Right Mindset Quotes

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After making all the mistakes, every player has a chance to turn the outcome of the game around by making the right moves next.
Zoltan Andrejkovics (The Invisible Game: The Mindset of a Winning Team)
Discovering you were wrong is an update, not a failure, and your worldview is a living document meant to be revised.
Julia Galef (The Scout Mindset: The Perils of Defensive Thinking and How to Be Right More Often)
Everything sounds like crap until you are in the right mind-set.
Shonda Rhimes (Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand In the Sun and Be Your Own Person)
But I'm different now than I was then. Just like I was different at the end of the trip than I'd been in the beginning. And I'll be different tomorrow than i am today. And what that means is that i can never replicate that trip. Even if I went to the same places and met the same people, it would'nt be the same. My experience would'nt be the same. To me, that's what traveling should be about. Meeting people, learning to not only appreciate a different culture, but really enjoy it like a local, following whatever impulse strikes you. So how could I recommend a trip to someone else, if I don't even know what to expect? My advice would be to make a list of places on some index cards, shuffle them, and pick any fice at random. Then just . . . go and see what happens. If you have the right mind-set, it does'nt matter where you end up or how much money you brought. It'll be something you'll remember forever.
Nicholas Sparks (The Guardian)
There were eleven of us. Each more different than the next. All with the same mindset. Things weren't the way they were meant to be. It was our job to make things right. We were the soldiers of Halla. It was time for us to take it back.
D.J. MacHale
Think about every good thing in your life right now. Free yourself of worrying. Let go of the anxiety, breathe. Stay positive, all is well.
Germany Kent
I saw a meme the other day with a picture of Marilyn Manson and Robin Williams. It said about the former, this isn’t the face of depression, and about the latter, this is. This really struck a chord and it’s been on my mind since then. As someone who has continuously dipped in and out of chronic depression and anxiety for close to three decades now, and I’ve never previously spoken about the subject, I finally thought it was time I did. These days it’s trendy for people to think they’re cool and understanding about mental illness, posting memes and such to indicate so. But the reality is far different to that. It seems most people think if they publicly display such understanding then perhaps a friend will come to them, open up, and calmly discuss their problems. This will not happen. For someone in that seemingly hopeless void of depression and anxiety the last thing they are likely to do is acknowledge it, let alone talk about it. Even if broached by a friend they will probably deny there is a problem and feel even more distanced from the rest of the world. So nobody can do anything to help, right? No. If right now you suspect one of your friends is suffering like this then you’re probably right. If right now you think that none of your friends are suffering like this then you’re probably wrong. By all means make your public affirmations of understanding, but at least take on board that an attempt to connect on this subject by someone you care about could well be cryptic and indirect. When we hear of celebrities who suffered and finally took their own lives the message tends to be that so many close friends had no idea. This is woeful, but it’s also great, right? Because by not knowing there was a problem there is no burden of responsibility on anyone else. This is another huge misconception, that by acknowledging an indirect attempt to connect on such a complex issue that somehow you are accepting responsibility to fix it. This is not the case. You don’t have to find a solution. Maybe just listen. Many times over the years I’ve seen people recoil when they suspect that perhaps that is the direct a conversation is about to turn, and they desperately scramble for anything that can immediately change the subject. By acknowledging you’ve heard and understood doesn’t mean you are picking up their burden and carrying it for them. Anyway, I’ve said my piece. And please don’t think this is me reaching out for help. If this was my current mindset the last thing I’d ever do is write something like this, let alone share it.
R.D. Ronald
The sense of ownership is one reason why abuse tends to get worse as relationships get more serious. The more history and commitment that develop in the couple, the more the abuser comes to think of his partner as a prized object. Possessiveness is at the core of the abuser’s mindset, the spring from which all the other streams spout; on some level he feels that he owns you and therefore has the right to treat you as he sees fit.
Lundy Bancroft (Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men)
The acknowledgement of a single possibility can change everything.
Aberjhani (Splendid Literarium: A Treasury of Stories, Aphorisms, Poems, and Essays)
At times it may seem as though you and your past are one. Sometimes we fail to differentiate between what has happened to us and who we are today. If you have a hard time getting beyond that damaging mind-set let me encourage you right now. You are not your past Although you are changed and shaped by past experiences who you were yesterday does not control the person you have the potential to become tomorrow.
Sue Augustine (When Your Past Is Hurting Your Present: Getting Beyond Fears That Hold You Back)
No cowboys for Canada. Canada got Mounties instead - Dudley Do-Right, not John Wayne. It's a mind-set of "Here I come to save the day" versus "Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker.
Sarah Vowell (The Partly Cloudy Patriot)
Blackouts can be fun if approached with the right mindset. You just can't sweat the fact that you've lost a small portion of your life for all eternity. Occasionally, little bubbles of memory will float up like surreal Mylar party balloons at unexpected times throughout the net day and start piecing together a colorful, if incomplete, version of reality.
Josh Kilmer-Purcell (I Am Not Myself These Days)
The ego is what drives a self-serving individual who hates to admit they are wrong.
Suzy Kassem (Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
Except in a very few matches, usually with world-class performers, there is a point in every match (and in some cases it's right at the beginning) when the loser decides he's going to lose. And after that, everything he does will be aimed at providing an explanation of why he will have lost. He may throw himself at the ball (so he will be able to say he's done his best against a superior opponent). He may dispute calls (so he will be able to say he's been robbed). He may swear at himself and throw his racket (so he can say it was apparent all along he wasn't in top form). His energies go not into winning but into producing an explanation, an excuse, a justification for losing.
C. Terry Warner (Bonds That Make Us Free: Healing Our Relationship, Coming to Ourselves)
Seven Ways To Get Ahead in Business: 1. Be forward thinking 2. Be inventive, and daring 3. Do the right thing 4. Be honest and straight forward 5. Be willing to change, to learn, to grow 6. Work hard and be yourself 7. Lead by example
Germany Kent
You have to choose your path. You have to decide what you wish to do. You are the only person that can determine your destiny.
Lailah Gifty Akita (Think Great: Be Great! (Beautiful Quotes, #1))
Just as there are fashions in clothing, so, too, are there fashions in ideas.
Julia Galef (The Scout Mindset: The Perils of Defensive Thinking and How to Be Right More Often)
Everyday presents a new opportunity to grow and press forward to your success. Stay the course believing that where you are right now doesn't matter, as long as you are moving in the right direction.
Germany Kent
To everyone battling a difficulty or under attack right now, smile, keep your head up, keep moving and stay positive, you'll get through it.
Germany Kent
So I’ve given it one. I call it scout mindset: the motivation to see things as they are, not as you wish they were. Scout mindset is what allows you to recognize when you are wrong, to seek out your blind spots, to test your assumptions and change course.
Julia Galef (The Scout Mindset: The Perils of Defensive Thinking and How to Be Right More Often)
The best description of motivated reasoning I’ve ever seen comes from psychologist Tom Gilovich. When we want something to be true, he said, we ask ourselves, “Can I believe this?,” searching for an excuse to accept it. When we don’t want something to be true, we instead ask ourselves, “Must I believe this?,” searching for an excuse to reject it.4
Julia Galef (The Scout Mindset: The Perils of Defensive Thinking and How to Be Right More Often)
Don't dull the voice of your heart just to please your brain As it swells into overthought and the desire to be right Switch on the light of your inner lamp. Listen to your heart so you can feel from your soul Don’t discount your heart to make your logic fit.
Christine Evangelou (Rocks Into Roses: Life Lessons and Inspiration for Personal Growth)
You are not white, but a rainbow of colors. You are not black, but golden. You are not just a nationality, but a citizen of the world. You are not just for the right or left, but for what is right over the wrong. You are not just rich or poor, but always wealthy in the mind and heart. You are not perfect, but flawed. You are flawed, but you are just. You may just be conscious human, but you are also a magnificent reflection of God.
Suzy Kassem (Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
We are constantly evolving as we are interacting with the world. Mindfulness and growth mindset drives our evolution faster and on right tracks.
Amit Ray (Mindfulness Meditation for Corporate Leadership and Management)
We have come to discover what we suspect is a new political mindset emerging among a younger generation of political leaders socialized on Internet communications. Their politics are less about right versus left and more about centralized and authoritarian versus distributed and collaborative.
Jeremy Rifkin (The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World)
Stand for something. Make your life mean something. Start where you are with what you have. You are enough.
Germany Kent
When you learn to let go of the need to be right, being wrong gradually lose its power to disturb you.
Yvan Byeajee (Paradigm Shift: How to cultivate equanimity in the face of market uncertainty)
Entrepreneurs don't fail because they want to, they fail because they don't have the right MINDSET to really succeed in a sustainable manner.
Tony Dovale
I hope your heart feels better.  I hope your mind is set right. I hope your love is connected to others, and you don't feel so lost and locked up. I hope everything is okay for you.  And by okay, I mean greater than ever.
Shailee J-N
Your belief systems are what will ultimately dictate what is possible. Overcoming their limitations is not a matter of fighting it, but taking complete ownership, complete integration of all the belief systems that you have right now, and then simply making the choice to introduce inputs into your mental environment that support the truth of what you want to see.
Daniel Mangena (Money Game: A Wealth Manifestation Guide. Level Up Your Mindset Step-By-Step & Create An Abundant Life)
You don’t have to be young. You don’t have to be thin. You don’t have to be “hot” in a way that some dumbfuckedly narrow mindset has construed that word. You don’t have to have taut flesh or a tight ass or an eternally upright set of tits. You have to find a way to inhabit your body while enacting your deepest desires. You have to be brave enough to build the intimacy you deserve. You have to take off all of your clothes and say, “I’m right here.” There are so many tiny revolutions in a life, a million ways we have to circle around ourselves to grow and change and be okay. And perhaps the body is our final frontier. It’s the one place we can’t leave. We’re there till it goes. Most women and some men spend their lives trying to alter it, hide it, prettify it, make it what it isn’t, or conceal it for what it is. But what if we didn’t do that? That’s the question you need to answer,
Cheryl Strayed (Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar)
Until you take your profession as passion, each and every activity looks as a headache
Vignesh SV (Adventures of Dollar Right)
A beautiful day begins with a beautiful mindset. Every day you wake up, think about what a privilege it is to simply be alive and healthy. Stop focusing on the negatives and everything that could go wrong and start thinking about what could go right. Better yet, think of everything that already is right. Be thankful for nights that turned into mornings, friends who turned into family and past dreams and goals that turned into realities. Use this mindset of positivity to fuel an even brighter today and tomorrow.
