Sanity Based Quotes

Today is filled with anger, fueled with hidden hate. Scared of being outkast, afraid of common fate. Today is build on tragedies which no one want's to face. Nightmares to humanity and morally disgraced. Tonight is filled with Rage, violence in the air. Children bred with ruthlessness cause no one at home cares. Tonight I lay my head down but the pressure never stops, knowing that my sanity content when I'm droped. But tomorrow I see change, a chance to build a new, build on spirit intent of heart and ideas based on truth. Tomorrow I wake with second wind and strong because of pride. I know I fought with all my heart to keep the dream alive.

MEMORY'S SO TREACHEROUS. ONE MOMENT YOU'RE LOST IN A CARNIVAL OF DELIGHTS, WITH POIGNANT CHILDHOOD AROMAS , THE FLASHING NEON OF PUBERTY, ALL THAT SENTIMENTAL CANDY-FLOSS ... THE NEXT , IT LEADS YOU SOMEWHERE YOU DON'T WANT TO GO... ...SOMEWHERE DARK AND COLD, FILLED WITH THE DAMP, AMBIGUOUS SHAPES OF THINKS YOU'D HOPED WERE FORGOTTEN. MEMORIES CAN BE VILE, REPULSIVE LITTLE BRUTES. LIKE CHILDREN, I SUPPOSE. HAHA. BUT CAN WE LIVE WITHOUT THEM? MEMORIES ARE WHAT OUR REASON IS BASED UPON. IF WE CAN'T FACE THEM, WE DENY REASON ITSELF! ALGHOUGH, WHY NOT? WE AREN'T CONTRACTUALLY TIED DOWN TO RATIONALITY! THERE IS NO SANITY CLAUSE! SO WHEN YOU FIND YOURSELF LOCKED ONTO AN UNPLEASANT TRAIN OF THOUGHT, HEADING FOR THE PLACES IN YOUR PAST WHERE THE SCREAMING IS UNBEARABLE, REMEMBER THERE'S ALWAYS MADNESS. MADNESS IS THE EMERGENCY EXIT... YOU CAN JUST STEP OUTSIDE, AND CLOSE THE DOOR ON ALL THOSE DREADFUL THINGS THAT HAPPENED. YOU CAN LOCK THEM AWAY... FOREVER.

Remembering's dangerous. I find the past such a worrying, anxious place. "The Past Tense," I suppose you'd call it. Memory's so treacherous. One moment you're lost in a carnival of delights, with poignant childhood aromas, the flashing neon of puberty, all that sentimental candy-floss... the next, it leads you somewhere you don't want to go. Somewhere dark and cold, filled with the damp ambiguous shapes of things you'd hoped were forgotten. Memories can be vile, repulsive little brutes. Like children I suppose. But can we live without them? Memories are what our reason is based upon. If we can't face them, we deny reason itself! Although, why not? We aren't contractually tied down to rationality! There is no sanity clause! So when you find yourself locked onto an unpleasant train of thought, heading for the places in your past where the screaming is unbearable, remember there's always madness. Madness is the emergency exit… you can just step outside, and close the door on all those dreadful things that happened. You can lock them away… forever.

Memories can be vile. Repulsive little brutes, like children I suppose. But can we live without them? Memories are what our reason is based upon. If we can't face them, we deny reason itself! Although, why not? We aren't contractually tied down to rationality. There is no sanity clause. So when you find yourself locked down in an unpleasant train of thought, heading for the places in your past where the screaming is unbearable, remember: There's always madness. You can just step outside and close the door, and all those dreadful things that happened, you can lock them away. Madness... is an emergency exit.

It seems also that the preferred method of attack on the other is based on the same principle as the attack felt to be implicit in the other's relationship to oneself. Thus, the man who is frightened of his own subjectivity being swamped, impinged upon, or congealed by the other is frequently to be found attempting to swamp, to impinge upon, or to kill the other person's subjectivity.

This touch of luxury was typical of the Base, though it was sometimes hard to explain its necessity to the folk back on Earth. Every man and woman in Clavius had cost a hundred thousand dollars in training and transport and housing; it was worth a little extra to maintain their peace of mind. This was not art for art’s sake, but art for the sake of sanity.

Acceptance makes pain more tolerable, and when things feel too hard to sit with, that’s a sign that practicing acceptance will help.

letting go of the prediction that her bad feelings would go on and on, and instead to sit with her current experience just as it was in this moment.

when we move from feeling blinded by thoughts to more realistic assessments, it’s easier to harness our resources to consider, how can I can cope?

