Realistic Motivational Quotes

A religion is a system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing those conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.

A religion is a system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing those conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.

Be “unrealistic” when you set a goal, and then be realistic about how you will achieve that goal.

I do not think it irresponsible to portray even the direst futures if we are to avoid them we must understand that they are possible. But where are the alternatives Where are the dreams that motivate and inspire We long for realistic maps of a world we can be proud to give to our children. Where are the cartographers of human purpose Where are the visions of hopeful futures of technology as a tool for human betterment and not a gun on hair trigger pointed at our heads

Excerpt from Ursula K Le Guin's speech at National Book Awards Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom – poets, visionaries – realists of a larger reality. Right now, we need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. Developing written material to suit sales strategies in order to maximise corporate profit and advertising revenue is not the same thing as responsible book publishing or authorship. Yet I see sales departments given control over editorial. I see my own publishers, in a silly panic of ignorance and greed, charging public libraries for an e-book six or seven times more than they charge customers. We just saw a profiteer try to punish a publisher for disobedience, and writers threatened by corporate fatwa. And I see a lot of us, the producers, who write the books and make the books, accepting this – letting commodity profiteers sell us like deodorant, and tell us what to publish, what to write. Books aren’t just commodities; the profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable – but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words. I’ve had a long career as a writer, and a good one, in good company. Here at the end of it, I don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river. We who live by writing and publishing want and should demand our fair share of the proceeds; but the name of our beautiful reward isn’t profit. Its name is freedom.

I think hard times are coming, when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies, to other ways of being. And even imagine some real grounds for hope. We will need writers who can remember freedom: poets, visionaries—the realists of a larger reality. Right now, I think we need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. The profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable; so did the divine right of kings. … Power can be resisted and changed by human beings; resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art—the art of words. I’ve had a long career and a good one, in good company, and here, at the end of it, I really don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river. … The name of our beautiful reward is not profit. Its name is freedom.

The secret of making lasting change is to acknowledge and accept that real change takes time and patience. We didn't get chronically ill overnight. We didn't gain weight in one week or even one month. Good chance, it may take us longer than twenty-one days to overcome whatever we're facing. Whether it's something physical, emotional, spiritual, or a combination, we may need to be realistic in our goals for meaningful change to happen. The first step is getting started!

It makes no sense to compare yourself with others because there will always be better & worse people than you out there. Each person has his own path to make. You are where you are now. Could you reach for the stars & have everything you want? realistically no. You may not win Olympic Gold in London 2012 , or be the CEO of a Fortune 500 company etc but you most definitely have the capacity to make YOUR life as the Masterpiece it could really be. The choice is yours...

What’s really worried me over the years is not our stock price, but that we might someday fail to take care of our customers, or that our managers might fail to motivate and take care of our associates. I also was worried that we might lose the team concept, or fail to keep the family concept viable and realistic and meaningful to our folks as we grow. Those challenges are more real than somebody’s theory that we’re headed down the wrong path. As

Going overboard on a quest for perfection leads to life suckage and backsliding.

When our hopes for performance are not completely met, realistic optimism involves accepting what cannot now be changed, rather than condemning or second-guessing ourselves. Focusing on the successful aspects of performance (even when the success is modest) promotes positive affect, reduces self-doubt, and helps to maintain motivation (e.g., McFarland & Ross, 1982).... Nevertheless, realistic optimism does not include or imply expectations that things will improve on their own. Wishful thinking of this sort typically has no reliable supporting evidence. Instead, the opportunity-seeking component of realistic optimism motivates efforts to improve future performances on the basis of what has been learned from past performances.

HONESTY is reached through the doorway of grief and loss. Where we cannot go in our mind, our memory, or our body is where we cannot be straight with another, with the world, or with our self. The fear of loss, in one form or another, is the motivator behind all conscious and unconscious dishonesties: all of us are afraid of loss, in all its forms, all of us, at times, are haunted or overwhelmed by the possibility of a disappearance, and all of us therefore, are one short step away from dishonesty. Every human being dwells intimately close to a door of revelation they are afraid to pass through. Honesty lies in understanding our close and necessary relationship with not wanting to hear the truth. The ability to speak the truth is as much the ability to describe what it is like to stand in trepidation at this door, as it is to actually go through it and become that beautifully honest spiritual warrior, equal to all circumstances, we would like to become. Honesty is not the revealing of some foundational truth that gives us power over life or another or even the self, but a robust incarnation into the unknown unfolding vulnerability of existence, where we acknowledge how powerless we feel, how little we actually know, how afraid we are of not knowing and how astonished we are by the generous measure of grief that is conferred upon even the most average life. Honesty is grounded in humility and indeed in humiliation, and in admitting exactly where we are powerless. Honesty is not found in revealing the truth, but in understanding how deeply afraid of it we are. To become honest is in effect to become fully and robustly incarnated into powerlessness. Honesty allows us to live with not knowing. We do not know the full story, we do not know where we are in the story; we do not know who is at fault or who will carry the blame in the end. Honesty is not a weapon to keep loss and heartbreak at bay, honesty is the outer diagnostic of our ability to come to ground in reality, the hardest attainable ground of all, the place where we actually dwell, the living, breathing frontier where there is no realistic choice between gain or loss.

Today's ideology masquerades as pragmatism with that pragmatism reduced to the simplistic assumption that the basis of human nature is self-interest, a view which discount philanthropy, discredits altruism, with the only motive deserving of trust self-promotion and self-advancement. This so-called pragmatism is wicked and it is doubly so because it is held up as being both realistic and a virtue. Whereas it is shallow, shabby and all too often callous.

reminded that in reality this isn’t the case. Nor is this a phenomenon confined to megalomaniacs or pathological narcissists, but something much more fundamental to being human: it’s the understandable tendency to judge everything from the perspective you occupy, so that the few thousand weeks for which you happen to be around inevitably come to feel like the linchpin of history, to which all prior time was always leading up. These self-centered judgments are part of what psychologists call the “egocentricity bias,” and they make good sense from an evolutionary standpoint. If you had a more realistic sense of your own sheer irrelevance, considered on the timescale of the universe, you’d probably be less motivated to struggle to survive, and thereby to propagate your genes.

YOU ARE THE CEO OF YOU

Colleagues are coming and going, following what seems like an unspoken annual ritual, invoking motivations of great artistic quality, risen from a spirit often young and unassuming.

Today I will remember the world owes me nothing, does not respond to my will, and goes merrily on with or without my consent. On the other hand, I am free to change myself as I see fit.