John Geiger
The true aim of personal change is to turn our minds away from miracle cures and quick fixes, and adopt a long-term strategy. Habit change isn’t a sprint; it’s a marathon. The right mindset is to wake up tomorrow almost exactly the same person, except for one small change—a small change that you can replicate every day until you don’t notice it anymore, at which point it’s time to plan another small change
Jeremy Dean (Making Habits, Breaking Habits: Why We Do Things, Why We Don't, and How to Make Any Change Stick)
Thoughts create emotions, emotions create feelings and feelings create behaviour. So it’s very important that our thoughts are positive, to attract the right people, events and circumstances into our lives.
Avis J. Williams (The Psychic Mind: A Practical Guide to Psychic Development & Spiritual Growth)
Six Beliefs That Set the Course of Your Life 1. If you don’t believe the impossible can happen, then you are right. 2. When you feel like you are less than others, then you are right. 3. When you believe what you have and how you were raised keeps you from having everything you ever dreamed of, you are right. 4. When you believe your mistakes can’t be undone, you are right. 5. When you feel this is the best it is going to get, you are right. 6. When you think someone will never change or rise above their brokenness, you are WRONG!
Shannon L. Alder
In looking for the right places to make these tiny changes, there are three broad areas of opportunity. You can tweak your beliefs—or what psychologists call your mindset; you can tweak your motivations; and you can tweak your habits. When we learn how to make small changes in each of these areas, we set ourselves up to make profound, lasting change over the course of our lives.
Susan David (Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life)
Do you tell other people when you realize they were right?
Julia Galef (The Scout Mindset: The Perils of Defensive Thinking and How to Be Right More Often)
Do you want to be right or happy?
Michael Easter (Scarcity Brain: Fix Your Craving Mindset and Rewire Your Habits to Thrive with Enough)
Growth is much more than a strategy. It is a complex change process that involves the right mindset, the right processes, experimentation, and an enabling environment.
Edward D. Hess
with the right mindset you can even make doing the dishes into a meditative exercise!
Mira Dessy (Beyond Meditation: Making Mindfulness Accessible for Everyone)
With the right mindset, we can’t lose, we either practice what we’ve learned or we learn what we need to practice.
Noura (Purpose, Vol. 1: Meditation on Love, Relationship, Fear, Death, Intuition, and Power - Uncovering our Resistance to Life)
No one creates a perfect resume on their first try. Writing a perfect resume is a messy process, but the easiest way to start is by simply getting in the right mindset and putting pen to paper.
Matthew T. Cross (The Resume Design Book: How to Write a Resume in College & Influence Employers to Hire You)
Some advice to the SJW castrati: Liberation is found through human agency. Each of us is an individual first with strengths & weaknesses. I am me. My group identities constitute parts of who I am but I expect people to judge me as an individual, not as a member of any group. Classical liberalism is founded on individual rights & freedoms. It is through this mindset that people flourish. Stop identity politics. I'm neither proud nor ashamed of my skin color. I am neither proud nor ashamed of my group affiliation. But I'm proud of my personhood.
Gad Saad
When you care deeply about someone or something, repairs are worth your investment of time, energy, effort, heart, and resources. Whether it is to repair a broken trust or a damaged relationship, take the initiative to make it right and make it better.
Susan C. Young
So, you’ve failed many times at many things. That’s okay! Learn, grow, and move forward. With the right attitude and mindset, you can learn a lot from failure. Pay attention and keep on striving! You’ve got this!
Stephanie Lahart
Focus on your goals and ambitions and less on people and things that are counterproductive. A few simple disciplines practiced everyday along with the right mindset will eventually give you the results you desire.
Germany Kent
scout mindset: the motivation to see things as they are, not as you wish they were.
Julia Galef (The Scout Mindset: The Perils of Defensive Thinking and How to Be Right More Often)
If you find out you were wrong about something, great—you’ve improved your map, and that can only help you.
Julia Galef (The Scout Mindset: The Perils of Defensive Thinking and How to Be Right More Often)
Do you have any good critics?
Julia Galef (The Scout Mindset: The Perils of Defensive Thinking and How to Be Right More Often)
As the late physicist Richard Feynman once said, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.
Julia Galef (The Scout Mindset: The Perils of Defensive Thinking and How to Be Right More Often)
Most people set intentions wrong. The right way to set intentions is to be clear on what you want to go FROM and what you want to go TO.
Jeffrey Shaw (The Self-Employed Life: Business and Personal Development Strategies That Create Sustainable Success)
The self-employed need business strategies that are relationship-based, not transactional, authentic to who you are, and right-sized for small business.
Jeffrey Shaw (The Self-Employed Life: Business and Personal Development Strategies That Create Sustainable Success)
Focus on what you can do right now, not what you can't do right now
Avis J. Williams
Stop listening to people who don’t experience happiness, success, peace, and fulfillment themselves. Don't let them tell you what is right and wrong!
Maddy Malhotra (How to Build Self-Esteem and Be Confident: Overcome Fears, Break Habits, Be Successful and Happy)
Right now we have many twenty-first-century schools with twentieth-century learning.
George Couros (The Innovator’s Mindset: Empower Learning, Unleash Talent, and Lead a Culture of Creativity)
Setting the right priorities or having superior time management skill means knowing the difference between “must have,” and “nice to have.
Pearl Zhu (Thinkingaire: 100 Game Changing Digital Mindsets to Compete for the Future (Digital Master Book 8))
The paradox is the result of two opposing truths existing side by side, which can be both right.
Pearl Zhu (Thinkingaire: 100 Game Changing Digital Mindsets to Compete for the Future (Digital Master Book 8))
Our greatest strength lies in our ability to channelize our energy for the right cause, and stay motivated against all the odds.
Amit Ray (Power of Exponential Mindset for Success and Leadership)
The entrepreneur’s mind-set is completely different to the employee’s mind-set. The entrepreneur finds it abhorrent to conform to organizational norms, whilst the employee finds joy and stability in all that’s tried and true. It’s not that one’s wrong and the other is right. It’s the mind-set that differentiates the two.
Dipa Sanatani (The Merchant of Stories: A Creative Entrepreneur's Journey)
The mindset of a believer every time he opens the Bible must be the conviction that whatever the Bible says is true. We cannot trust our reason to determine what is true or false, right or wrong.
Michael P.V. Barrett (Beginning at Moses: A Guide to Finding Christ in the Old Testament)
All of these people had character. None of them thought they were special people, born with the right to win. They were people who worked hard, who learned how to keep their focus under pressure, and who stretched beyond their ordinary abilities when they had to.
Carol S. Dweck
There was a time you longed for people to love you. You prayed that they’d see or hear you. You wished they could see the depth, truth, and message in front of them. Their words, actions, and mindsets pushed you away, but you always pulled yourself back. You made excuses like: “But I love her/him/them” “But that’s family” “But they’ve been in my life for so long” Until you finally told yourself “I can’t.” There are some pains, tactics, and revelations you can’t bounce back from or unsee—so you don’t. You just never come back. To the person that has removed themselves from that group, friendship, or relationship—trust and believe that sometimes the right decision doesn’t always feel good and is seldom understood by the masses. Choose your peace, well-being, and self-love anyway. Some roads are difficult to leave behind but destructive to stay on.
Morgan Richard Olivier (The Tears That Taught Me)
Many parents have asked me: What is the point of my child explaining their work if they can get the answer right? My answer is always the same: Explaining your work is what, in mathematics, we call reasoning, and reasoning is central to the discipline of mathematics.
Jo Boaler (Mathematical Mindsets: Unleashing Students' Potential through Creative Math, Inspiring Messages and Innovative Teaching (Mindset Mathematics))
The majority of people live neither in low-income countries nor in high-income countries, but in middle-income countries. This category doesn’t exist in the divided mind-set, but in reality it definitely exists. It’s where 75 percent of humanity lives, right there where the gap is supposed to be. Or, to put it another way, there is no gap.
Hans Rosling (Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About The World - And Why Things Are Better Than You Think)
Ending feudalism, ending slavery, enacting labor laws, winning universal suffrage, ending Jim Crow laws, overcoming much of the mindset and practice of patriarchy as it was entrenched in the ‘50s and ‘60s, bringing gay rights and liberation into the light of social policy and practice. Putting ecology on the political map. The left has a long lineage.
Michael Albert
Musicians, like golfers, have to put their minds in the right place – trusting, confident, enjoying the pressure, being in present. And so forth. Otherwise, no amount of practice or “Time management” will make them better. The same is true in all professions: if you’re stuck in the Training Mindset, evaluating yourself, or thinking in the past or future, you will not perform up to your potential. You will waste a lot of time, be an inefficient performer, and likely assume you need to manage your time better. In reality you need to manage your thinking better.
John Eliot (Overachievement: The New Science of Working Less to Accomplish More)
There are two powerful fuels, two forces; motivation and inspiration. To be motivated you need to know what your motives are. Over time - and to sustain you through it - your motivation must become an inner energy; a 'motor' driving you forward, passionately, purposefully, wisely and compassionately... come what may, every day. Inspiration is an outer - worldly - energy that you breathe and draw in. It may come from many places, faces, spaces and stages - right across the ages. It is where nature, spirit, science, mind and time meet, dance, play and speak. It keeps you outward facing and life embracing. But you must be open-minded and open-hearted to first let it in and then let it out again. Together - blended, combined and re-entwined - motivation and inspiration bring connectivity, productivity, creativity and boundless possibilities that is not just 'self' serving but enriching to all humanity and societies...just as it should be.
Rasheed Ogunlaru
Similarly, he forgot - or never really understood - that we live in a culture where men, as a group, have more power than women. This isn't a controversial statement, despite the protestations of guys who funnel their frustration that not all extremely young, conventionally attractive women want to sleep with them into and argument that women, as a group, have "all the power." (Bill Maher, repping for his fan base, famously jokes that men have to do all sorts of shit to get laid, but women only have to do "their hair.") The really great thing about this argument is how the patently nonsensical premise - that some young women's ability to manipulate certain men equals a greater degree of gendered power than say, owning the presidency for 220-odd years - obscures the most chilling part: in this mindset, "all the power" means, simply, the power to withhold consent. Let that sink in for a minute. If one believes women are more powerful that men because we own practically all of the vaginas, then women's power to withhold consent to sex is the greatest power there is. Which means the guy who can take away a woman's right to consent is basically a superhero. Right?