We over-manage and under-lead, trying to control people rather than connecting to them and developing their potential.

At times, we get so swept up by an emotion or thought that we don’t follow through and imagine that whatever the outcome, we’ll most likely manage to cope. The worst is rarely as bad as we think.

As speaker and author Byron Katie asks, “Do you want to meet the love of your life? Look in the mirror.” When you see your incredible self, you won’t feel like your worth lies outside of you and you’ll also be more likely to keep good company.

Because our actions are based on our understanding, our behavior will then become unrealistic. When this occurs to a sufficient degree our fellow citizens will recognize that we are “out of touch with reality,” and will deem us mentally ill even though we ourselves are most likely convinced of our sanity.

Long black hair and deep clean blue eyes and skin pale white and lips blood red she's small and thin and worn and damaged. She is standing there. What are you doing here? I was taking a walk and I saw you and I followed you. What do you want. I want you to stop. I breathe hard, stare hard, tense and coiled. There is still more tree for me to destroy I want that fucking tree. She smiles and she steps towards me, toward toward toward me, and she opens he r arms and I'm breathing hard staring hard tense and coiled she puts her arms around me with one hand not he back of my head and she pulls me into her arms and she holds me and she speaks. It's okay. I breathe hard, close my eyes, let myself be held. It's okay. Her voice calms me and her arms warm me and her smell lightens me and I can feel her heart beat and my heart slows and I stop shaking an the Fury melts into her safety an she holds me and she says. Okay. Okay. Okay. Something else comes and it makes me feel weak and scared and fragile and I don't want to be hurt and this feeling is the feeling I have when I know I can be hurt and hurt deeper and more terribly than anything physical and I always fight it and control it and stop it but her voice calms me and her arms warm me and her smell lightens me and I can feel her heart beat and if she let me go right now I would fall and the need and confusion and fear and regret and horror and shame and weakness and fragility are exposed to the soft strength of her open arms and her simple word okay and I start to cry. I start to cry. I want to cry. It comes in waves. THe waves roll deep and from deep the deep within me and I hold her and she holds me tighter and i let her and I let it and I let this and I have not felt this way this vulnerability or allowed myself to feel this way this vulnerability since I was ten years old and I don't know why I haven't and I don't know why I am now and I only know that I am and that it is scary terrifying frightening worse and better than anything I've ever felt crying in her arms just crying in her ams just crying. She guides me to the ground, but she doesn't let me go. THe Gates are open and thirteen years of addiction, violence, hell and their accompaniments are manifesting themselves in dense tears and heavy sobs and a shortness of breath and a profound sense of loss. THe loss inhabits, fills and overwhelms me. It is the loss of a childhood of being a Teeenager of normalcy of happiness of love of trust anon reason of God of Family of friends of future of potential of dignity of humanity of sanity f myself of everything everything everything. I lost everything and I am lost reduced to a mass of mourning, sadness, grief, anguish and heartache. I am lost. I have lost. Everything. Everything. It's wet and Lilly cradles me like a broken Child. My face and her shoulder and her shirt and her hair are wet with my tears. I slow down and I start to breathe slowly and deeply and her hair smells clean and I open my eyes because I want to see it an it is all that I can see. It is jet black almost blue and radiant with moisture. I want to touch it and I reach with one of my hands and I run my hand from the crown along her neck and her back to the base of her rib and it is a thin perfect sheer and I let it slowly drop from the tips of my fingers and when it is gone I miss it. I do it again and again and she lets me do it and she doesn't speak she just cradles me because I am broken. I am broken. Broken. THere is noise and voices and Lilly pulls me in tighter and tighter and I know I pull her in tighter and tighter and I can feel her heart beating and I know she can feel my heart beating and they are speaking our hearts are speaking a language wordless old unknowable and true and we're pulling and holding and the noise is closer and the voices louder and Lilly whispers. You're okay. You're okay. You're okay.

... everything based on arguments involving the ''is'' of identidy and the older el (elementalistic) 'logic' and 'psychology', such as the prevailing doctrines, laws, institutions, systems. , cannot possibly be in full accordance with the structure of our nervous system. This, in turn, affects the latter and results in the prevailing private and public un-sanity. Hence, the unrest, unhappines, nervous strain, irritability, lack of wisdom and absence of balance, the instability of our instituitions, the wars and revolutions, the increase of ''mental ills, prostitution, criminality, commercialism as a creed, the inadequate standards of education, the low professional standards of lawyers, priests, politicians, physicians, teachers, parents, and even of scientists - which in the last-named field often lead to dogmatic and antisocial attitudes and lack of creativeness.

ultimate peace of mind resides in being in the current moment

When we fixate on the idea that there’s a best option, we find ourselves feeling dissatisfied with any alternatives, and less able to commit to our existing choices.