What is fantasy? On one level, of course, it is a game: a pure pretense with no ulterior motive whatever. It is one child saying to another child, “Let’s be dragons,” and then they’re dragons for an hour or two. It is escapism of the most admirable kind—the game played for the game’s sake. On another level, it is still a game, but a game played for very high stakes. Seen thus, as art, not spontaneous play, its affinity is not with daydream, but with dream. It is a different approach to reality, an alternative technique for apprehending and coping with existence. It is not antirational but pararational; not realistic, but surrealistic, superrealistic, a heightening of reality. In Freud’s terminology, it employs primary, not secondary process thinking. It employs archetypes, which, Jung warned us, are dangerous things. Dragons are more dangerous, and a good deal commoner, than bears. Fantasy is nearer to poetry, to mysticism, and to insanity than naturalistic fiction is. It is a real wilderness, and those who go there should not feel too safe. And their guides, the writers of fantasy, should take their responsibilities seriously.

I am whatever I need to be to survive. Roles are as interchangeable as clothes and there are enough fools out there for me to live a long and prosperous life. The role I’ll play next is that of executioner,” Rondo replied, grinning at each pause.

Writer Brigid Brophy exposes [their motives] with great precision: "Whenever people say 'We mustn't be sentimental,' you can take it they are about to do something cruel. And if they add 'We must be realistic,' they mean they are going to make money out of it. These slogans have a long history. After being used to justify slave traders, ruthless industrialists, and contractors who had found that the most economically 'realistic' method of cleaning a chimney was to force a small child to climb it, they have now been passed on, like an heirloom, to the factory farmers. 'We mustn't be sentimental' tries to persuade us that factory farming isn't, in fact, cruel. It implies that the whole problem had been invented by our sloppy imaginations.

But how can psychotherapists purport to dispel the illusions of their clients while protecting and maintaining their own? Furthermore, a therapist's belief in and commitment to the therapeutic process ought not to be based on naive idealism, but rather on realistic appraisal.

A truly solid plan involves, well… planning. So many people miss this part, but it’s not that hard. Take a realistic look at where you are today, and make an aggressive, but realistic plan for change. Instead of having goals, have a vision and see yourself succeeding several times per day.

Cynics build no bridges; they make no discoveries; no gaps are spanned by them. Cynics may pride themselves in being realistic in their approach, but progress and the onward march of civilization demand an inspiration and motivation that cynicism never affords. If we want progress, we must take the forward look.

I wish I’d seen, as I was writing it, that it would be much more effective if he motivation were love; that he does these terrible things out of sheer compassion. He’s killing people in order to save their souls....It’s much more interesting, because much more realistic, when there’s a struggle between different goods.

Third, you can increase the positive—whatever is enjoyable or beneficial—by creating, growing, or preserving it. You could breathe more quickly to lift your energy, remember times with friends that make you feel happy, have realistic and useful thoughts about a situation at work, or motivate yourself by imagining how good it will feel to eat healthy foods.

Traditionally, there have been two major strains of motivation (or perceived motivations) in anarchist politics: Duty and Joy. Like any duality, it is easy to fall into the trap of simplistic black and white labels, ignoring the more realistic continuum of grays. Instead, think of these two motivations as the end points on a continuum, illuminating everything in between.

Although he trusted the good sense of the people in the long run, he believed that they could easily be misled by demagogues. He was a realist who had no illusions about human nature. “The motives which predominate most human affairs,” he said, “are self-love and self-interest.” The common people, like the common soldiers in his army, could not be expected to be “influenced by any other principles than those of interest.

Perhaps in the end the first real step toward peace would be a realistic acceptance of the fact that our political ideals are perhaps to a great extent illusions and fictions to which we cling out of motives that are not always perfectly honest: that because of this we prevent ourselves from seeing any good or any practicability in the political ideals of our enemies—which may, of course, be in many ways even more illusory and dishonest than our own.

In 1972, the psychologist Irving Janis defined groupthink as, “a mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members’ strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.” Groupthink most commonly affects homogenous, close-knit communities that are overly insulated from internal and external criticism, and that perceive themselves as different from or under attack by outsiders. Its symptoms include censorship of dissent, rejection or rationalization of criticisms, the conviction of moral superiority, and the demonization of those who hold opposing beliefs. It typically leads to the incomplete or inaccurate assessment of information, the failure to seriously consider other possible options, a tendency to make rash decisions, and the refusal to reevaluate or alter those decisions once they’ve been made.

Often the greatest obstacle to our pursuit of mastery comes from the emotional drain we experience in dealing with the resistance and manipulations of the people around us. If we are not careful, our minds become absorbed in endless political intrigues and battles. The principal problem we face in the social arena is our naïve tendency to project onto people our emotional needs and desires of the moment. We misread their intentions and react in ways that cause confusion or conflict. Social intelligence is the ability to see people in the most realistic light possible. By moving past our usual self-absorption, we can learn to focus deeply on others, reading their behavior in the moment, seeing what motivates them, and discerning any possible manipulative tendencies. Navigating smoothly the social environment, we have more time and energy to focus on learning and acquiring skills. Success attained without this intelligence is not true mastery, and will not last.

Among the people to whom he belonged, nothing was written or talked about at that time except the Serbian war. Everything that the idle crowd usually does to kill time, it now did for the benefit of the Slavs: balls, concerts, dinners, speeches, ladies' dresses, beer, restaurants—all bore witness to our sympathy with the Slavs. With much that was spoken and written on the subject Konyshev did not agree in detail. He saw that the Slav question had become one of those fashionable diversions which, ever succeeding one another, serve to occupy Society; he saw that too many people took up the question from interested motives. He admitted that the papers published much that was unnecessary and exaggerated with the sole aim of drawing attention to themselves, each outcrying the other. He saw that amid this general elation in Society those who were unsuccessful or discontented leapt to the front and shouted louder than anyone else: Commanders-in-Chief without armies, Ministers without portfolios, journalists without papers, and party leaders without followers. He saw that there was much that was frivolous and ridiculous; but he also saw and admitted the unquestionable and ever-growing enthusiasm which was uniting all classes of society, and with which one could not help sympathizing. The massacre of our coreligionists and brother Slavs evoked sympathy for the sufferers and indignation against their oppressors. And the heroism of the Serbs and Montenegrins, fighting for a great cause, aroused in the whole nation a desire to help their brothers not only with words but by deeds. Also there was an accompanying fact that pleased Koznyshev. It was the manifestation of public opinion. The nation had definitely expressed its wishes. As Koznyshev put it, ' the soul of the nation had become articulate.' The more he went into this question, the clearer it seemed to him that it was a matter which would attain enormous proportions and become epoch-making.