Kate Harding (Asking for It: The Alarming Rise of Rape Culture and What We Can Do about It)
Just make an effort and keep going. Start from where you are, even if you are scared and unsure. Take that first step, even if your hand shakes and your voice quivers. Use what you have, right where you are. Begin right now.
Norbertus Krisnu Prabowo
In this age of quick fixes and microwave mindsets, most of us want what we want, and we want it right now, whether it is instant download speed, instant riches, or an Oompa-Loompa, but just as you can’t force the farm to produce a harvest, you can’t force your seed of potential to grow until it is ripe and ready.
Derek Rydall (Emergence: The End of Self Improvement)
The problem with identity is that it wrecks your ability to think clearly. Identifying with a belief makes you feel like you have to be ready to defend it, which motivates you to focus your attention on collecting evidence in its favor. Identity makes you reflexively reject arguments that feel like attacks on you or the status of your group.
Julia Galef (The Scout Mindset: The Perils of Defensive Thinking and How to Be Right More Often)
She was told she had typhoid fever. Right away, as I still do today, I looked up the disease in medical books and read all about it.
Richard P. Feynman ("What Do You Care What Other People Think?": Further Adventures of a Curious Character)
I don't talk about my vision, I show it.
Marion Bekoe (I WILL BE A BILLIONAIRE: The right mindset is the first step towards the journey.)
She can build or destroy your ego while on her knees.
Marion Bekoe (I WILL BE A BILLIONAIRE: The right mindset is the first step towards the journey.)
Smile generously at others and you may find that their smiles are returned right back to you.
Susan C. Young (The Art of Preparation: 8 Ways to Plan with Purpose & Intention for Positive Impact (The Art of First Impressions for Positive Impact, #2))
Oh, the days will be tough that I promise is true but right around the corner the dream will be Infront of you.
Nikki Rowe
Math and science need to be made more hospitable places for women. And women need all the growth mindset they can get to take their rightful places in these fields.
Carol S. Dweck (Mindset: The New Psychology of Success)
Bloom, it is your right.
Temi O'Sola
Itry to abide by the rule that when you advocate changing something, you should make sure you understand why it is the way it is in the first place.
Julia Galef (The Scout Mindset: The Perils of Defensive Thinking and How to Be Right More Often)
a willingness to say “I was wrong” to someone else is a strong sign of a person who prizes the truth over their own ego. Can you think of cases in which you’ve done the same?
Julia Galef (The Scout Mindset: The Perils of Defensive Thinking and How to Be Right More Often)
Rethink Your Success Mindset: With the right mindset, everything that you experience, along your journey towards success, is a blessing.
Tony Dovale
Entrepreneurship, with the right mindset, can help anyone reach his goals in life.
Joey A. Concepcion (GO NEGOSYO: Joey Concepcion's 55 Inspiring Stories of Women Entrepreneurs)
The right mindset is the most powerful force we can use to positively change the world.
Tony Dovale
being right isn’t the key to a successful negotiation—having the right mindset is. HOW
Chris Voss (Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It)
The business leaders must work with the right mindset to create an inclusive organization with every dip in the business lifecycle.
Pearl Zhu (Digital Maturity: Take a Journey of a Thousand Miles from Functioning to Delight)
‎..:When we don't have the have the right mindset, we only see a dim and blurry picture of things. It is as if we were staring into a polished metal:.. -R.G-
Rafael Garcia
Creating the right mind-set and a positive attitude today, will help you to start crafting a clear plan of how you intend to make your life a success.
Archibald Marwizi (Making Success Deliberate)
Your greatest asset is the way you think. Not your skills, resources or the position you occupy. Because with the right mindset, you can turn any situation into greater success.
Victor Kwegyir (Business 365: Daily Inspiration for Creativity, Innovation and Business Success)
To enter into that karaoke mindset, you have to leave behind all your notions of good or bad, right or wrong, in tune or out of tune. The kara in the word karaoke is the same as the one in karate, which means 'empty hand.' They're both 'empty' arts because you have no weapons and no musical instruments to hide behind--only courage, your heart, and your will to inflict pain.
Rob Sheffield (Turn Around Bright Eyes: The Rituals of Love & Karaoke)
The difference between the good and the great is the difference between your mindset and your skill set. In a world where skills are bountiful, and increasingly outsourced to cheaper parts of the world, we need more than skills to survive, let alone thrive. Mindset separates the best from the rest: the right mindset drives the right habits, which drive the right performance.
Jo Owen (The Mindset of Success: From Good Management to Great Leadership)
Remember, you are training your mind. You are either training it to look for things to go wrong or you are training it to look for things to go right. Train yourself to think only positive thoughts
Karon Waddell
When a man learns the art of thinking from the end, that man is master of his fate. For he defines his end, he formulates an aim in life, and then feels himself right into the situation of that end.
Neville Goddard (The Wealth Mindset: Understanding the Mental Path to Wealth)
We have failed to see truth right in front of us because we have been buried into an obfuscated mindset by theologies and cultural mores made by theologies that themselves have been created by diseases.
L.B. Ó Ceallaigh (Revenants, Retroviruses, and Religion: How Viruses and Disease Created Cultural Mythology and Shaped Religious Perspectives)
When law students prepare to argue for either the plaintiff or defendant in a moot court, they come to believe that their side of the case is both morally and legally in the right—even when the sides were randomly assigned.
Julia Galef (The Scout Mindset: The Perils of Defensive Thinking and How to Be Right More Often)
Empowered women are dangerous, Alina. They threaten men’s power, and that is the one thing men don’t like to share. Women bear and rear children. They hold the power to change the mindset of an entire generation. Can you imagine what it would be like if an entire generation grew up with a clear idea of democracy, liberty, and equal rights?
Vlad Kahany (Flowers For The Devil)
When the Right proclaims that socialism has failed, and that capitalism is the only alternative, the cultural Left has little to say in reply. For it prefers not to talk about money. Its principal enemy is a mind-set rather than a set of economic arrangements –– a way of thinking which is, supposedly, at the root of both selfishness and sadism.
Richard Rorty (Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America)
To me, that's what traveling should be about. Meeting people, learning to not only appreciate a different culture, but really enjoy it like a local, follow whatever impulse strikes you. My advice would be to make a list of laces on some index cards shuffle them, and pick any five a random. Then just go and see what happens. If you have the right mind-set, it doesn't matter where you end up or how much money you have brought. It'll be something you'll remember forever.
Nicholas Sparks
Don’t reinvent the wheel. Focus on winning one customer at a time. Be honest and sincere. Do what’s right. There’s nothing magical about this.’ That’s been my guiding principle. To make it work, you have to live it every day. Make it your mind-set.
Robert Spector (The Nordstrom Way to Customer Service Excellence: The Handbook For Becoming the "Nordstrom" of Your Industry)
So George talked about the two aspects of every crisis: danger and opportunity. If you have the right mind-set, he said, you can make the crisis work for you. You have the chance to create a new identity for the team that will be even stronger than before.
Phil Jackson (Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success)
Shod Omnivorism; it pretty much sums up the current state of the world. I find the word 'shod' deeply descriptive; it conjures such an archaic barbaric feeling, of being shackled and tamed, captive and downtrodden. Omnivorism is the concept that every living and non-living thing on this planet is a potential meal, and God forbid that anyone should question another’s right to eat whatever, whoever and however they desire. Shod and Omnivorism together truly emphasise the sad disequilibrium of the dominant prevailing human mindset.
Mango Wodzak (Destination Eden - Eden Fruitarianism Explained)
Of course, all maps are imperfect simplifications of reality, as a scout well knows. Striving for an accurate map means being aware of the limits of your understanding, keeping track of the regions of your map that are especially sketchy or possibly wrong. And it means always being open to changing your mind in response to new information. In scout mindset, there’s no such thing as a “threat” to your beliefs.
Julia Galef (The Scout Mindset: The Perils of Defensive Thinking and How to Be Right More Often)
Life can be difficult if all you see is everything that’s wrong. Start focusing on what’s right, what’s good, what’s constructive. No matter what you’re facing, if you choose a positive mindset, you’ll emerge the winner. So if you want to feel better, you’ve got to think better!
Ismail Musa Menk
A main reason for our experience of pain is because of our eagerness to bring people we love or care about into our own growth spurts and into our own leaps forward that they are simply not ready to morph into. You could be a tree sprouting new branches left and right or a planetary wonder hurtling space rocks igniting the skies in glowing streaks, then the other person or people are plantlings still forming roots, or, sunbeams that want to stay on bedroom walls. See, that hurts. It hurts to grow alone, it hurts to realise that someone else won't be coming with you.
C. JoyBell C.
Even if you’ve never heard the phrase motivated reasoning, I’m sure you’re already familiar with the phenomenon. It’s all around you under different names—denial, wishful thinking, confirmation bias, rationalization, tribalism, self-justification, overconfidence, delusion. Motivated reasoning is so fundamental to the way our minds work that it’s almost strange to have a special name for it; perhaps it should just be called reasoning.
Julia Galef (The Scout Mindset: The Perils of Defensive Thinking and How to Be Right More Often)
Just because there’s no one living on a planet does not mean it’s yours for the taking. Do you not see how dangerous that mindset is? Do you not think that treating the galaxy as if it is something to be endlessly used will always, always end in tragedy? You think you’ve broken the cycle. You haven’t. You’re in a less violent period of the exact same cycle, and you don’t see it. And the line of what you find to be justifiable cause is going to keep slipping and slipping until you end up right back where you started. You haven’t fixed anything. You put a stamp and a permit and a shiny coat of paint on an idea that has been fundamentally damaged from day one. You engaged in bloody theft and you called it progress, and no matter how much better you think you’ve made things, no matter how good your intentions are, that will always be the root of the GC. You cannot divorce any of what you do from that. Ever.
Becky Chambers (The Galaxy, and the Ground Within (Wayfarers, #4))
None of these approaches have shown much promise in changing people’s thinking in the long run or outside of the classroom. And that should not surprise us. We use motivated reasoning not because we don’t know any better, but because we’re trying to protect things that are vitally important to us—our ability to feel good about our lives and ourselves, our motivation to try hard things and stick with them, our ability to look good and persuade, and our acceptance in our communities.
Julia Galef (The Scout Mindset: The Perils of Defensive Thinking and How to Be Right More Often)
Not all overconfidence is due to motivated reasoning. Sometimes we simply don’t realize how complicated a topic is, so we overestimate how easy it is to get the right answer. But a large portion of overconfidence stems from a desire to feel certain. Certainty is simple. Certainty is comfortable. Certainty makes us feel smart and competent.