When we glorify relationships and assume that a person completes us, it follows that if that person disappoints us, we are apt to feel especially pained.

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. —RUMI

Being present in your life is the opposite of waiting for love, and research suggests that the more present you can be, the more fulfillment you will experience.

to feel connected, we need a core group, not a single person.

The real interaction designer's decisions are based on what the user is trying to achieve.

The more mindful you are, the more readily you’ll be able to change your thoughts.

Trying to make a thought go away guarantees that it will stick around.

Bringing your awareness to your emotions is a mindfulness practice that can free you.

When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.

trusting that your actions will create the outcomes you crave can be a huge source of hope and meaning.

Simply put, mindfulness is thinking differently about thinking. Just because you have a thought doesn’t mean you must believe that thought.

My point is that everyone can benefit from the reminder that our unfulfilled fantasies, like our stereotypes, are just thoughts. My prescription is for you to start practicing joyful living now.

A Chapman University study of twenty-five thousand people led by sociologist Brian Gillespie found that the two biggest predictors of life satisfaction are quality of friendships and job engagement.

Prone in the prison of this question, Hell or salvation, fired incessantly from the neuronal network in the pallium cowering in the base of the skull, lying motionless or walking out of the question.

At one time, psychologists used to promote building self-esteem. Now, the wisdom in the field is that self-control, doing what we know is wise, even when we aren’t in the mood, is the key to evolving and growing.

The belief that your happiness hinges on an external circumstance that you can’t control (i.e., meeting a romantic partner) not only makes it harder to find love, but it also sets you up for unhappiness. Letting go of the maddening myth that happiness comes from coupling up is the first step to freedom. Stressing out about meeting someone will not help you meet that person any faster. The healthiest way to increase your chances of finding love is to increase your happiness, right now.

Corn is at the core of modern agribusiness, the most important food crop in North America. In no other crop are the values of modern commercial agribusiness as thoroughly embedded. There is nothing we can do that is ultimately subversive - there is no act of gardening that is so profound a rebellion, there is no act of eating that is so potent a blow for food quality and food system sanity - as to take back the corn crop in our own backyards, and grow, breed, eat, and save seed of corn based upon an entirely different set of values.

So instead of lying awake circling over your mistakes and ongoing to-dos, a nice alternative may be practicing gratitude for a couple of minutes, then spending a moment purposefully noticing what you’ve done well, which also seems like a better way to prepare for a good night’s sleep.

According to Roy Baumeister’s research on happiness, believing your life is relatively easy correlates with happiness, while thinking your life is difficult predicts unhappiness. Letting go of assumptions, stereotypes, and affective forecasts and adopting a more hopeful perspective can increase your happiness. A

told myself that what was in my control was being kind, patient, present, and grateful. Yes, I wanted to meet someone, but that wasn’t my sole reason for living, and this quest wasn’t going to ruin me the way it had seemed to for years. I realized that I didn’t deserve to feel ashamed about being single, and stopped acting embarrassed.

And now, dear Emma, I'll show you just what you have to be wary of," he said, and his head moved down, blotting out the light. This was no slow, sensuous caress of mouth and lip. This was no chaste salute, nor was it the wet awkwardness of an untried boy or a randy old man. He opened his mouth over hers and kissed her, using his tongue, his teeth, and all the clever weapons he had in his arsenal. She told herself she was being kissed by a practiced rake. She told herself it meant nothing, it was a trick, an act, a small skill that anyone could acquire. She told herself that as her body trembled and melted beneath him, as her mouth opened to his skillful insistence. She told herself it meant absolutely nothing as his tongue pushed into her mouth, and the moan that came from deep inside her had to be one of displeasure, didn't it? It wasn't one kiss, it was twenty, it was a long series of unending kisses, leading one into another, so that she barely had time to begin to regain her sanity when he stripped it away once more. He kissed her eyelids, the side of her mouth, the beating pulse at the base of her neck. He kissed her nose and her chin, he bit her earlobe, and then he covered her mouth once more, kissing her with a devastating thoroughness that had her damp and trembling in his arms. His hands were on her petticoats, slowly drawing them up her long legs, and her hips cradled him. He was hard against her, she belatedly recognized that fact, and the knowledge panicked her.e wanted her, his body wanted to claim hers, and there was no way she could stop him. No way, God help her, that she wanted to stop him. He broke the kiss, rising up over her as she lay on the bed, staring down at her with a hooded expression in his eyes. His mouth was wet from hers, and his breathing was slightly labored. It would have been the only sign of his arousal, had it not been for the heat pressing against her hips. "Do you want me, Emma?" he murmured, his voice low and insistent. "You don't have to say a word. Just put your mouth against mine." Oh, God, she did want him, as terrifying as that notion was. She wanted to touch him, to feel his skin against hers, and she felt a dark burning deep inside her that she knew only he could assuage. She wanted his mouth, she wanted his heart, she wanted his soul.