Thank you Neil, and to the givers of this beautiful reward, my thanks from the heart. My family, my agent, editors, know that my being here is their doing as well as mine, and that the beautiful reward is theirs as much as mine. And I rejoice at accepting it for, and sharing it with, all the writers who were excluded from literature for so long, my fellow authors of fantasy and science fiction—writers of the imagination, who for the last 50 years watched the beautiful rewards go to the so-called realists. I think hard times are coming when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine some real grounds for hope. We will need writers who can remember freedom. Poets, visionaries—the realists of a larger reality. Right now, I think we need writers who know the difference between the production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. Developing written material to suit sales strategies in order to maximize corporate profit and advertising revenue is not quite the same thing as responsible book publishing or authorship. (Thank you, brave applauders.) Yet I see sales departments given control over editorial; I see my own publishers in a silly panic of ignorance and greed, charging public libraries for an ebook six or seven times more than they charge customers. We just saw a profiteer try to punish a publisher for disobedience and writers threatened by corporate fatwa, and I see a lot of us, the producers who write the books, and make the books, accepting this. Letting commodity profiteers sell us like deodorant, and tell us what to publish and what to write. (Well, I love you too, darling.) Books, you know, they’re not just commodities. The profit motive often is in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art—the art of words. I have had a long career and a good one. In good company. Now here, at the end of it, I really don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river. We who live by writing and publishing want—and should demand—our fair share of the proceeds. But the name of our beautiful reward is not profit. Its name is freedom. Thank you.

The key to achieving your objective is to frame it properly before you begin. Do you know the ‘SMART method’?” “No, I—” “You need to make sure that your objective is S for Specific (you have to avoid it being vague) and M for Measurable—in this case, for example, success would be losing ten pounds. Then there’s A for Attainable, defined as being achievable, thanks to a series of short steps; it mustn’t be an ‘unreachable star.’ R for Realistic: to keep you motivated, your objective has to make sense in relation to your personality and your possibilities. And, finally, T for Timely: you need to set yourself a deadline.

Finally, we arrive at the question of the so-called nonpolitical man. Hitler not only established his power from the very beginning with masses of people who were until then essentially nonpolitical; he also accomplished his last step to victory in March of 1933 in a "legal" manner, by mobilizing no less than five million nonvoters, that is to say, nonpolitical people. The Left parties had made every effort to win over the indifferent masses, without posing the question as to what it means "to be indifferent or nonpolitical." If an industrialist and large estate owner champions a rightist party, this is easily understood in terms of his immediate economic interests. In his case a leftist orientation would be at variance with his social situation and would, for that reason, point to irrational motives. If an industrial worker has a leftist orientation, this too is by all mean rationally consistent—it derives from his economic and social position in industry. If, however, a worker, an employee, or an official has a rightist orientation, this must be ascribed to a lack of political clarity, i.e., he is ignorant of his social position. The more a man who belongs to the broad working masses is nonpolitical, the more susceptible he is to the ideology of political reaction. To be nonpolitical is not, as one might suppose, evidence of a passive psychic condition, but of a highly active attitude, a defense against the awareness of social responsibility. The analysis of this defense against consciousness of one's social responsibility yields clear insights into a number of dark questions concerning the behavior of the broad nonpolitical strata. In the case of the average intellectual "who wants nothing to do with politics," it can easily be shown that immediate economic interests and fears related to his social position, which is dependent upon public opinion, lie at the basis of his noninvolvement. These fears cause him to make the most grotesque sacrifices with respect to his knowledge and convictions. Those people who are engaged in the production process in one way or another and are nonetheless socially irresponsible can be divided into two major groups. In the case of the one group the concept of politics is unconsciously associated with the idea of violence and physical danger, i.e., with an intense fear, which prevents them from facing life realistically. In the case of the other group, which undoubtedly constitutes the majority, social irresponsibility is based on personal conflicts and anxieties, of which the sexual anxiety is the predominant one. […] Until now the revolutionary movement has misunderstood this situation. It attempted to awaken the "nonpolitical" man by making him conscious solely of his unfulfilled economic interests. Experience teaches that the majority of these "nonpolitical" people can hardly be made to listen to anything about their socio-economic situation, whereas they are very accessible to the mystical claptrap of a National Socialist, despite the fact that the latter makes very little mention of economic interests. [This] is explained by the fact that severe sexual conflicts (in the broadest sense of the word), whether conscious or unconscious, inhibit rational thinking and the development of social responsibility. They make a person afraid and force him into a shell. If, now, such a self-encapsulated person meets a propagandist who works with faith and mysticism, meets, in other words, a fascist who works with sexual, libidinous methods, he turns his complete attention to him. This is not because the fascist program makes a greater impression on him than the liberal program, but because in his devotion to the führer and the führer's ideology, he experiences a momentary release from his unrelenting inner tension. Unconsciously, he is able to give his conflicts a different form and in this way to "solve" them.

Steve Jobs was famous for what observers called his “reality distortion field.” Part motivational tactic, part sheer drive and ambition, this field made him notoriously dismissive of phrases such as “It can’t be done” or “We need more time.” Having learned early in life that reality was falsely hemmed in by rules and compromises that people had been taught as children, Jobs had a much more aggressive idea of what was or wasn’t possible. To him, when you factored in vision and work ethic, much of life was malleable. For instance, in the design stages for a new mouse for an early Apple product, Jobs had high expectations. He wanted it to move fluidly in any direction—a new development for any mouse at that time—but a lead engineer was told by one of his designers that this would be commercially impossible. What Jobs wanted wasn’t realistic and wouldn’t work. The next day, the lead engineer arrived at work to find that Steve Jobs had fired the employee who’d said that. When the replacement came in, his first words were: “I can build the mouse.” This was Jobs’s view of reality at work. Malleable, adamant, self-confident. Not in the delusional sense, but for the purposes of accomplishing something. He knew that to aim low meant to accept mediocre accomplishment. But a high aim could, if things went right, create something extraordinary. He was Napoleon shouting to his soldiers: “There shall be no Alps!” For most of us, such confidence does not come easy. It’s understandable. So many people in our lives have preached the need to be realistic or conservative or worse—to not rock the boat. This is an enormous disadvantage when it comes to trying big things. Because though our doubts (and self-doubts) feel real, they have very little bearing on what is and isn’t possible. Our

The American novel claims to find its unity in reducing man either to elementals or to his external reactions and to his behavior. It does not choose feelings or passions to give a detailed description of, such as we find in classic French novels. It rejects analysis and the search for a fundamental psychological motive that could explain and recapitulate the behavior of a character. This is why the unity of this novel form is only the unity of the flash of recognition. Its technique consists in describing men by their outside appearances, in their most casual actions, of reproducing, without comment, everything they say down to their repetitions, and finally by acting as if men were entirely defined by their daily automatisms. On this mechanical level men, in fact, seem exactly alike, which explains this peculiar universe in which all the characters appear interchangeable, even down to their physical peculiarities. This technique is called realistic only owing to a misapprehension. In addition to the fact that realism in art is, as we shall see, an incomprehensible idea, it is perfectly obvious that this fictitious world is not attempting a reproduction, pure and simple, of reality, but the most arbitrary form of stylization. It is born of a mutilation, and of a voluntary mutilation, performed on reality. The unity thus obtained is a degraded unity, a leveling off of human beings and of the world. It would seem that for these writers it is the inner life that deprives human actions of unity and that tears people away from one another. This is a partially legitimate suspicion. But rebellion, which is one of the sources of the art of fiction, can find satisfaction only in constructing unity on the basis of affirming this interior reality and not of denying it. To deny it totally is to refer oneself to an imaginary man.