Julia Galef (The Scout Mindset: The Perils of Defensive Thinking and How to Be Right More Often)
Affirmative words and actions confirm you are on the right path and help you attract what you desire. Whether you are reaffirming a dream, a goal, a previous commitment, or a person, reaffirmations will strengthen your area of focus. Begin reaffirming yourself and others through encouragement, paying attention, listening, and being grateful.
Susan C. Young
The traditions of . . . bygone times, even to the smallest social particular, enable one to understand more clearly the circumstances with contributed to the formation of character. The daily life into which people are born, and into which they are absorbed before they are well aware, forms chains which only one in a hundred has moral strength enough to despise, and to break when the right time comes - when an inward necessity for independent individual action arises, which is superior to all outward conventionalities. Therefore it is well to know what were the chains of daily domestic habit which were the natural leading-strings of our forefathers before they learnt to go alone.
Elizabeth Gaskell (Ruth)
A unified team is a force to be reckoned with. When teams pull together to serve a higher purpose, the synergy builds momentum and helps everyone head in the right direction. When people reunite, pull together, have each other’s backs, and strive to achieve a clearly defined purpose, the culture is empowered to produce extraordinary outcomes.
Susan C. Young
It is not called 'The Web' for any small reason. It was declared to you right at the start that this is going to be a web.
Vineet Raj Kapoor
Right knowledge of God leads to renewal of mind.
Lailah Gifty Akita
When you don't see what you want on the market, create it.
Marion Bekoe (I WILL BE A BILLIONAIRE: The right mindset is the first step towards the journey.)
You will only find yourself in a race when you choose to compare yourself to others.
Marion Bekoe (I WILL BE A BILLIONAIRE: The right mindset is the first step towards the journey.)
Life is so beautiful when you have someone to share it with, but it's more beautiful when you find happiness in yourself while alone.
Marion Bekoe (I WILL BE A BILLIONAIRE: The right mindset is the first step towards the journey.)
The better your message makes you feel about yourself, the less likely it is that you are convincing anyone else.”15
Julia Galef (The Scout Mindset: The Perils of Defensive Thinking and How to Be Right More Often)
Being in scout mindset means wanting your “map”—your perception of yourself and the world—to be as accurate as possible.
Julia Galef (The Scout Mindset: The Perils of Defensive Thinking and How to Be Right More Often)
IMAGE: CHOOSING BELIEFS THAT MAKE US LOOK GOOD
Julia Galef (The Scout Mindset: The Perils of Defensive Thinking and How to Be Right More Often)
BELONGING: FITTING IN TO YOUR SOCIAL GROUPS
Julia Galef (The Scout Mindset: The Perils of Defensive Thinking and How to Be Right More Often)
Fitting in isn’t only about conforming to the group consensus. It also means demonstrating your loyalty to the group by rejecting any evidence that threatens its figurative honor.
Julia Galef (The Scout Mindset: The Perils of Defensive Thinking and How to Be Right More Often)
With the right attitude, the impossible becomes merely challenging.
Aloo Denish Obiero
Anger is temporary but words said in anger aren't.
Marion Bekoe (I WILL BE A BILLIONAIRE: The right mindset is the first step towards the journey.)
You’ll only find yourself in a race when you choose to compare yourself to others.
Marion Bekoe (I WILL BE A BILLIONAIRE: The right mindset is the first step towards the journey.)
Once you get your mind right, happiness and inner peace is sure to follow.
Bohdi Sanders (The Art of Inner Peace: The Law of Attraction for Inner Peace)
I stopped asking why , rather prayed for guidance to know why.
Marion Bekoe (I WILL BE A BILLIONAIRE: The right mindset is the first step towards the journey.)
Mistakes are lessons, I've learned to appreciate, celebrate, and be grateful for them.
Marion Bekoe (I WILL BE A BILLIONAIRE: The right mindset is the first step towards the journey.)
I'm sometimes on my knees to please but I'm mostly on my knees to pray. I'm no saint.
Marion Bekoe (I WILL BE A BILLIONAIRE: The right mindset is the first step towards the journey.)
If the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step we take just gets us to the wrong place faster." — Stephen Covey
Library Mindset (The Art of Laziness: Overcome Procrastination & Improve Your Productivity)
I learned a great fear of being wrong that shifted my mind-set from thinking “I’m right” to asking myself “How do I know I’m right?
Ray Dalio (Principles: Life and Work)
Sex is one of the most important aspects of a healthy relationship, and finding your sexy self adds to the feeling that you're with the right person.
Robi Ludwig (Your Best Age Is Now: Embrace an Ageless Mindset, Reenergize Your Dreams, and Live a Soul-Satisfying Life – Proven Strategies for Thriving in Your 40s, 50s, and 60s)
The truth is that you always know the right thing to do. The hard part is doing it".
Venugopal Acharya
Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right.
Magnus Steele (Master Your Mind, Master Your Life: 15 Mindset Hacks That Will Unleash Your Full Potential TODAY)
You don't give up when you can't give up.
Marion Bekoe (I WILL BE A BILLIONAIRE: The right mindset is the first step towards the journey.)
We must change our mind-set from one of self-improvement to one of self-liberation. Self-liberation means freedom from our limiting beliefs, our misguided idea that there is something wrong with us that needs to be “fixed.” Our constant attempts to “get it right” and to be “perfect” leave us in a state of exhaustion, never resting in the present moment, never happy with who we are.
Shauna Shapiro (Good Morning, I Love You: Mindfulness and Self-Compassion Practices to Rewire Your Brain for Calm, Clarity, and Joy)
Great leaders understand the importance of assigning the right people to the right positions. If you put the wrong person in the wrong place, no matter how talented or earnest they are, they will never reach the peak of their potential. Their strengths will be underutilized and they may never measure up to your expectations. Reassign to get the best out of others and the situation.
Susan C. Young
Change is a difficult process. It can truly take place in an environment of support, structure, and sacrifice. Support comes from asking for help, seeking professional coaching, and surrounding yourself with the right people. Structure requires accountability, a follow-up system, and action. Sacrifice requires paying the price and getting out of your comfort zone but staying in your strength zone.
Farshad Asl (The "No Excuses" Mindset: A Life of Purpose, Passion, and Clarity)
THESE ARE A FEW OF MY FAVORITE life lessons that I learned as a result of walking on the Moon and the preparation that took us there—the guiding principles that have helped keep me going since returning to Earth. • The sky is not the limit … there are footprints on the Moon! • Keep your mind open to possibilities. • Show me your friends, and I will show you your future. • Second comes right after first. • Write your own epitaph. • Maintain your spirit of adventure. • Failure is always an option. • Practice respect for all people. • Do what you believe is right even when others choose otherwise. • Trust your gut … and your instruments. • Laugh … a lot! • Keep a young mind-set at every age. • Help others go beyond where you have gone. I hope these lessons will be as helpful to you as they have been to me. Take it from a man who has walked on the Moon: Be careful what you dream—it just might come to pass, so be prepared. Apollo is the story of people at their best, working together for a common goal. We started with a dream, and we can do these kinds of things again. With a united effort and a great team, you too can achieve great things. I know, because I am living proof that no dream is too high!
Buzz Aldrin (No Dream Is Too High: Life Lessons From a Man Who Walked on the Moon)
You win by cultivating the right culture, leadership, expectations, beliefs, mindset, relationships, and habits before you even play the game. You win in the locker room first. Then, you win on the field.
Jon Gordon (You Win in the Locker Room First: The 7 C's to Build a Winning Team in Business, Sports, and Life (Jon Gordon))
The true aim of personal change is to turn our minds away from miracle cures and quick fixes, and adopt a long-term strategy. Habit change isn’t a sprint; it’s a marathon. The right mindset is to wake up tomorrow almost exactly the same person, except for one small change—a small change that you can replicate every day until you don’t notice it anymore, at which point it’s time to plan another small change . . .
Jeremy Dean (Making Habits, Breaking Habits: Why We Do Things, Why We Don't, and How to Make Any Change Stick)
Are you willing to have a little faith? What is faith? Sometimes it is described as a strong belief in something for which there is no proof. If that’s the case, then faith is exactly what you need right now.
Jason Harvey (MINDSET BREAKTHROUGH: The Power of Small Daily Changes to Achieve Big Results)
Do you want to live a long, healthy, and prosperous life? Don’t smoke. Exercise. Eat right. But also take good care of your interpersonal relationships and the way you deal with life’s inevitable upsets and traumas. Your mind-set, your coping strategies, how you navigate challenging circumstances, your capacity to transcend distress, your capacity to love – these things, I believe, are also a matter of life and death.
Sandeep Jauhar (Heart: A History)
Silence doesn’t have to be a major pilgrimage into the wilderness in order to find a solitary space. Everyday tasks such as driving around town, folding laundry, preparing food, washing dishes, or taking walks can all provide a measure of solitude each day when approached with the right mindset and a commitment to shut off televisions, computers, tablets, smartphones, radios, and anything else that could interrupt silence.
Ed Cyzewski (Flee, Be Silent, Pray: An Anxious Evangelical Finds Peace with God through Contemplative Prayer)
There are two ways to view the future: What if? and Why not? Looking forward through a lens of What if? subconsciously places limits on our potential, anticipating failure rather than allowing ourselves to see the vastness of possibilities that lie before us. On the other hand, Why not? recognizes we have an inherent right to chase that dream, no matter the odds, and it roots our goals in a mindset where anything is possible.
Mallory Weggemann (Limitless: The Power of Hope and Resilience to Overcome Circumstance)
So if we’re still supposed to care what people think of us, but we’re also incapable of caring about everyone equally, what’s the solution? The answer is fairly easy, but it gets glossed over or passed by all too often - we’re supposed to care what the right people think of us. This is another mindset shift and one that can often be very difficult to make, especially because it runs so counter to a global culture in which we are constantly being bombarded with anti-tribal messaging. One method I’ve personally implemented to get my mind right on this concept is a basic one - a person has to earn the right for his opinion to matter to me.
Tanner Guzy (The Appearance of Power: How Masculinity is Expressed Through Aesthetics)
For no matter whether the fairies are seen metaphorically or as real beings inhabiting their own real world, a study of them shows us that those who came before us (and many of that mindset still survive) realized that we are -- no matter what we may think to the contrary -- very little creatures, here for a short time only ('passing through,' as the old people say) and that we have no right to destroy what the next generation will most assuredly need to also see itself through. If only we could learn that lesson, maybe someday we might be worthy of the wisdom of those who knew that to respect the Good People is basically to respect yourself.