Ironically, many of the institutions that run the economy, such as medicine, education, law and even psychology are largely dependent upon failing health. If you add up the amounts of money exchanged in the control, anticipation and reaction to failing health (insurance, pharmaceutical research and products, reactive or compensatory medicine, related legal issues, consultation and therapy for those who are unwilling to improve their physical health and claim or believe the problem is elsewhere, etc.), you end up with an enormous chunk. To keep that moving, we need people to be sick. Then we have the extreme social emphasis placed on the pursuit and maintenance of a lifestyle based on making money at any cost, often at the sacrifice of health, sanity and well-being.

Setting a goal and working to achieve it doesn’t ensure success, no matter how diligently we try, and that leads to disappointment, one of the most depressing emotions. Disappointment can make us feel powerless, and psychologists actually talk about two different types: outcome-related disappointment (when things didn’t go as we’d hoped) and person-related disappointment (when people let us down).

Shall I stop in to check on Bella before I go?” “Not dressed like that. You would give her palpitations if she knew you were going into danger for her benefit.” “Luckily, I am mostly immune to Bella’s powers and could cure such palpitations with a thought,” Gideon mused. Jacob raised a brow, taking the medic’s measure. He could not recall the last time he had heard the Ancient crack wise about anything. It was not a wholly unpleasant experience, and it amused the Enforcer. “I . . . am aware of what is occurring between you and Legna, as you know,” Jacob mentioned with casual quiet. “I am only recently Imprinted myself, but should you require—” He broke off, suddenly uncomfortable. “Of course, you probably know far more about Imprinting than I ever will.” He is reaching out to you. Legna’s soft encouragement made Gideon suddenly aware of that fact. It was one of those nuances he would have missed completely, rusty as he was with matters of friendship and how to relate better to others. “I am glad for the offer of any help you can provide,” Gideon said quickly. “In fact, I had wanted to ask you . . . something . . .” What did I want to ask him? he asked Legna urgently. I do not know! I did not tell you to engage him, just to graciously accept his offer. Oh. My apologies. Still, you are clever enough to think of something, are you not? Legna knew he was baiting her, so she laughed. Ask him why it is you seem to constantly irritate me. I will ask him no such thing, Magdelegna. Well then, you had better come up with an alternative, because that is the only suggestion I have. “Yes?” Jacob was encouraging neutrally, trying to be patient as the medic seemed to gather his thoughts. “Do you find that your mate tends to lecture you incessantly?” he asked finally. Jacob laughed out loud. “You know something, I can actually advise you about that, Gideon.” “Can you?” The medic actually sounded hopeful. “Give up. Now. While you still have your sanity. Arguing with her will get you nowhere. And, also, never ever ask questions that refer to the whys and wherefores of women, females, or any other feminine-based criticism. Otherwise you will only earn an argument at a higher decibel level. Oh, and one other thing.” Gideon cocked a brow in question. “All the rules I just gave you, as well as all the ones she lays down during the course of your relationship, can and will change at whim. So, as I see it, you can consider yourself just as lost as every other man on the planet. Good luck with it.” “That is not a very heartening thought,” Gideon said wryly, ignoring Legna’s giggle in his background thoughts.

It seems like an indulgence to take the time to cultivate mindfulness when so much is being lost. But this is the tension - to find a considered way of acting not based on reaction. Building a different kind of sanity requires a stable base for careful action. It means being willing to know all the dimensions of the reality of destruction, being willing to breathe with the tension of emotional response, being willing to cultivate tolerance for unresolved conflict. This nonverbal form of ethical deliberation depends on the careful work of paying attention to the whole thing. Meditating, walking slowly, calming the mind by centering on the breath - these painstaking, deliberate practices increase the odds for acting intelligently in the midst of crisis.