The unreal is the illogical. And this age seems to have a capacity for surpassing even the acme of illogicality, of anti-logicality: it is as if the monstrous reality of the war had blotted out the reality of the world. Fantasy has become logical reality, but reality evolves the most a-logical phantasmagoria. An age that is softer and more cowardly than any preceding age suffocates in waves of blood and poison-gas; nations of bank clerks and profiteers hurl themselves upon barbed wire; a well-organized humanitarianism avails to hinder nothing, but calls itself the Red Cross and prepares artificial limbs for the victims; towns starve and coin money out of their own hunger; spectacled school-teachers lead storm-troops; city dwellers live in caves; factory hands and other civilians crawl out on their artificial limbs once more to the making of profits. Amid a blurring of all forms, in a twilight of apathetic uncertainty brooding over a ghostly world, man like a lost child gropes his way by the help of a small frail thread of logic through a dream landscape that he calls reality and that is nothing but a nightmare to him. The melodramatic revulsion which characterizes this age as insane, the melodramatic enthusiasm which calls it great, are both justified by the swollen incomprehensibility and illogicality of the events that apparently make up its reality. Apparently! For insane or great are terms that can never be applied to an age, but only to an individual destiny. Our individual destinies, however, are as normal as they ever were. Our common destiny is the sum of our single lives, and each of these single lives is developing quite normally, in accordance, as it were, with its private logicality. We feel the totality to be insane, but for each single life we can easily discover logical guiding motives. Are we, then, insane because we have not gone mad?

What’s really worried me over the years is not our stock price, but that we might someday fail to take care of our customers, or that our managers might fail to motivate and take care of our associates. I also was worried that we might lose the team concept, or fail to keep the family concept viable and realistic and meaningful to our folks as we grow. Those challenges are more real than somebody’s theory that we’re headed down the wrong path. As business leaders, we absolutely cannot afford to get all caught up in trying to meet the goals that some retail analyst or financial institution in New York sets for us on a ten-year plan spit out of a computer that somebody set to compound at such-and-such a rate. If we do that, we take our eye off the ball. But if we demonstrate in our sales and our earnings every day, every week, every quarter, that we’re doing our job in a sound way, we will get the growth we are entitled to, and the market will respect us in a way that we deserve.

Time management also involves energy management. Sometimes the rationalization for procrastination is wrapped up in the form of the statement “I’m not up to this,” which reflects the fact you feel tired, stressed, or some other uncomfortable state. Consequently, you conclude that you do not have the requisite energy for a task, which is likely combined with a distorted justification for putting it off (e.g., “I have to be at my best or else I will be unable to do it.”). Similar to reframing time, it is helpful to respond to the “I’m not up to this” reaction by reframing energy. Thinking through the actual behavioral and energy requirements of a job challenges the initial and often distorted reasoning with a more realistic view. Remember, you only need “enough” energy to start the task. Consequently, being “too tired” to unload the dishwasher or put in a load of laundry can be reframed to see these tasks as requiring only a low level of energy and focus. This sort of reframing can be used to address automatic thoughts about energy on tasks that require a little more get-up-and-go. For example, it is common for people to be on the fence about exercising because of the thought “I’m too tired to exercise.” That assumption can be redirected to consider the energy required for the smaller steps involved in the “exercise script” that serve as the “launch sequence” for getting to the gym (e.g., “Are you too tired to stand up and get your workout clothes? Carry them to the car?” etc.). You can also ask yourself if you have ever seen people at the gym who are slumped over the exercise machines because they ran out of energy from trying to exert themselves when “too tired.” Instead, you can draw on past experience that you will end up feeling better and more energized after exercise; in fact, you will sleep better, be more rested, and have the positive outcome of keeping up with your exercise plan. If nothing else, going through this process rather than giving into the impulse to avoid makes it more likely that you will make a reasoned decision rather than an impulsive one about the task. A separate energy management issue relevant to keeping plans going is your ability to maintain energy (and thereby your effort) over longer courses of time. Managing ADHD is an endurance sport. It is said that good soccer players find their rest on the field in order to be able to play the full 90 minutes of a game. Similarly, you will have to manage your pace and exertion throughout the day. That is, the choreography of different tasks and obligations in your Daily Planner affects your energy. It is important to engage in self-care throughout your day, including adequate sleep, time for meals, and downtime and recreational activities in order to recharge your battery. Even when sequencing tasks at work, you can follow up a difficult task, such as working on a report, with more administrative tasks, such as responding to e-mails or phone calls that do not require as much mental energy or at least represent a shift to a different mode. Similarly, at home you may take care of various chores earlier in the evening and spend the remaining time relaxing. A useful reminder is that there are ways to make some chores more tolerable, if not enjoyable, by linking them with preferred activities for which you have more motivation. Folding laundry while watching television, or doing yard work or household chores while listening to music on an iPod are examples of coupling obligations with pleasurable activities. Moreover, these pleasant experiences combined with task completion will likely be rewarding and energizing.

The ordinary miracle is the one that can actually happen. It can be seen in  people who hated exercise, lived off junk food and were in a death spiral — until they changed. Usually via a slow and steady approach, more tortoise than hare, but they changed. It was a long process, but they got leaner and more muscular. They worked hard to build strength, speed and stamina. They looked and felt better. They got out of the death spiral and began to enjoy life much more. For them, looking back on who they used to be and who they became, it seems miraculous.

Procrastination. Out of a perspective of pessimism, a person often delays “trying.” Since he sees no value in completion that doesn’t include top-mark perfection, he puts off doing anything.

Energy requires three things: Food Sleep Activity—physical, and also mental

Personal freedom is not the absence of inner constraint, but a realistic awareness of our motivations and the ability, in light of this knowledge, to do what is honoring to God regardless of the cost.