Eddie Lenihan (Meeting the Other Crowd : The Fairy Stories of Hidden Ireland)
If you can smell things, you’re breathing right.” What I found was that consciously smelling the Threat not only kept me breathing but was both calming and put me in a predator mindset.[39] It was very, very effective.
Rory Miller (Facing Violence: Preparing for the Unexpected)
But I’m different now than I was then. Just like I was different at the end of the trip than I’d been at the beginning. And I’ll be different tomorrow than I am today. And what that means is that I can never replicate that trip. Even if I went to the same places and met the same people, it wouldn’t be the same. My experience wouldn’t be the same. To me, that’s what traveling should be about. Meeting people, learning to not only appreciate a different culture, but really enjoy it like a local, following whatever impulse strikes you. So how could I recommend a trip to someone else, if I don’t even know what to expect? My advice would be to make a list of places on some index cards, shuffle them, and pick any five at random. Then just… go and see what happens. If you have the right mind-set, it doesn’t matter where you end up or how much money you brought. It’ll be something you’ll remember forever.
Nicholas Sparks (The Choice)
But most of the time, being wrong doesn’t mean you did something wrong. It’s not something you need to apologize for, and the appropriate attitude to have about it is neither defensive nor humbly self-flagellating, but matter-of-fact.
Julia Galef (The Scout Mindset: The Perils of Defensive Thinking and How to Be Right More Often)
And to start with I would focus on five of these killer apps that have immediate application to governing today: (1) the ability to adapt when confronted by strangers with superior economic and military might without being hobbled by humiliation; (2) the ability to embrace diversity; (3) the ability to assume ownership over the future and one’s own problems; (4) the ability to get the balance right between the federal and the local—that is, to understand that a healthy society, like a healthy tropical forest, is a network of healthy ecosystems on top of ecosystems, each thriving on its own but nourished by the whole; and, maybe most important, (5) the ability to approach politics and problem-solving in the age of accelerations with a mind-set that is entrepreneurial, hybrid, and heterodox and nondogmatic—mixing and coevolving any ideas or ideologies that will create resilience and propulsion, no matter whose “side” they come from. Of
Thomas L. Friedman (Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations)
When people begin to experience the lull of mediocrity, they often question whether they are in the right job. They wonder if there might be another one out there that would better suit them, and that might give them the thrill they once experienced before things went south. They may even act on that impulse, hopping to another job or company, and subsequently find that everything is better for a while. The newness is back, and that craved-for sense of challenge has returned. Problem solved? Actually, no. In many of these situations the job hopper is right back in crisis within a matter of months. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with their new job; it’s because they changed their external situation without changing their mind-set and methods. They were trying to solve an internal problem by changing their external circumstances, which rarely works. You have to begin by finding alignment internally, then question your work environment.
Todd Henry (Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day)
By saying that human issues are more important than non-human issues, that violence to humans is more relevant than violence to animals, one forgets that the animal liberation movement implies a message of peace for every being on earth and the opposition against the mindset of oppression. To make a distinction between one violence and another is exactly the root of all violence: Some wouldn't do any harm to those who share with them a flag, a religion, a language, etc. but would easily condemn to suffering and death those who are different. This tragic use of diversity as an excuse to inflict pain on others for a matter of profit and convenience is the cause of suffering for both human and non-human animals.
Mango Wodzak (The Eden Fruitarian Guidebook)
On a collective level, the mind-set “We are right and they are wrong” is particularly deeply entrenched in those parts of the world where conflict between two nations, races, tribes, religions, or ideologies is long-standing, extreme, and endemic. Both sides of the conflict are equally identified with their own perspective, their own “story,” that is to say, identified with thought. Both are equally incapable of seeing that another perspective, another story, may exist and also be valid. Israeli writer Y. Halevi speaks of the possibility of “accommodating a competing narrative,”3 but in many parts of the world, people are not yet able or willing to do that. Both sides believe themselves to be in possession of the truth. Both regard themselves as victims and the “other” as evil, and because they have conceptualized and thereby dehumanized the other as the enemy, they can kill and inflict all kinds of violence on the other, even on children, without feeling their humanity and suffering.
Eckhart Tolle (A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose)
Elite performers win in their minds first. The mind is a battleground where the greatest struggle takes place. The thoughts that win the battle for your mind will direct your life. Mental state affects physical performance. The mind constantly sends messages to the body, and the body listens and responds. Therefore, elite warriors train their minds to focus and think in a way that maximizes how they practice and how they perform in competition. Getting your mind right means managing two things: A) What you focus on. B) How you talk to yourself. If you focus on negative things and talk to yourself in negative ways, that will put you into a negative mindset. Your performance will suffer. If you focus on productive things and talk to yourself in productive ways, that will put you into a productive mindset. Your performance will be enhanced. We teach our players to replace low-performance self-talk with high-performance self-talk. We tell our players, “The voice in your mind is a powerful force. Take ownership of that force.
Urban Meyer (Above the Line: Lessons in Leadership and Life from a Championship Program)
Under the contributor mind-set you receive money as payment for your social service. The money you earn is society's way of saying: 'In exchange for your valued contribution, you are hereby granted the right to extract equivalent value from society at a time of your choosing.
Michael Ellsberg (The Education of Millionaires: It's Not What You Think and It's Not Too Late)
Facebook would never put it this way, but algorithms are meant to erode free will, to relieve humans of the burden of choosing, to nudge them in the right direction. Algorithms fuel a sense of omnipotence, the condescending belief that our behavior can be altered, without our even being aware of the hand guiding us, in a superior direction. That's always been a danger of the engineering mindset, as it moves beyond its roots in building inanimate stuff and beings to design a more perfect social world. We are the screws and rivets in their grand design
Franklin Foer (World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech)
In retrospect, my crash was one of the best things that ever happened to me because it gave me the humility I needed to balance my aggressiveness. I learned a great fear of being wrong that shifted my mind-set from thinking “I’m right” to asking myself “How do I know I’m right?
Ray Dalio (Principles: Life and Work)
Therefore, “A man will act right for the right woman” is not only false, but an unhealthy narrative to continue propagating. With this mindset, men will continue being unprepared for relationships, and women will continue hurting themselves in efforts to love unprepared men or even worse,
Derrick Jaxn (DON'T FORGET YOUR CROWN: Self-Love has everything to do with it.)
Without the right mindset, you can’t get very far. After all, there are rich kids with tons of unfair advantages who have amounted to nothing. All the world lay at their feet, yet they never took action. Perhaps an even better example in today’s world is the huge numbers of people who have paid huge amounts of money for an education they are not using! Still others have status, but may not be leveraging it. Yes, we start from what we have and what we are born into, but we also start from how we see the world, and what we are driven to do in it – and we can change these things in our favour at any time.
Hasan Kubba (The Unfair Advantage: How You Already Have What It Takes to Succeed)
Dweck’s work with children revealed two mindsets in action—a “growth” mindset that generally thinks big and seeks growth and a “fixed” mindset that places artificial limits and avoids failure. Growth-minded students, as she calls them, employ better learning strategies, experience less helplessness, exhibit more positive effort, and achieve more in the classroom than their fixed-minded peers. They are less likely to place limits on their lives and more likely to reach for their potential. Dweck points out that mindsets can and do change. Like any other habit, you set your mind to it until the right mindset becomes routine.
Gary Keller (The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth About Extraordinary Results)
They were also taught a three-step process for practicing the new mindset whenever they felt stressed. The first step is to acknowledge stress when you experience it. Simply allow yourself to notice the stress, including how it affects your body. The second step is to welcome the stress by recognizing that it’s a response to something you care about. Can you connect to the positive motivation behind the stress? What is at stake here, and why does it matter to you? The third step is to make use of the energy that stress gives you, instead of wasting that energy trying to manage your stress. What can you do right now that reflects your goals and values?
Kelly McGonigal (The Upside of Stress: Why Stress Is Good for You, and How to Get Good at It)
Priority one is risk management. It is to protect ourselves from the potential for loss, especially catastrophe. In the human mind, losses weigh much more heavily than gains, so elevating risk management is the right thing to do. This step is about building the proper mindset, one that values avoiding mistakes over demonstrating brilliance.
Brian Portnoy (The Geometry of Wealth: How to shape a life of money and meaning)
Picquart’s process of coming to realize that Dreyfus was innocent is a striking example of what cognitive scientists sometimes call accuracy motivated reasoning. In contrast to directionally motivated reasoning, which evaluates ideas through the lenses of “Can I believe it?” and “Must I believe it?,” accuracy motivated reasoning evaluates ideas through the lens of “Is it true?
Julia Galef (The Scout Mindset: The Perils of Defensive Thinking and How to Be Right More Often)
Do what you can with what you have. Your job is to live well, embracing what you do know, what you can do, and who you can be—today. If you wait until you have enough information or ability, the perfect opportunity or circumstances, or exactly the right mood, mindset, or physical makeup, you’re pushing pause on your life. Even if you choose to stop living, the clock does not stop ticking.
Chrystal Evans Hurst (She's Still There: Rescuing the Girl in You)
Everyone has the right to say what they want, as long as it does not break the rules. We also have the right not to feel bad about it. They have the right to their opinion, and we have the right to disregard it. What people say and think about us does not define who we are. Their views are not what decides our self-worth. It is best to let them deflect off us like water rolls off a lotus leaf.
Swami Mukundananda (7 Mindsets for Success, Happiness and Fulfilment)
That’s an extreme case, but all social groups have some beliefs and values that members are implicitly expected to share, such as “Climate change is a serious problem,” or “Republicans are better than Democrats,” or “Our group is fighting for a worthy cause,” or “Children are a blessing.” Dissent may not get you literally kicked out of the group, but it can still alienate you from the other members.
Julia Galef (The Scout Mindset: The Perils of Defensive Thinking and How to Be Right More Often)
To summarize, I’ve presented two different ways people think about their working life. The first is the craftsman mindset, which focuses on what you can offer the world. The second is the passion mindset, which instead focuses on what the world can offer you. The craftsman mindset offers clarity, while the passion mindset offers a swamp of ambiguous and unanswerable questions. As I concluded after meeting Jordan Tice, there’s something liberating about the craftsman mindset: It asks you to leave behind self-centered concerns about whether your job is “just right,” and instead put your head down and plug away at getting really damn good. No one owes you a great career, it argues; you need to earn it—and the process won’t be easy. With this in mind, it’s only natural to envy the clarity of performers like Jordan Tice. But here’s the core argument of Rule #2: You shouldn’t just envy the craftsman mindset, you should emulate it. In other words, I am suggesting that you put aside the question of whether your job is your true passion, and instead turn your focus toward becoming so good they can’t ignore you. That is, regardless of what you do for a living, approach your work like a true performer.