Fundamental security comes from realizing that you have broken through something. You reflect back and realize that you used to be extraordinarily paranoid and neurotic, watching each step you made, thinking you might lose your sanity, that situations were always threatening in some way. Now you are free of all those fears and preconceptions. You discover that you have something to give rather than having to demand from others, having to grasp all the time. For the first time, you are a rich person, you contain basic sanity. You have something to offer, you are able to work with your fellow sentient beings, you do not have to reassure yourself anymore. Reassurance implies a mentality of poverty--you are checking yourself, "Do I have it? How could I do it?" But the bodhisattva's delight in his richness is based upon experience rather than theory or wishful thinking. It is so, directly, fundamentally. He is fundamentally rich and so can delight in generosity.

I like rainbows. We came back down to the meadow near the steaming terrace and sat in the river, just where one of the bigger hot streams poured into the cold water of the Ferris Fork. It is illegal – not to say suicidal – to bathe in any of the thermal features of the park. But when those features empty into the river, at what is called a hot pot, swimming and soaking are perfectly acceptable. So we were soaking off our long walk, talking about our favorite waterfalls, and discussing rainbows when it occurred to us that the moon was full. There wasn’t a hint of foul weather. And if you had a clear sky and a waterfall facing in just the right direction… Over the course of a couple of days we hked back down the canyon to the Boundary Creek Trail and followed it to Dunanda Falls, which is only about eight miles from the ranger station at the entrance to the park. Dunanda is a 150-foot-high plunge facing generally south, so that in the afternoons reliable rainbows dance over the rocks at its base. It is the archetype of all western waterfalls. Dunenda is an Indian name; in Shoshone it means “straight down,” which is a pretty good description of the plunge. ... …We had to walk three miles back toward the ranger station and our assigned campsite. We planned to set up our tents, eat, hang our food, and walk back to Dunanda Falls in the dark, using headlamps. We could be there by ten or eleven. At that time the full moon would clear the east ridge of the downriver canyon and would be shining directly on the fall. Walking at night is never a happy proposition, and this particular evening stroll involved five stream crossings, mostly on old logs, and took a lot longer than we’d anticipated. Still, we beat the moon to the fall. Most of us took up residence in one or another of the hot pots. Presently the moon, like a floodlight, rose over the canyon rim. The falling water took on a silver tinge, and the rock wall, which had looked gold under the sun, was now a slick black so the contrast of water and rock was incomparably stark. The pools below the lip of the fall were glowing, as from within, with a pale blue light. And then it started at the base of the fall: just a diagonal line in the spray that ran from the lower east to the upper west side of the wall. “It’s going to happen,” I told Kara, who was sitting beside me in one of the hot pots. Where falling water hit the rock at the base of the fall and exploded upward in vapor, the light was very bright. It concentrated itself in a shining ball. The diagonal line was above and slowly began to bend until, in the fullness of time (ten minutes, maybe), it formed a perfectly symmetrical bow, shining silver blue under the moon. The color was vaguely electrical. Kara said she could see colors in the moonbow, and when I looked very hard, I thought I could make out a faint line of reddish orange above, and some deep violet at the bottom. Both colors were very pale, flickering, like bad florescent light. In any case, it was exhilarating, the experience of a lifetime: an entirely perfect moonbow, silver and iridescent, all shining and spectral there at the base of Dunanda Falls. The hot pot itself was a luxury, and I considered myself a pretty swell fellow, doing all this for the sanity of city dwellers, who need such things more than anyone else. I even thought of naming the moonbow: Cahill’s Luminescence. Something like that. Otherwise, someone else might take credit for it.

Similarities are read into nature by our nervous system, and so are structurally less fundamental than differences. Less fundamental, but no less important, as life and 'intelligence' would be totally impossible without abstracting. It becomes clear that the problem which has so excited the s.r. of the people of the United States of America and added so much to the merriment of mankind, 'Is the evolution a ''fact'' or a ''theory''?, is simply silly. Father and son are never identical - that surely is a structural 'fact' - so there is no need to worry about still higher abstractions, like 'man' and 'monkey'. That the fanatical and ignorant attack on the theory of evolution should have occured may be pathetic, but need concern us little, as such ignorant attacks are always liable to occur. But that biologists should offer 'defences' based on the confusions of orders of abstractiobs, and that 'philosophers' should have failed to see the simple dependence is rather sad. The problems of 'evolution' are verbal and have nothing to do with life as such, which is made up all through of different individuals, 'similarity' being structurally a manufactured article, produced by the nervous system of the observer.