Many people generally think of it as a sincere desire to help the other person to be more realistic, behave in more constructive ways, to help them recognize others as worthwhile, unique individuals, to show that you value the relationship, or to help that person reduce self-destructive behaviors. Our motives are praiseworthy, we are trying to help the other person. Many times what you fail to recognize is that your vision of needed changes rises from your own needs and expectations. Yes, the changes may do all that is needed to make the person more effective and loveable, but the impetus is your need to have him or her be this way—not his or her need. The person did not request or seek your assistance to change, you decided it was necessary and began to work to make him or her accept your vision.

You ultimate goal is to be a healthy eating workout warrior, day after day, until your dirt nap. So compete against your self. Aspire to get better. Aspire go faster and further. Aspire to be stronger and have more stamina. Aspire to be awesome.

Wake up, you sonofabitch! It’s time to kick some ass!

When trying to overcome temptations, successful people think “I don’t” instead of “I can’t” Successful people don’t think about what they don’t want. Instead, they think about what they do want. Instead of suppressing negative habits, successful people focus on replacing them. Instead of vaguely thinking about what they would like to achieve, successful people write and shareSMART goals Successful people use “if-then” thinking to achieve their goals. Using “if-then” planning triples their chances of achieving success. Successful people commit themselves fully to their goal and take daily action to achieve it Successful people use the five-minute technique to overcome procrastination. “To-go” thinking keeps successful people motivated so that they can achieve their goals Unsuccessful people think that achieving their goals will be easy. Successful people are confident in achieving their goals but realize that the process of doing so will be difficult. If you want increase your chances of achieving your goals, be a realistic optimist. Successful people don’t just visualize success. They also think about and prepare themselves for the difficulties they will encounter. They visualize themselves persisting even when things get rough. Successful people think of failures as part of the process of achieving success. Instead of shying away from failure, they give themselves permission to fail. Doing so allows them to still stay motivated even when they do fail. Unsuccessful people think that their abilities and intelligence levels are fixed. Successful people think that they can improve themselves through hard work. Unsuccessful people look at criticism and failure as a negative judgement of their abilities. Successful people, on the other hand, view criticism and failure as opportunities for improvement. Successful people are successful because they make a conscious choice to adopt the above habits, attitudes and thinking processes. Success is not an accident - it is a choice.

Richard the Second is our launching pad that brings convicts back to normalcy. Then we break the curse that they are defined by their deeds with Henry the Fourth. After that, we build in them the potential for greatness with Henry the Fifth. In Henry the Sixth, we teach them to keep that potential grounded in realistic options. And with Richard the Third, we show them that it is essential that they follow their intrinsic motivations. Richard the Third is the consequence of not being rewarded as one thinks he should be. He is the consequence of extrinsic motivation.

All these physical practices were subjected to subsequent meditational observation in which students would examine what had arisen within their minds during the practices and their responses to such stimuli. Progressively there are different types of meditations, which are concerned, with the development of a balanced, quiescent and ultimately realistic experience of mind called smriti, they are concerning the body, feelings, mind, and mental objects. Through such practices as mindfulness, practitioners were brought face to face with a greater experience of the nature and motivations they carried within their bodies and minds.

Naive hope is based on wishful thinking, but a hope formed from suffering, perseverance, and character and rooted in faith in God is something else entirely. It is realistic, motivating, and awesome. It helps us see beyond the misery of the immediate to the possible. It is founded on the certainty of the Lord’s love and power.

Of all the current social theories, the rational/utilitarian tradition, in its modern incarnation, is most finely tuned to a way of making social policies work. The conflict tradition, with its tradition of conflicting movements and revolutionary upheavals, has a tendency to focus on the evils that exist, and the conditions that will bring about an uprising against them. Where conflict theory is weak is in explaining what will happen after the revolution, or after a successful movement has won some power. Its attitude tends to be: put the oppressed peoples in charge and everything will be great. At this point conflict theory stops being realistic. In their own ways, the other lines of social theory also tend to be vague about social theory. The Durkheimian tradition, with its emphasis on the conditions that produce solidarity and its ideals, doesn’t see people as very capable of generating specific social results; its victories are symbolic and emotional rather than practical. The micro-interaction theories, with their emphasis on the shifting cognitive interpretations of social reality, are also not very good at specific social policies. They assume either that somehow a social belief will be created that people find satisfactory, or that people live in their own little worlds of cognitive reality-construction, like separate bubbles in a stream. The modern rational/utilitarians, for all their faults, nevertheless are no the forefront in attempting to apply sociological insights to propose policies that have a realistic chance of succeeding. That is not to say that the theoretical basis of rational/utilitarian theory is necessarily adequate yet to this task. We have seen a consistent problem in the utilitarian tradition, on the level of how to motivate people for collective action. Can the appeal to interests alone motivate people to adopt great reforms, whether this appeal is embodies in the legal codes advocated by Bentham, in Adam Smith’s freedom of the market, or in schemes for new rules of the social game such as those proposed by Rawls, Buchanan, or Coleman? There is an element of pulling oneself up by one’s own bootstraps in these proposals, as long as one starts from the isolated individual concerned for his or her own interests. As an alternative, we may still need to draw on the conflict theory, which suggests that people fight for their interests rather blindly, solving one problem but creating new ones. The other alternative is the Durkheimian tradition of social solidarity, which explains precisely the emotional links among people that rational/utilitarian theory leaves out.

To reiterate, geniuses are people who combine an especially high intellectual ability with a spontaneous tendency to focus on some abstract (by ‘abstract’ we mean ‘not-social’) problem, and the inner motivation to maintain this focus, to quest for an answer, for relatively long periods of time. However, there are only two ways that they can realistically find the space to pursue their genius: a patron or, in some cases, a well-funded university.