Cal Newport (So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love)
When we hear radical stories of long-distance dispersal, it is all too easy to place a human mindset onto the events, and it is worth spending a moment to address this. There is a temptation to describe these rodents and monkeys as hopeful adventurers, with a narrative of pioneering spirit and survival against the odds in an unknown and inhospitable land, an inappropriate framing that owes much to the era of colonialism. Where an animal or plant from one part of the world appears in another, some might use the language of invasion, of a native ecosystem despoiled and rendered lesser by newcomers. Frequently, this is an appeal to nostalgia, to the landscape known in childhood, contrasted with the altered, often depleted world of today. It brings with it an implication that what was was right and what is is wrong.
Thomas Halliday (Otherlands: Journeys in Earth's Extinct Ecosystems)
What does it mean to be self aware? In a sense, it's what it sounds like, but it also goes deeper than that. Self awareness is awareness that goes beyond the surface of the self; it's becoming aware not just of who we are, but what we stand for, and all the little things that make us up. When you become self aware, you learn about what makes you tick. You delve into the experiences that make you up as well as your thought patterns, perspectives, predominant emotions, and overarching beliefs. Self awareness without judgement is the key to a deep understanding of oneself, and the beginning of the healing process. Becoming self aware helps us to better understand our wants and needs, and only then can we move forward in taking care of ourself the right way, meeting our needs, and being secure enough in ourselves to go after our dreams.
LeeNor Dikel (The Game-Changer Workbook: A Life-Changing Guide to Rediscover Your True Self, Boost Self-Confidence, and Step into Your Power (Journals To Guide My Journey))
Liberal agnosticism about the good life has some compelling historical reasons behind it. It is a mind-set that was consciously cultivated as an antidote to the religious wars of centuries ago, when people slaughtered one another over ultimate differences. After World War II, revulsion with totalitarian regimes of the right and left made us redouble our liberal commitment to neutrality. But this stance is maladaptive in the context of twenty-first-century capitalism because, if you live in the West and aren’t caught up in battles between Sunnis and Shiites, for example, and if we also put aside the risk of extraordinary lethal events like terrorist attacks in Western countries, then the everyday threats to your well-being no longer come from an ideological rival or a theological threat to the liberal secular order. They are native to that order.
Matthew B. Crawford (The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction)
A person is never the same person for very long. You can carry memories in your soul, for example, of childhood friendships, but agonize over the fact that they are only memories because those friends are not the same people right now. This kind of experiential interaction with memories and the people attached to our memories, is a source of anguish in all of our lives. There is a type of acceptance and understanding that needs to be applied here: accepting that the scenes of life change as time goes by, and understanding that the people occupying the scenes of your life were in fact authentic. But right now, they are authentically who they are NOW, which is a different person. They're not the same person today. But who they used to be was also who they truly were at that time. We need to release people from the chains of our memories and not demand explanations of them. We must allow them the freedom to morph, to grow, into all the persons they were meant to become. But then we also have to afford ourselves this, in that very same breath. And this is why, sometimes marriages need to be over, sometimes friendships need to be over, sometimes relationships need to come to an end. Because you need to set yourself, and other people, free from the skins they used to wear.
C. JoyBell C.
If you ask me, too many men have a fixed mindset about sex. They believe they're pretty much born instinctively knowing everything they need to know, and if they have to seek any kind of outside knowledge, that's somehow a form of failure. I never bought into that. I fumbled through things when I was a teenager like everyone else, but once I grew up, I wanted to really learn how to do it right. So I did what I'd do for anything else - I took lessons from an expert.
Lynn Red (Bad Boys and Billionaires (The Naughty List Romance Bundles #1))
We've all got scars. Words that were said to you when you were young... Things you saw that you should never have seen... Lifelong consequences from stupid decisions, whether ours or someone else's... Men, make sure that they are SCARS not WOUNDS. If you keep finding that you are sensitive about certain things, held back by the same unreasonable fears, or that you keep making the same bad decisions repeatedly, or that you have habits you just can't quit.... chances are good that you have a wound that never healed right. It's not a scar, it's a wound or an infection. Get it cleaned out and get it healed. If that means you need to get some professional help, to talk to a trusted friend about it, or whatever - the only person that can make the decision to get that part of your life healed is you. A scar shows you've been through the process. An overly sensitive attitude, a destructive habit, a fearful mindset just show that you have a wound you need to work on.
Josh Hatcher
My culture gives me no categories to view suffering—especially suffering at the hands of an oppressor—as victory. My culture sees suffering only as defeat, as evil. It never sees suffering as a means of victory. This is why I need to read John’s vision about what’s really going on from God’s perspective to correct my American, self-serving, “I will defend my rights at all costs” mind-set. I need to follow the slaughtered Lamb wherever He goes, so that I can reign with Him in victory. THE
Preston Sprinkle (Fight: A Christian Case for Non-Violence)
right now that will take you a giant step closer to your goal of getting rich. Make sure it’s something scary, something that you’d really rather not do because it’s super uncomfy, something that makes you feel like you might puke, e.g., renting the massive space for your new handbag company, flying across the country and figuring out how to get yourself in front of the guy who’s hiring for that engineering job that you’re perfect for, cold-calling ten prospective clients, hiring a new full-time employee, etc.
Jen Sincero (You Are a Badass at Making Money: Master the Mindset of Wealth)
I hope that I never become so set in my ways that I meet someone different from me and think of them wrong and I right. I hope that I never become so set in my ways that I meet someone different from me and refuse to sit with them because I think them sinners. I hope I never become so set in my ways that I cannot change my opinions and beliefs when I roam and meet others unlike me. I hope that when I am 85, I will still be able to change my mind and learn from all of our many differences; sins and praises both.
C. JoyBell C.
Joy discovered this, too. Like Alison, she’d been stuck in the prison of rigid thinking for years after her divorce, trapped in the mind-set of dichotomies: good/bad, right/wrong, victim/victimizer. Because she saw things in such stark and absolute terms, the stakes were always high—all or nothing, life or death, with nothing in between. This made any conflict, even a minor dispute, feel treacherous. Because there was no room in her mind-set for nuance or complexity, Joy couldn’t bear for anyone to disagree with her.
Edith Eger (The Gift: 12 Lessons to Save Your Life)
like to think of mindset as the ground floor, the bedrock. The wrong foundation crumbles quickly when loaded with challenges, and we become trapped in the rubble. The right foundation can support a rocket launch. The core principles of a stable creative mindset are: You are a creative person. The world is abundant and full of possibilities. Your situation can always be changed. You can use your creativity to create the change you seek. Creativity is natural and healthy but requires practice. Creativity is ultimate personal power.
Chase Jarvis (Creative Calling: Establish a Daily Practice, Infuse Your World with Meaning, and Succeed in Work + Life)
I’m always shocked when I run into people who don’t believe in God. I’ll even ask them, “How can you not believe that there’s a power greater than you who’s engineering this whole system of things?” Usually they’ll tell me something like, “Man, God is just some mythical fairy tale. God is no different than Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, or the Tooth Fairy.” I disagree wholeheartedly, but that mind-set is honestly one of the reasons I don’t sell that junk about holiday headliners to my daughters. Maybe it’s the Witness influence on me, but to this day I’m not a fan of holidays. I think it’s a mistake to hype your kids on Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy on one hand, and then try to sell them on God with the other. When they get older and realize Santa and the Easter Bunny aren’t real, it becomes too easy for them to dismiss God as well. “So you were lying to me about everybody else, but this God character is real?” they’ll say. “Yeah, right.” And then they’ll miss out on the affirmation, confidence, and faith that religion can provide when they’re older and really need it.
Charlamagne Tha God (Black Privilege: Opportunity Comes to Those Who Create It)
Trump’s falsehoods connect with longstanding American Nativist and Know-Nothing movements, and with totalistic contemporary Republican assertions. He in fact draws upon the voices of right-wing extremism, what Todd Gitlin calls “The Vortex” of “the Birthers, Whitewater, ‘Travelgate,’ and Vince Foster conspiracy theorists, ‘death panel’ enthusiasts, ‘Lock her up!’ chanters, scientist-haters and other Flat Earth factions.” In other words Trump’s solipsism can connect with a sea of mostly right-wing exaggeration, misinformation, conspiracism, falsehood, and lies.
Robert Jay Lifton (Losing Reality: On Cults, Cultism, and the Mindset of Political and Religious Zealotry)
scout mindset: the motivation to see things as they are, not as you wish they were. Scout mindset is what allows you to recognize when you are wrong, to seek out your blind spots, to test your assumptions and change course. It’s what prompts you to honestly ask yourself questions like “Was I at fault in that argument?” or “Is this risk worth it?” or “How would I react if someone from the other political party did the same thing?” As the late physicist Richard Feynman once said, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.
Julia Galef (The Scout Mindset: The Perils of Defensive Thinking and How to Be Right More Often)
This isn’t some libertarian mistrust of government policy, which is healthy in any democracy. This is deep skepticism of the very institutions of our society. And it’s becoming more and more mainstream. We can’t trust the evening news. We can’t trust our politicians. Our universities, the gateway to a better life, are rigged against us. We can’t get jobs. You can’t believe these things and participate meaningfully in society. Social psychologists have shown that group belief is a powerful motivator in performance. When groups perceive that it’s in their interest to work hard and achieve things, members of that group outperform other similarly situated individuals. It’s obvious why: If you believe that hard work pays off, then you work hard; if you think it’s hard to get ahead even when you try, then why try at all? Similarly, when people do fail, this mind-set allows them to look outward. I once ran into an old acquaintance at a Middletown bar who told me that he had recently quit his job because he was sick of waking up early. I later saw him complaining on Facebook about the “Obama economy” and how it had affected his life. I don’t doubt that the Obama economy has affected many, but this man is assuredly not among them. His status in life is directly attributable to the choices he’s made, and his life will improve only through better decisions. But for him to make better choices, he needs to live in an environment that forces him to ask tough questions about himself. There is a cultural movement in the white working class to blame problems on society or the government, and that movement gains adherents by the day. Here is where the rhetoric of modern conservatives (and I say this as one of them) fails to meet the real challenges of their biggest constituents. Instead of encouraging engagement, conservatives increasingly foment the kind of detachment that has sapped the ambition of so many of my peers. I have watched some friends blossom into successful adults and others fall victim to the worst of Middletown’s temptations—premature parenthood, drugs, incarceration. What separates the successful from the unsuccessful are the expectations that they had for their own lives. Yet the message of the right is increasingly: It’s not your fault that you’re a loser; it’s the government’s fault. My dad, for example, has never disparaged hard work, but he mistrusts some of the most obvious paths to upward mobility. When
J.D. Vance (Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis)
Assault isn’t just for criminals. Elite military teams, hostage rescue, SWAT, and entry teams use this mindset as much as criminals do. They don’t want to be tested or find out what their limitations are, they want to get the job done and go home. The mindset is implacable and predatory. They use surprise, superior numbers, and superior weapons—every cheat they can, and they practice. On the rare, rare occasions when my team made a fast entry and someone actually fought, the only emotion that I registered was that I was offended that they resisted, and we rolled right over the threat(s) like a force of nature.