The traitor elves of the World Above professed to hate evil. In reality, Quenthel thought, they feared what they didn’t understand. Thanks to the tutelage of Lolth, the drow did, and having understood it, they embraced it. For evil, like chaos, was one of the fundamental forces of Creation, manifest in both the macrocosm of the wide world and the microcosm of the individual soul. As chaos gave rise to possibility and imagination, so evil engendered strength and will. It made sentient beings aspire to wealth and power. It enabled them to subjugate, kill, rob, and deceive. It allowed them to do whatever was required to better themselves with never a crippling flicker of remorse. Thus, evil was responsible for the existence of civilization and for every great deed any hero had ever performed. Without it, the peoples of the world would live like animals. It was amazing that so many races, blinded by false religions and philosophies, had lost sight of this self-evident truth. In contrast, the dark elves had based a society on it, and that was one of the points of superiority that served to exalt them above all other races. Paradoxically, though, a touch of the pure black heart of this darkest of all powers could be deadly, just as the highest expression of comforting warmth was the fire that consumed. Even folk who spent their lives in the adoration of evil generally had no real comprehension of the endless burning sea of it raging below and beyond the material world, and that was just as well. Even a fleeting glimpse could convey secrets too huge and fearsome for the average mind. Its touch could annihilate sanity and even identity. The threat was sufficiently grave that the majority of spellcasters hesitated to regard the force directly. They preferred to treat with evil at one remove, by dealing with the devils and undead that embodied it.

Another way to reduce vulnerability is to think about what you value and what brings you joy (as we covered in chapters 5 and 6). These practices are like emotional deposits in your bank account that provide a safety net when inevitable withdrawals hit you.

Studies led by neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett and her team suggest that people who are more skilled in figuring out what they’re feeling are likelier to use strategies to reduce negative emotions and increase positive ones than people less able to distinguish their emotions.

If it’s hard to believe that sitting with unpleasant feelings can be more helpful than escaping them, consider whether avoiding your emotions has worked for you in the past.

We can create powerful and pleasurable software-based products by the simple expedient of designing our computer-based products before we build them.

Then I suppose our discussion is done." She turned to go, but he had a hard grip on her upper arm, pulling her back. "Not yet it's not," he growled. She fought down the old, nauseous fear. "Let go of me." "Why?" He cocked his head, an ugly sneer on his beautiful lips. "Can't stand my touch?" "Yes!" she tossed back, losing her patience, her self-control, and any upper hand she'd ever had in their argument. Which was when he took her by the shoulders, pulled her roughly into his arms, and pressed his mouth to hers. And Eve lost her sanity. Eve Dinwoody's lips were soft and sweet, entirely belying her sharp and tart personality. For all of a half second Asa reveled in that yielding sweetness. He'd shut her up in the most basic, the most primitive way a man could a woman. And then he realized something was very wrong. He pulled back, his lip curled cynically. She was an aristocrat. She probably thought him bestial, base, dirty, and not worthy of her mouth. No doubt she was disgusted by him. But disgust wasn't what showed on her face. It was fear. White showed all around the blue irises of her eyes, and there were pale indents on the sides of her nostrils. Her expression reminded him of what she'd looked like when he'd found her with the dog, but this was worse- much worse. She wasn't making a sound. "Eve." Her brows creased and the most horrible sound came from her lips. She whimpered.

At one time, psychologists used to promote building self-esteem. Now, the wisdom in the field is that self-control, doing what we know is wise, even when we aren’t in the mood,

Self-control is not just a puritanical virtue. It is a key psychological trait that breeds success at work and play—and in overcoming life’s hardship,” according to Roy Baumeister. When we depend on external factors, including other people, to live well, life feels risky.

In living a life based on values, we need to make room for self-care too.

Autonomy literally refers to regulating yourself. Having some freedom to choose what matters, from life values to design details, makes the rest of life feel full of choices too.

When you let yourself be a pessimistic forecaster or your own private bully, it’s hard to find inner peace.

The only way to reliably feel best is by learning to sit with feelings, even if they are painful. No matter who is around, you can never break up with your emotions. That’s a good thing, since they have a lot to teach us.