Old people vote. You know who votes in the swing states where this election will be fought? Really old people. Instead of high-profile videos with Cardi B (no disrespect to Cardi, who famously once threatened to dog-walk the egregious Tomi Lahren), maybe focus on registering and reaching more of those old-fart voters in counties in swing states. If your celebrity and music-industry friends want to flood social media with GOTV messages, let them. It makes them feel important and it’s the cheapest outsourcing you can get. Just don’t build your models on the idea that you’re going to spike young voter turnout beyond 20 percent. The problem with chasing the youth vote is threefold: First, they’re unlikely to be registered. You have to devote a lot of work to going out, grabbing them, registering them, educating them, and motivating them to go out and vote. If they were established but less active voters, you’d have voter history and other data to work with. There are lower-effort, lower-cost ways to make this work. Second, they’re not conditioned to vote; that November morning is much more likely to involve regret at not finishing a paper than missing a vote. Third, and finally, a meaningful fraction of the national youth vote overall is located in California. Its gigantic population skews the number, and since the Golden State’s Electoral College outcome is never in doubt, it doesn’t matter. What’s our motto, kids? “The Electoral College is the only game in town.” This year, the Democrats have been racing to win the Free Shit election with young voters by promising to make college “free” (a word that makes any economic conservative lower their glasses, put down the brandy snifter, and arch an eyebrow) and to forgive $1.53 trillion gazillion dollars of student loan debt. Set aside that the rising price of college is what happens to everything subsidized or guaranteed by the government.17 Set aside that those subsidies cause college costs to wildly exceed the rate of inflation across the board, and that it sucks to have $200k in student loan debt for your degree in Intersectional Yodeling. Set aside that the college loan system is run by predatory asswipes. The big miss here is a massive policy disconnect—a student-loan jubilee would be a massive subsidy to white, upper-middle-class people in their mid-thirties to late forties. I’m not saying Democrats shouldn’t try to appeal to young voters on some level, but I want them to have a realistic expectation about just how hard it is to move those numbers in sufficient volume in the key Electoral College states. When I asked one of the smartest electoral modeling brains in the business about this issue, he flooded me with an inbox of spreadsheets and data points. But the key answer he gave me was this: “The EC states in play are mostly old as fuck. If your models assume young voter magic, you’re gonna have a bad day.

Bruce’s strategy had little to do with changing people’s values and everything to do with motivating them to change their behavior, with little or no sacrifice required.

Adam Smith had a sharper eye. As I quoted last time, he understood that the “masters of mankind,” the merchants and manufacturers, would make sure that their own interests are cared for no matter how grievous the effect on others and would follow their vile maxim: all for ourselves, nothing for anyone else. Madison didn’t see things this way at the time of the Convention, though it didn’t take long for him to gain a more realistic understanding of the world. Already by 1792 he recognized that the Hamiltonian developmental capitalist state would be a social system “substituting the motive of private interest in place of public duty,” leading to “a real domination of the few under an apparent liberty of the many.” In a letter to Jefferson he deplored “the daring depravity of the times [as the] stockjobbers will become the pretorian band of the government—at once its tools and its tyrant; bribed by its largesses, and overawing it by clamors and combinations.

Nothing I do is natural, realistic, organic or accidental. I'm never spontaneous, I'm completely premeditated.

groupthink occurs when people “are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group,” and their “strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.

Of course the Catholic ethic was an ethic of intentions. But the concrete intentio of the single act determined its value. And the single good or bad action was credited to the doer determining his temporal and eternal fate. Quite realistically the Church recognized that man was not an absolutely clearly defined unity to be judged one way or the other, but that his moral life was normally subject to conflicting motives and his action contradictory.

Mohammed bin Salman’s plan should probably have been called Vision 2050. That would have represented a more realistic, if a less-motivating, time frame for transforming the Saudi economy from one based almost entirely on oil-funded transfer payments into one based partially on productive enterprise. Even by 2050, the existing plan will not turn Saudi Arabia into South Korea.

You have the power to be the master of your physical destiny Eliminate negative self-talk Use visualization to enforce your positive mindset Create SMART goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time bound Learn to love exercise by forgetting the past, pacing yourself, ditching excuses and overcoming insecurities Build the exercise habit with cues, routines and rewards Use the FITT Principle to create your ideal workout program Work through all three energy systems to achieve total fitness Vary your training heart rate zone for total cardiovascular fitness

Most of us aren’t very good at setting goals. Fortunately, an excellent template has been devised to help us get it right. It is summed up in the acronym SMART, which stands for: Specific Measurable Achievable Realistic Time Bound

Rome was not built in a day, so don't have just one big goal. Rather have daily goals which are smaller and realistic. Those daily goals can then sum up to your bigger long term goals.

In defense of Madison’s stand, we should recall that his mentality was precapitalist. He assumed that the people who would run the country, those who had the wealth of the nation, would be “enlightened gentlemen,” people who have the good of the society at heart, not their own fortunes. They would be like the mostly mythical Roman noblemen who were an image for the Framers, even providing the names for the pseudonymous pamphlets of the intellectual elite. Adam Smith had a sharper eye. As I quoted last time, he understood that the “masters of mankind,” the merchants and manufacturers, would make sure that their own interests are cared for no matter how grievous the effect on others and would follow their vile maxim: all for ourselves, nothing for anyone else. Madison didn’t see things this way at the time of the Convention, though it didn’t take long for him to gain a more realistic understanding of the world. Already by 1792 he recognized that the Hamiltonian developmental capitalist state would be a social system “substituting the motive of private interest in place of public duty,” leading to “a real domination of the few under an apparent liberty of the many.” In a letter to Jefferson he deplored “the daring depravity of the times [as the] stockjobbers will become the pretorian band of the government—at once its tools and its tyrant; bribed by its largesses, and overawing it by clamors and combinations.” Not an unfamiliar picture.

Some people like her are self motivated. She is the woman of emotions. She'll handle herself better in her worst situation. She is capable to take care of her surroundings without knowing anyone the battle inside her heart. She is an artist of her life. She has everything inside her. Her qualities will make her sustainable. She is not a common human. She is a vast deep detector of technicality. She has tremendous sense of ideas & realistic psychology. Her decisions never got fail. She never got fail. Her God has blessed her uniquely. Don't try to chase her or find her. Don't try to communicate with her. She is isolated passion flower. Her existence itself was the blessing for you.

M is for measurable–As you work on achieving the goal, you must track or measure your progress or lack thereof (more on this later). This shows where you are along the way and keeps you motivated as you draw nearer to the goal. A is for achievable–Is the goal you’ve set for yourself achievable? How? Is it realistic? Notice, I didn’t say how easy. You want to stretch yourself, but not to the point of wanting to give up. R is for relevant–Is the goal relevant to your personal growth and what you’re trying to achieve? T is for timely–Establish a time frame you believe would be realistic based on your schedule for accomplishing the goal. Every goal needs a deadline to keep you motivated as you move forward. Keep in mind, when selecting goals, you may find that a larger goal will include smaller goals that help you reach the larger one. Breaking goals down, where possible, into smaller achievable “bites” make the most overwhelming goals more attainable.

Before you take a job, carefully list what things others are going to need to do or to deliver in order for you to successfully achieve what you hope to do. Ask yourself: “What are the assumptions that have to prove true in order for me to be able to succeed in this assignment?” List them. Are they within your control? Equally important, ask yourself what assumptions have to prove true for you to be happy in the choice you are contemplating. Are you basing your position on extrinsic or intrinsic motivators? Why do you think this is going to be something you enjoy doing? What evidence do you have? Every time you consider a career move, keep thinking about the most important assumptions that have to prove true, and how you can swiftly and inexpensively test if they are valid. Make sure you are being realistic about the path ahead of you.