Rory Miller (Meditations on Violence: A Comparison of Martial Arts Training & Real World Violence)
When I watch Björk sing, It's right here, that spot at the top of the forehead. Neil Young is the same. He sings to this spot in his head. And what he's singing, he's already heard. He's hearing it come out. And the same with Björk. When she's singing, she's singing what she's hearing so there's no force. It's a force in itself. What I realised watching Michael Stipe, was that this is someone whose voice is in command of them rather than the other way around. It's very natural but it takes a long time for that to become natural. Like any singer, it takes a long time to find that, and it keeps changing. How I sing now feels different to a few years ago. It's just where you're at. Singing is nothing but being in the moment. That's it. I remember during OK Computer, I still thought "I need to be slightly drunk" or "I need to do something beforehand so that I'm in the right space, man", but it's all bollocks, because basically you just gotta learn to be there with it when you do it. You're not trying to prove anything. You're not trying to get anywhere. You're not trying to achieve anything. You're not trying to get this emotion across. You're not in this space trying to get this space across. You're not trying to get this mindset across or anything. You're just letting it happen.
Thom Yorke
Effective leadership begins with having the right mind-set; in particular, it begins with having an ownership mind-set. This means a willingness to put oneself in the shoes of a decision maker and think through all of the considerations that the decision maker must factor into his or her thinking and actions. Having an ownership mind-set is essential to developing into an effective leader. By the same token, the absence of an ownership mind-set often explains why certain people with great promise ultimately fail to reach their leadership potential. An ownership mind-set involves three essential elements, which I will put in the form of questions: •  Can you figure out what you believe, as if you were an owner? •  Can you act on those beliefs? •  Do you act in a way that adds value to someone else: a customer, a client, a colleague, or a community? Do you take responsibility for the positive and negative impact of your actions on others? These elements are not a function of your formal position in an organization. They are not a function of title, power, or wealth, although these factors can certainly be helpful in enabling you to act like an owner. These elements are about what you do. They are about taking ownership of your convictions, actions, and impact on others. In my experience, great organizations are made up of executives who focus specifically on these elements and work to empower their employees to think and act in this way.
Robert S. Kaplan (What You Really Need to Lead: The Power of Thinking and Acting Like an Owner)
I want those in what I call the regressive left who are reading this exchange to understand that the first stage in the empowerment of any minority community is the liberation of reformist voices within that community so that its members can take responsibility for themselves and overcome the first hurdle to genuine empowerment: the victimhood mentality. This is what the American civil rights movement achieved, by shifting the debate. Martin Luther King Jr. and other leaders took responsibility for their own communities and acted in a positive and empowering way, instead of constantly playing the victim card or rioting in the streets. Perpetuating this groupthink mind-set is both extremely dangerous and in fact disempowering.
Sam Harris (Islam and the Future of Tolerance: A Dialogue)
Our delight in each other did not happen because he is the perfect man, or because he “loves me like Christ loves the church,” or because he is “sensitive to all my needs.” It didn’t happen because he takes the trash out, or cleans up after himself, or has always made a good living, providing me with all the things most women take for granted. It didn’t happen because he is a strong spiritual leader and always does the right thing. It happened and continues to happen because of the choices I make every day. I never have a chip on my shoulder, no matter how offended I have a right to be—and I do have reasons to be offended regularly. Every day, I remember to view myself as the woman God gave this man. This mind-set helps me be just that: a gift, a playmate, his helper.
Debi Pearl (Created to be His Help Meet)
Thought experiments aren’t oracles. They can’t tell you what’s true or fair or what decision you should make. If you notice that you would be more forgiving of adultery in a Democrat than a Republican, that reveals you have a double standard, but it doesn’t tell you what your standard “should” be. If you notice that you’re nervous about deviating from the status quo, that doesn’t mean you can’t decide to play it safe this time anyway. What thought experiments do is simply reveal that your reasoning changes as your motivations change. That the principles you’re inclined to invoke or the objections that spring to your mind depend on your motives: the motive to defend your image or your in-group’s status; the motive to advocate for a self-serving policy; fear of change or rejection.
Julia Galef (The Scout Mindset: The Perils of Defensive Thinking and How to Be Right More Often)
Psycho-compulsion is therefore not just about instilling people with a so-called correct employability mindset. It is a mechanism for penalising deviation from what it defines as the right set of attitudes and behaviours. ‘What psycho-compulsion therefore attempts to do is silence alternative discourses to the neoliberal myth that you are to blame for your unemployment,’ said Friedli. ‘At the same time, it undermines and erodes alternative frameworks around which people can come together in solidarity to act against the social causes of worklessness.’ In short, psycho-compulsion not only pathologises and punishes a claimant’s dissent, it depoliticises the causes of joblessness (which discourages collective action), and it does so by resuscitating Margaret Thatcher’s earlier myth that unemployment can be reduced to character deficiencies.
James Davies (Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created our Mental Health Crisis)
The Messianic Wall and the Ultra-Loyal Base First published in 2019 There is much talk of Trump’s ultra-loyal political base, and rightly so. That base, or at least the most passionate element of it, consists of angry people who feel spurned by the political establishment. The base showed its psychological and political clout when Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, who claimed to speak for it, denounced Trump for “caving” to a unanimous Senate decision to keep the government running, which caused Trump to reverse himself and create a disastrous partial government shutdown. Yet that same base could play a large part in removing Trump from office. People who submit themselves to an omnipotent guru can be especially passionate in their support of all that he says and does. But this cultism can also be a source of vulnerability for both. Leaders and followers can become antagonists rather than mutual nurturers.
Robert Jay Lifton (Losing Reality: On Cults, Cultism, and the Mindset of Political and Religious Zealotry)
We as a people have become so addicted to DYSFUNCTION that we don't recognize PEACE (man or woman) when it enters our energetic space. We call PEACE soft, too nice, pushover, doormat and other names because PEACE respects you. PEACE cares about & for you. PEACE doesn't want to argue, PEACE speaks it's mind with healthy discussion & at the end of the day, PEACE says I Love you. PEACE keeps their word. PEACE enjoys spending time with you & treating you better than anyone else ever has but because of our addiction, we say this is too good to be true. We wait for the other shoe to drop. We check PEACE phone, follow PEACE home or just dismiss PEACE altogether because something just ain't right!" LEAVE that phone alone, STOP looking for a reason, and CHANGE your mindset. "Once you have begun down this new path, your vibrations will change & PEACE will start to walk with you, YOU will attract his siblings-Love, Joy, Kindness, Happiness & your relationships will become everything you inwardly desired but secretly believed you were not worthy of attaining.
Sanjo Jendayi
Albert Einstein once said, “Most people say that it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character.” . . . On one level, science is a collection of facts about the world, and adding to that collection does require discoveries. But science is also something larger. It’s a mindset, a process, a way of reasoning about the world that allows us to expose wishful thinking and biases and replace them with deeper, more reliable truths. Considering how vast the world is, there’s no way to check every reported experiment yourself and personally verify it. At some point, you have to trust other people’s claims—which means those people need to be honorable, need to be worthy of trusting. Moreover, science is an inherently social process. Results cannot be kept secret; they have to be verified by the wider community, or science simply doesn’t work. And given what a deeply social process science is, acts that damage society by shortchanging human rights or ignoring human dignity will almost always cost you in the end—by destroying people’s trust in science and even undermining the very conditions that make science possible.
Sam Kean (The Icepick Surgeon: Murder, Fraud, Sabotage, Piracy, and Other Dastardly Deeds Perpetrated in the Name of Science)
As we’ve seen, one of the most frequently pursued paths for achievement-minded college seniors is to spend several years advancing professionally and getting trained and paid by an investment bank, consulting firm, or law firm. Then, the thought process goes, they can set out to do something else with some exposure and experience under their belts. People are generally not making lifelong commitments to the field in their own minds. They’re “getting some skills” and making some connections before figuring out what they really want to do. I subscribed to a version of this mind-set when I graduated from Brown. In my case, I went to law school thinking I’d practice for a few years (and pay down my law school debt) before lining up another opportunity. It’s clear why this is such an attractive approach. There are some immensely constructive things about spending several years in professional services after graduating from college. Professional service firms are designed to train large groups of recruits annually, and they do so very successfully. After even just a year or two in a high-level bank or consulting firm, you emerge with a set of skills that can be applied in other contexts (financial modeling in Excel if you’re a financial analyst, PowerPoint and data organization and presentation if you’re a consultant, and editing and issue spotting if you’re a lawyer). This is very appealing to most any recent graduate who may not yet feel equipped with practical skills coming right out of college. Even more than the professional skill you gain, if you spend time at a bank, consultancy, or law firm, you will become excellent at producing world-class work. Every model, report, presentation, or contract needs to be sophisticated, well done, and error free, in large part because that’s one of the core value propositions of your organization. The people above you will push you to become more rigorous and disciplined, and your work product will improve across the board as a result. You’ll get used to dressing professionally, preparing for meetings, speaking appropriately, showing up on time, writing official correspondence, and so forth. You will be able to speak the corporate language. You’ll become accustomed to working very long hours doing detail-intensive work. These attributes are transferable to and helpful in many other contexts.