I think the approach of quickly trying to look for the good is bound to backfire, because it feels dismissive of pain.

A crucial part of self-compassion is noticing pain and adding kindness.

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. —ARISTOTLE

It’s natural to want to reach out to friends and talk through details of our experiences. The sad reality, though, is that when we start ruminating, our loved ones may start to burn out.

Given that we’re social beings and want to connect, regrets on the topic of love are not only felt intensely, but also the hardest to overcome. If you struggle with regret, letting go of your incriminating story and forgiving yourself is a liberating choice.

If we’re stuck in regret, we don’t have resources left to invest elsewhere.

The takeaway is, we don’t need to run from regret. Rather, we can learn from our past and treat our mistakes and ourselves with kindness

If your concerns are based on your values and inner wisdom, allow fear of regret to be there, and act courageously, anyway.

After decades of research, Hayes and his coauthors put it this way: “Many forms of psychopathology can be conceptualized as unhealthy efforts to escape and avoid emotions, thoughts, memories. . . .” In other words, many of our problems are actually caused or exacerbated by the imperfect solution of trying to avoid our pain.

While the single people described did feel less satisfied with their relationship status and lonelier than those who were coupled, their satisfaction with life, self-esteem, attractiveness, and extroversion were comparable to that of people in relationships.

I hope that by replacing the husband treadmill with a more mindful mindset, you can build what Sharon Salzberg describes as “a heart as wide as the world.

There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so. —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

when we feel intensely or notice that we’re in emotion mind, it’s much harder to access our ability to think reasonably.

When it comes to finding love, while you may not be able to conjure up the right partner instantly, you can change your mindset on what being single means.

I’ve come to believe that there are four main paths to loneliness: Judging ourselves Judging others Judging our time: I’m busy! Judging the importance: Why bother?

When the creators of software-based products examine their handiwork, they overlook how bad it is. Instead, they see its awesome power and flexibility. They see how rich the product is in features and functions. They ignore how excruciatingly difficult it is to use, how many mind-numbing hours it takes to learn, or how it diminishes and degrades the people

You should also know that whatever your gift is, nobody can do it quite like you. One of the biggest traps we fall into as women is the comparison trap, the “she’s got it all” trap, the “she has more fans” trap, or the “she’s making more money” trap. We tend to stack ourselves up against everyone else and pick ourselves apart based on what other people are doing. This practice does nothing to make us better,

The obnoxious behavior and obscure interaction that software-based products exhibit is institutionalizing what I call "software apartheid":

You forget the majesty of trade and the unparalleled virtues of the British Constitution which are all based on the sanity of the middle classes, combined with the diligence of the working-classes. You're

Whether you believe something possible or impossible -- either way, you will be right.

Kryptonite. I love their smell, their taste, the sounds they make when they come inside of me. But between a full-time job, law school, hours of reading cases, and study groups, I barely have time to sleep, much less date. Which is why I gave them up. “Which floor?” His upper crust Brit accent curls around my spine, making mush out of me. “Uh, nine.” I reach across to press the ‘9’ button, and a whiff of his scent reaches me—expensive cologne, clean soap, and a base note I suspect is just him. My legs, already wobbly from the mad dash from the Metro, turn to Jell-O. Damn! No wonder women stuff panties in his pockets. The man is pure sex on a stick. If anybody could tempt me to break my no-screwing-men vow, yeah, it would be Gabriel Storm. The door closes and someone coughs, alerting me to the other people in the elevator. Hoping no one noticed my temporary lapse of sanity, I look behind me. Only blank expressions greet me. Thank God. It won’t do for a rumor to spread around the office that I’ve been caught drooling over the COO of the company we are negotiating against. No one would take me seriously after that. I do the polite thing and wish good morning all around, get back a couple of nods before the car reaches the second floor, site of my law firm’s cafeteria. As soon as the door opens, the smell of cinnamon drifts into the car. Stuffed French toast day. Knowing what’s coming, I step to the side to avoid the stampede. Not that I blame them. With a limited supply of the delicious treat, it’s every employee for himself. When the doors slide shut, Gabriel Storm and I are the sole occupants in the car. For seven floors,

life. I want you to experiment with foods outside the basic Paleo diet (this is what the 7-Day Carb Test Plan is for) and figure out what foods you can eat that do not cause you problems. This provides for as much variety as possible while maintaining our health, sanity, and waistline. In my own diet I tend to include a fair amount of properly prepared beans and lentils, as well as some goat’s- and sheep’s-milk-based dairy, mainly cheeses. I am highly reactive to gluten, and cow dairy (of all types, with the possible exception of butter) gives me acne. Being middle-aged is bad enough; I do not want to be over the hill and looking like I’m going through puberty at the same time, so I generally follow Paleo guidelines while adding foods that I feel good with. This is the process I want you to follow.