In general, though, new leaders are perceived as more credible when they display these characteristics: Demanding but able to be satisfied. Effective leaders get people to make realistic commitments and then hold them responsible for achieving results. But if you’re never satisfied, you’ll sap people’s motivation. Know when to celebrate success and when to push for more. Accessible but not too familiar. Being accessible does not mean making yourself available indiscriminately. It means being approachable, but in a way that preserves your authority. Decisive but judicious. New leaders communicate their capacity to take charge, perhaps by rapidly making some low-consequence decisions, without jumping too quickly into decisions that they aren’t ready to make. Early in your transition, you want to project decisiveness but defer some decisions until you know enough to make the right calls. Focused but flexible. Avoid setting up a vicious cycle and alienating others by coming across as rigid and unwilling to consider multiple solutions. Effective new leaders establish authority by zeroing in on issues but consulting others and encouraging input. They also know when to give people the flexibility to achieve results in their own ways. Active without causing commotion. There’s a fine line between building momentum and overwhelming your group or unit. Make things happen, but avoid pushing people to the point of burnout. Learn to pay attention to stress levels and pace yourself and others. Willing to make tough calls but humane. You may have to make tough calls right away, including letting go of marginal performers. Effective new leaders do what needs to be done, but they do it in ways that preserve people’s dignity and that others perceive as fair.

The realistic novels of George Eliot appeared after p England wearied of the fanciful fictions of Walter Scott. A generation passed by before the reaction set in with full force. Both writers wrote as they did, largely in obedience to the tendencies of their times, upon which they reacted and were reacted upon. They wrote because of personal repressions. Their methods of of expression were different , because of a desire to comply somewhat with literary traditions. Romanticism was fashionable in 1830, while realism was in the air in 1860.

NBC would broadcast these public-service announcements. The Cosby kids would say things like, "Don't do drugs, because you've got a lot to live for." And I used to think, Well, okay--it's easy to say that, but some people are sitting at home and aren't from a rich family and might have no future. And here's a kid actor making shitloads of money, and he's telling everyone they have a lot to live for? It's hypocrisy on the grandest scale. Seeing something like that was always a motivation for me to create something more realistic. That was one of the things I dealt with in the "I'm with the Band" episode [of Freaks and Geeks], where Nick auditions to become a drummer. Lindsay tells Nick, "You've got to follow your dreams! You can be anything you want to be!" When I wrote that episode, it was my way of saying, "Actually, no. That's nonsense. You might have that attitude, but that's not the way the world works.

Formulating farfetched, unrealistic goals only sets up a pattern of failure and hence frustration, dampening motivations. Don’t set a goal of gaining 10 pounds of muscle each week or month when you’ve heard it over and over from all authorities that a 10-pound gain of muscle per year is more realistic

the threat today is not western religions, but psychology and consumerism. is the Dharma becoming another psychotherapy, another commodity to be bought and sold? will western Buddhism become all too compatible with our individualistic consumption patterns, with expensive retreats and initiations, catering to overstressed converts, eager to pursue their own enlightenment? let’s hope not, because Buddhism and the west need each other. despite its economic and technologic dynamism, western civilisation and its globalisation are in trouble, which means all of us are in trouble. the most obvious example is our inability to respond to accelerating climate change, as seriously as it requires. if humanity is to survive and thrive over the next few centuries, there is no need to go on at length here about the other social and ecological crisis that confront us now, which are increasingly difficult to ignore [many of those are considered in the following chapters]. it’s also becoming harder to overlook the fact that the political and economic systems we’re so proud of seem unable to address these problems. one must ask, is that because they themselves are the problem? part of the problem is leadership, or the lack of it, but we can’t simply blame our rulers. it’s not only the lack of a moral core of those who rise to the top, or the institutional defamations that massage their rise, economical and political elites, and there’s not much difference between them anymore. like the rest of us, they are in need of a new vision of possibility, what it means to be human, why we tend to get into trouble, and how we can get out go it, those who benefit the most from the present social arrangements may think of themselves as hardheaded realists, but as self-conscious human beings, we remain motivated by some such vision, weather we’re aware of it or not, as why we love war, points out. even secular modernity is based on a spiritual worldview, unfortunately a deficient one, from a Buddhist perspective.

As a realist, I can argue that there is no fire without smoke and not the other way around.

But there are some to-do list essentials that we should all know if we want to help our brains navigate the day, based on the science of working memory, motivation, and goal pursuit. I don’t always see people applying these brain-friendly essentials, so here’s a checklist for you to consider: Write it down as soon as it comes to mind. Never waste your brain’s precious working memory by trying to hold your tasks or ideas in your head. Use your intelligence for getting things done, rather than trying to remember what you need to do. That means having a process for capturing to-dos as soon as they occur to you, even if you then end up transferring them to a master list. Only keep today’s tasks in view. You might have a grand list of tasks you’d like to complete in the coming weeks or months. But once you’ve decided what you really need and want to get done today, work off that list, and hide the rest. As long as your longer-term items are visible, they’ll use up a little of your brain’s processing capacity—and may even depress you a little if your long list is very long. Make it satisfying to check off. If you’re online, give yourself a box to check, and a ping or a swoosh to hear. If you’re working on paper, give yourself the satisfaction of a big bold line through everything you’ve done. The more rewarding it feels to track your progress, the more your brain will tend to spur you toward getting things done. Be realistic about what you can do in a day. Progress feels good to your brain’s reward system; failure doesn’t. Do you have five things you’d like to tackle today, but know you probably only have time for three? It’s better to feel great about nailing three tasks. If you succeed and find you’ve got more time, you’ll be flushed with motivation to seek out one or two more tasks. Include mind-body maintenance. Put exercise, rest, and other physical health goals on your list alongside your other tasks. If you take a moment to put “take a walk” on the list, you’re way more likely to build it into your day rather than let it be crowded out by other demands—just as defining goals for anything makes it more likely you’ll get it done.

if our stories are fully aligned, you will never need to worry about me misunderstanding or undermining your efforts. With aligned stories, the founders will be able to involve developers in their prioritization discussions to keep goals realistic and achievable; the tech lead will discover that he doesn’t have all the answers and that team members can work with him to improve the structure and process more effectively; and the product manager will find that she can replace detailed specs with conversations with motivated developers.

You must be realistic about the good and the bad in life or you will never be motivated to try new things, explore ideas and concepts.