Andrew Yang (Smart People Should Build Things: How to Restore Our Culture of Achievement, Build a Path for Entrepreneurs, and Create New Jobs in America)
Soon all humane people would understand the need for a revolution from below, where those who worked and struggled and produced would be the ruling class. Those with eyes to see could detect this with ease, while those whose eyes had yet to be opened could always… well, it was thought that events would also assist in persuading them. I realize that this may sound slightly as if I had joined a cult. There actually was a rival Trotskyist group, later to make itself notorious by recruiting Corin and Vanessa Redgrave, whose depraved “leader” Gerry Healy did in fact teach us all we needed to learn about cultism and the mental and sexual and financial exploitation of the young and the credulous. (I learned a lot about “faith-based” movements from this early instruction.) But the “I.S.,” as our group was known, had a relaxed and humorous internal life and also a quizzical and critical attitude to the “Sixties” mindset. We didn’t grow our hair too long, because we wanted to mingle with the workers at the factory gate and on the housing estates. We didn’t “do” drugs, which we regarded as a pathetic, weak-minded escapism almost as contemptible as religion (as well as a bad habit which could expose us to a “plant” from the police). Rock and roll and sex were OK. Looking back, I still think we picked the right options.
Christopher Hitchens (Hitch-22)
And this deflation of rivals is no closer to the truth than the self-inflation that is also high on the agenda for that particular conversation. But the deflation is heartfelt; we tend to believe the bad publicity we give rivals, the better to spread it. The Buddha seems to have seen this dynamic clearly. A scripture attributed to him reads: The senses’ evidence, And works, inspire such scorn For others, and such smug Conviction he is right, That all his rivals rank As “sorry, brainless fools.” So what do we do about all this? If our mind keeps getting seized by different modules, and each module carries with it different illusions, how do we change the situation? The answer isn’t simple, but what should already be clear is that getting more control over the situation may have something to do with feelings. A link between feelings and illusion was somewhat apparent back in chapter 3, when I noted that some feelings are in one sense or another “false,” so getting some critical distance from them can clarify things. But the case against being enthralled by our feelings only grows when you realize that their connection to illusion can be described in a second way. Feelings don’t just bring specific, fleeting illusions; they can usher in a whole mind-set and so alter for some time a range of perceptions and proclivities, for better or worse.
Robert Wright (Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment)
Your story isn’t powerful enough if all it does is lead the horse to water; it has to inspire the horse to drink, too. On social media, the only story that can achieve that goal is one told with native content. Native content amps up your story’s power. It is crafted to mimic everything that makes a platform attractive and valuable to a consumer—the aesthetics, the design, and the tone. It also offers the same value as the other content that people come to the platform to consume. Email marketing was a form of native content. It worked well during the 1990s because people were already on email; if you told your story natively and provided consumers with something they valued on that platform, you got their attention. And if you jabbed enough to put them in a purchasing mind-set, you converted. The rules are the same now that people spend their time on social media. It can’t tell you what story to tell, but it can inform you how your consumer wants to hear it, when he wants to hear it, and what will most make him want to buy from you. For example, supermarkets or fast-casual restaurants know from radio data that one of the ideal times to run an ad on the radio is around 5:00 P.M., when moms are picking up the kids and deciding what to make for dinner, and even whether they have the energy to cook. Social gives you the same kind of insight. Maybe the data tells you that you should post on Facebook early in the morning before people settle
Gary Vaynerchuk (Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World)
crucial that we acknowledge two cardinal truths. First, whining and complaining about unfavorable conditions does nothing to resolve them. Second, it can too easily introduce a host of negative emotions that result in further despair and disappointment. Maintaining a positive mindset is pivotal to facing adversity with courage. Each morning, reflect on things that have gone right for you. Each afternoon, think about everything you have for which to be thankful. Each evening, before you go to bed, contemplate the small victories you enjoyed throughout the day. Practice gratitude daily. Habit #5: Build a tolerance for change. Mental toughness requires that you be flexible to your circumstances. When things go wrong, you must be able to adapt in order to act with purpose. Most of us dread change. We enjoy predictability because it reduces uncertainty. Fear of uncertainty is one of the chief impediments to taking purposeful action. Building this habit entails leaving your comfort zone. It calls for actively seeking changes that you can incorporate into your life. The upside is that doing so will desensitize you to changing circumstances, increasing your tolerance for them. As your tolerance increases, your fear will naturally erode. The great thing about habit development is that you can advance at your own pace. Again, it’s best to start with small steps and progress slowly. But each of us is different with regard to what “small” and “slowly” mean. Design a plan that aligns with your existing routines and caters to your available time, attention, and energy. EXERCISE #6 Write down three habits you’d like to develop. Next to each one, write down
Damon Zahariades (The Mental Toughness Handbook: A Step-By-Step Guide to Facing Life's Challenges, Managing Negative Emotions, and Overcoming Adversity with Courage and Poise)
The quality of our thinking is largely influenced by the mental models in our heads. While we want accurate models, we also want a wide variety of models to uncover what’s really happening. The key here is variety. Most of us study something specific and don’t get exposure to the big ideas of other disciplines. We don’t develop the multidisciplinary mindset that we need to accurately see a problem. And because we don’t have the right models to understand the situation, we overuse the models we do have and use them even when they don’t belong. You’ve likely experienced this first hand. An engineer will often think in terms of systems by default. A psychologist will think in terms of incentives. A business person might think in terms of opportunity cost and risk-reward. Through their disciplines, each of these people sees part of the situation, the part of the world that makes sense to them. None of them, however, see the entire situation unless they are thinking in a multidisciplinary way. In short, they have blind spots. Big blind spots. And they’re not aware of their blind spots. [...] Relying on only a few models is like having a 400-horsepower brain that’s only generating 50 horsepower of output. To increase your mental efficiency and reach your 400-horsepower potential, you need to use a latticework of mental models. Exactly the same sort of pattern that graces backyards everywhere, a lattice is a series of points that connect to and reinforce each other. The Great Models can be understood in the same way—models influence and interact with each other to create a structure that can be used to evaluate and understand ideas. [...] Without a latticework of the Great Models our decisions become harder, slower, and less creative. But by using a mental models approach, we can complement our specializations by being curious about how the rest of the world works. A quick glance at the Nobel Prize winners list show that many of them, obviously extreme specialists in something, had multidisciplinary interests that supported their achievements. [...] The more high-quality mental models you have in your mental toolbox, the more likely you will have the ones needed to understand the problem. And understanding is everything. The better you understand, the better the potential actions you can take. The better the potential actions, the fewer problems you’ll encounter down the road. Better models make better decisions.
Shane Parrish (The Great Mental Models: General Thinking Concepts)
FREEING YOURSELF FROM YOUR MIND What exactly do you mean by “watching the thinker”? When someone goes to the doctor and says, “I hear a voice in my head,” he or she will most likely be sent to a psychiatrist. The fact is that, in a very similar way, virtually everyone hears a voice, or several voices, in their head all the time: the involuntary thought processes that you don’t realize you have the power to stop. Continuous monologues or dialogues. You have probably come across “mad” people in the street incessantly talking or muttering to themselves. Well, that’s not much different from what you and all other “normal” people do, except that you don’t do it out loud. The voice comments, speculates, judges, compares, complains, likes, dislikes, and so on. The voice isn’t necessarily relevant to the situation you find yourself in at the time; it may be reviving the recent or distant past or rehearsing or imagining possible future situations. Here it often imagines things going wrong and negative outcomes; this is called worry. Sometimes this soundtrack is accompanied by visual images or “mental movies.” Even if the voice is relevant to the situation at hand, it will interpret it in terms of the past. This is because the voice belongs to your conditioned mind, which is the result of all your past history as well as of the collective cultural mind-set you inherited. So you see and judge the present through the eyes of the past and get a totally distorted view of it. It is not uncommon for the voice to be a person’s own worst enemy. Many people live with a tormentor in their head that continuously attacks and punishes them and drains them of vital energy. It is the cause of untold misery and unhappiness, as well as of disease. The good news is that you can free yourself from your mind. This is the only true liberation. You can take the first step right now. Start listening to the voice in your head as often as you can. Pay particular attention to any repetitive thought patterns, those old gramophone records that have been playing in your head perhaps for many years. This is what I mean by “watching the thinker,” which is another way of saying: listen to the voice in your head, be there as the witnessing presence. When you listen to that voice, listen to it impartially. That is to say, do not judge. Do not judge or condemn what you hear, for doing so would mean that the same voice has come in again through the back door. You’ll soon realize: there is the voice, and here I am listening to it, watching it. This I am realization, this sense of your own presence, is not a thought. It arises from beyond the mind.
Eckhart Tolle (The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment)
Human beings are capable of extraordinary things. We can create and we can destroy, we can love or we can hate. Some people believe they have souls. While others think that there is only this. Just this. Reality. The news. Killings, wars, bombings, hate, prejudice. Death. And death? No one ever dies on television. Only the bad guys do. Not you. Just them. So death is without meaning. Happens without meaning due to media. We see but don't feel, we watch but haven't experienced. We can only sympathize. A gun doesn't fire on it's own and a fanatic doesn't just wake up one day and become a murderer. Hate doesn't have a face. Death doesn't have a face. Human beings become that face. All of us everyday. Whether you like it or not. Why? Because this is a mindset a culture a history. From the time we are children we are taught that this is right and this is wrong. This is what a man does. This is what a woman does. Children emulate the behaviors of adults. Parents, movie characters and just about everyone else. We live in a society based on ideals. We celebrate the intelligence of the human race and then we take on the guises of everything the opposite of that belief we've ever known and support violence, support war. Behaviors that any intelligent race should have abandoned many years ago. We are surrounded by violence, surrounded by what we still are and what we are not becoming. Frankly we are all still just primitives and not capable in any way shape or form of creating a complete and everlasting peace and that's the sad reality of it all and always has been. We're just human. Only human. The good, the bad and the ugly. The evil, the damaged and the sick. The rich, the poor and all the rest of us. So look at it this way. You can't change the world or make the world stop killing. You can't stop violence or hatred but you can walk away from it all. Violence is a part of being human. But so is love. So? Only fight if you have to. Live peacefully and as a peace keeper and do what you can to make the small part of your own world a better place. Whether that's thru creation, protest, teaching or just being who you are and doing what you do. You can't stop humanity from being humanity and you certainly can't stop all the horrible things that happen around the world everyday. So accept it. Light a candle, say a prayer, donate or meditate, listen to some music, write. But even if the human race isn't everything you wish it could be? Hold on to love. Hold onto friends. Hold onto hope or whatever religion or belief that guides you through the dark. Because in the end? You're just human and that's all that you can do. The best that you can do.
R.M. Engelhardt (R A W POEMS R.M. ENGELHARDT)