We have to stop, Genevieve. Did your brothers tell you to apply perfume to your breasts?” He didn’t realize the extent of his non sequitur until he beheld the confusion in her eyes. “They did not.” “Your scent is stronger here.” He nuzzled her throat. “Jasmine and insanity.” A lovely combination. Her pulse raced at the base of her throat, matching the throbbing behind his falls. “Genevieve.” He swallowed and tried again. “Your nightgown sports a number of bows, my dear.” She smoothed her hands back through his hair, a caress that rippled over his skull, down his spine, and went right, straight to his bollocks. “Elijah, what—?” He untied the first bow with his teeth, mostly in the hope that, because teeth were not as dexterous as fingers, some sanity might return between bows number one and six. “Never, ever put the bows on your nightgown or your chemise in the front,” he warned as he undid bows two and three in a similar fashion. “A man can take only so much temptation.” He

…went on to clarify that when we’re mindful, instead of chasing something like money, we ask ourselves: What would I do if I had more money? Maybe we’d travel more or spend more time with loved ones. Ironically, by focusing on a goal like “more money” we may shut out opportunities for adventure and fun with friends.

So much in our culture reinforces the idea that a relationship is everything, but just as it’s financially smart to have a diversified portfolio of investments, the more you strive to make as many aspects in your life as meaningful as possible, the more satisfied you’ll feel.

As Brach powerfully describes, “Perhaps the biggest tragedy in our lives is that freedom is possible, yet we can pass our years trapped in the same old patterns. Entangled in the trance of unworthiness, we grow accustomed to caging ourselves in with self-judgment and anxiety, with restlessness and dissatisfaction.

Self-criticism depletes us, while self-care makes us more endearing; the latter is associated with healthier romantic relationships and an enhanced ability to give to others.

Taking care of yourself isn’t about settling for being single. It’s something you deserve whether you’re in a relationship or not.

what seems universally true is that when we move from feeling blinded by thoughts to more realistic assessments, it’s easier to harness our resources to consider, how can I can cope?

My sense, influenced by principles in DBT, is that it’s inevitable that you’ll face dissatisfaction in relationships.

The word respect comes from the Latin word respectus, which means the action of looking back. McWilliams (1999) emphasizes that the formulations encourage us to think about our patients as complex wholes, not just their weaknesses, but their strengths, not just their pathology but their health, not just their misperceptions but their surprising, unaccountable sanity under the worst of conditions.

If we wish to move into a better era, women need to step away from their unfeminine behavior and once again use our natural inclinations to guide men back to sanity.

I decided that I was willing to go through pain, guilt, and loneliness to act courageously. I realized that I could sit with thoughts of anticipated aloneness if it meant I would be able to live my life in a way that fit with my most cherished values.

Priority Metrics Group13 states that there are six ways to differentiate your business. Have a look at the diagram below. So how can you apply this to online businesses like yours and mine—particularly personal brands or those wanting to build an expert business (a business based around sharing your expertise)?

But how do you actually get this information? To get a deep picture of who your audience are and what they want, you need to 1. Research your ideal reader. 2. Create a persona based on that research. I’m going to give you a hack that I regularly use to find this information.

your business model is mostly ads or click-based affiliate marketing, then sure, you don’t need an email list. But if you’re building a personal brand... Selling coaching, digital products, or even affiliate marketing of tools, programs, or services for that matter, you’ll regret not having an email list from Day 1.

The prospect of social exclusion reduced people’s capacity for intelligent thought.

It makes more sense to more flexibly zoom out to see the full picture of yourself;

If you can mindfully notice your thoughts and emotions, catching them before they intensify, you’ll have an easier time coping

Accepting uncertainty is a crucial part of happiness in life.

To live expansively, you need to sit with your feelings, especially ones that feel tricky, rather than indulge in the urge to push unpleasant emotions away.

Once you’re especially vulnerable and deluged by painful thoughts, it takes a lot of work not to act on your emotions.

Practicing mindfulness is one way to strengthen your ability to recover from challenges.