t given it a task. Once you begin giving your subconscious questions to think about regularly, you will notice how the quantity and quality of your ideas will skyrocket. 3. Separate analyzing and generating ideas. When you are analyzing ideas, your analytical brain blocks your superfast creative brain from thinking. To let the creative brain do its work, separate the processes of analyzing and generating ideas. 4. Think and rest. The most effective thinking algorithm is the following: think about a problem for an extensive period of time, forget about the problem and rest, occasionally think about the problem for few minutes and forget about it again. The incubation period when you don’t think about the problem is essential for your subconscious mind to process millions of thoughts and combinations of ideas, however to give it a task you need to think for some time about the problem consciously. 5. Generate many ideas. In creative thinking, quantity equals quality. You can’t generate one great idea. However, you can generate many ideas and select one or several great ideas out of them. 6. Have fun. Your subconscious mind thinks most effectively when you have fun. When you are serious, you are very unlikely to create really creative and valuable ideas. 7. Believe and desire. Believe that you will generate great ideas and have a burning desire to generate them. If you do, great ideas will come to you in abundance and sooner or later the problem will be solved. Once you have made these 7 principles a part of your own creative habits, glance through the book again and practice other principles and techniques. In a year’s time of practicing generating ideas regularly, you will become a world-class creative thinker. The skill of creating ideas will make your business successful and your life an adventure. I wish you good luck in creating successful ideas and in achieving all your dreams in business.

Riddick, it’s that we’re all basically the same. White or black, we’re all going to end up in the same place (well, one of two places), but most of us don’t like to think about death. And even fewer of us take the time to plan for it. Which is kind of funny when you consider the odds of it happening. By contrast, think about how much time we take planning for other stuff. We talk to people, check out things on Google, and weigh our options on everything from the type of wedding cake we want to which career looks most promising. We analyze our health benefits, test-drive cars, and peek in the crawl spaces of our houses. When children come along, we buy books about what to name them, how to toilet train them, and what we should do when they announce that they don’t need us anymore and they’re leaving home to follow a rock-’n’-roll band.