If you don’t have the highest ambitions, you will never achieve anything great. If you’re “realistic” rather than “idealistic”, you will inevitably accept failure because failure is always the realistic outcome of any undertaking. Samuel Beckett said, “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.” That’s idealistic, not realistic. The realist would just give up. Illuminism is about aiming for the highest heights. If you prefer the plains, the lows, the average, the ordinary, the banal, the bland, the uncommitted, the neutral, the self-interested, the “realistic”, Illuminism is not for you.

ask yourself what assumptions have to prove true for you to be happy in the choice you are contemplating. Are you basing your position on extrinsic or intrinsic motivators? Why do you think this is going to be something you enjoy doing? What evidence do you have? Every time you consider a career move, keep thinking about the most important assumptions that have to prove true, and how you can swiftly and inexpensively test if they are valid. Make sure you are being realistic about the path ahead of you.

when other-motivated people (no previous SM desires or fantasies) are offered a safe chance to experience it, their reaction will put them into one of three groups with about equal frequency.

An idealist believes the short run doesn’t count. A cynic believes the long run doesn’t matter. A realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run. Syndey J. Harris

There is no evidence from anywhere in the world that harm reduction measures encourage drug use. Denying addicts humane assistance multiplies their miseries without bringing them one inch closer to recovery. There is also no contradiction between harm reduction and abstinence. The two objectives are incompatible only if we imagine that we can set the agenda for someone else’s life regardless of what he or she may choose. We cannot. Short of extreme coercion there is absolutely nothing anyone can do to induce another to give up addiction, except to provide the island of relief where contemplation and self-respect can, perhaps, take root. Those ready to choose abstinence should receive every possible support — much more support than we currently provide. But what of those who don’t choose that path? The impossibility of changing other people is not restricted to addictions. Try as we may to motivate another person to be different or to do this or not to do that, our attempts founder on a basic human trait: the drive for autonomy. “And one may choose what is contrary to one’s own interests and sometimes one positively ought,” wrote Fyodor Dostoevsky in Notes from the Underground. “What man wants is simply independent choice, whatever that independence may cost and wherever it may lead.” The issue is not whether the addict would be better off without his habit — of course he would — but whether we are going to abandon him if he is unable to give it up. Are we willing to care for human beings who suffer because of their own persistent behaviours, mindful that these behaviours stem from early life misfortunes they had no hand in creating? The harm reduction approach accepts that some people — many people — are too deeply enmeshed in substance dependence for any realistic “cure” under present circumstances. There is, for now, too much pain in their lives and too few internal and external resources available to them. In practising harm reduction we do not give up on abstinence — on the contrary, we may hope to encourage that possibility by helping people feel better, bringing them into therapeutic relationships with caregivers, offering them a sense of trust, removing judgment from our interactions with them and giving them a sense of acceptance. At the same time, we do not hold out abstinence as the Holy Grail and we do not make our valuation of addicts as worthwhile human beings dependent on their making choices that please us. Harm reduction is as much an attitude and way of being as it is a set of policies and methods.

give yourself permission to dream, to be totally unrealistic. (Richard Bolles says, "One of the saddest lines in the world is, 'Oh, come now, be realistic.' ")

don’t think this is realistic,” he said. “The CEO would be an older white man.” My colleague and I agreed that might often be the case, but explained that we wanted to focus more on Linda’s needs and motivations than on how she looked. “Sorry, it’s just not believable,” he insisted. “We need to change it.” I squirmed in my Aeron chair. My colleague looked out the window. We’d lost that one, and we knew it. Back at the office, “Linda” became “Michael”—a suit-clad, salt-and-pepper-haired guy. But we kept Linda’s photo in the mix, swapping it to another profile so that our personas wouldn’t end up lily-white. A couple weeks later, we were back in that same conference room, where our client had asked us to share the revised personas with another member of his executive team. We were halfway through our spiel when executive number two cut us off. “So, you have a divorced black woman in a low-level job,” he said. “I have a problem with that.” Reader, I died. Looking back, both of these clients were right: most of the CEOs who were members of their organization were white men, and representing their members this way wasn’t a good plan for their future. But what they missed—because, I recognize now, our personas encouraged them to miss it—was that demographics weren’t the point. Differing motivations and challenges were the real drivers behind what these people wanted and how they interacted with the organization. We thought adding photos, genders, ages, and hometowns would give our personas a more realistic feel. And they did—just not the way we intended. Rather than helping folks connect with these people, the personas encouraged the team to assume that demographic information drove motivations—that

The Commissioner asserts 'motivated intruders' evidence from Professor Anderaon was accepted under cross-examination as an 'over-extension' from his personal experiences with completely unrelated animal rights activists - see para.24 of the closing submissions, Professor Anderson's "wild speculations" about the possibility of "young men, borderline sociopathic or psychopathic" attaching themselves to the PACE trial criticism 'do him no credit". Nor do his extrapolations from benign Twitter requests for information to an "organised campaign” from an "adversarial group" show that he has maintained the necessary objectivity and accuracy that he is required to maintain. He does not distinguish between legitimate ethical and political disagreement, and the use of positions of access to confidential data. He stated that where there was legitimate disagreement one should assume that people will act in unlawful ways, This proposition that one should in every case assume the absolute worst about data disclosure is clearly neither sensible nor realistic. Freedom of Information Act tribunal judgment

According to famed psychologist David McClelland, there are three basic types of motivation: 1) Achievement, 2) Authority and 3) Affiliation. Achievement Seekers Those who seek Achievement are looking for the following things: They attain realistic but challenging goals. Achieving the task is its own reward. Financial reward is a measurement of success. Security/status are not the primary motivators. Feedback is a quantifiable measure of success. They seek improvement. Authority Seekers Employees who seek Authority are looking for the following things: They value their ideas being heard and prevailing. Having influence and impact is the most important reward. They show leadership skills and enjoy directing others. Increasing personal status and prestige is important. Affiliation Seekers Employees who are motivated by Affiliation are looking for the following things: They need friendly relationships and are motivated by interaction with others. Being liked and held in high regard is important. They are team players. Emotions are a larger motivating factor than quantifiable data. They are in tune with others’ feelings and seek to make others happy.

How to Create Your Action Plan First, take your goal and make it into a SMART goal. What is a SMART goal? SMART is an acronym that stands for ‘Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-tagged.’ It helps you create clear, attainable, realistic, and achievable goals.

it’s the understandable tendency to judge everything from the perspective you occupy, so that the few thousand weeks for which you happen to be around inevitably come to feel like the linchpin of history, to which all prior time was always leading up. These self-centered judgments are part of what psychologists call the “egocentricity bias,” and they make good sense from an evolutionary standpoint. If you had a more realistic sense of your own sheer irrelevance, considered on the timescale of the universe, you’d probably be less motivated to struggle to survive, and thereby to propagate your genes.