Test Your Limits Quotes

Not every puzzle is intended to be solved. Some are in place to test your limits. Others are, in fact, not puzzles at all...

Life's trials will test you, and shape you, but don’t let them change who you are.” ~ Aaron Lauritsen, ‘100 Days Drive

It is good to test your limits now and then, learn what the body is capable of, what you can endure.

If you don't test your limits, they get harder to reach.

YOU SHOULD LIMIT THE NUMBER OF TIMES YOU ACT AGAINST YOUR NATURE, LIKE SLEEPING WITH PEOPLE YOU HATE. IT¹S INTERESTING TO TEST YOUR CAPABILITIES FOR A WHILE BUT TOO MUCH WILL CAUSE DAMAGE.

You must never be limited by external authority, whether it be vested in a church, man, or book. It is your right to question, challenge, and investigate.

Paige, you will have two tasks tonight,” he said, turning to face me. “Both will test the limits of your sanity. Will you believe me if I tell you that they will help you?” “Not likely,” I said, “but let's get on with it.

Test your limits. You will find none.

Every time you speak, you are either building up yourself for the better or you are limiting yourself for the worse. Words carry power, therefore before you speak out, speak in... and test your words!

You want to stab me again, don't you?" He didn't look at all ashamed. "Think of it as testing the limits of your new abilities." I groaned. "I've created a monster." "I don't think someone who recently crawled from the grave should be throwing around labels like 'monster,'" he said, making sarcastic little air-quotes fingers. "It wasn't a grave," I sniffed. "It was a comfy four-poster.

No test or temptation that comes your way is beyond the course of what others have had to face. All you need to remember is that God will never let you down; he'll never let you be pushed past your limit; he'll always be there to help you come through it.

To dream anything that you want to dream. That's the beauty of the human mind. To do anything that you want to do. That is the strength of the human will. To trust yourself to test your limits. That is the courage to succeed.

You do not require a license to love someone; you don’t need to pass any complicated tests. Love does not have age limitations, rules, or restrictions. Love is our birthright—it is the one thing that all humans know how to do, the one thing we all deserve. You can’t force it or fake it. You can know someone for an entire lifetime, and not feel a drop of love for them. And you can know someone for a single day, and give your heart to them completely.

Factfulness is … recognizing that a single perspective can limit your imagination, and remembering that it is better to look at problems from many angles to get a more accurate understanding and find practical solutions. To control the single perspective instinct, get a toolbox, not a hammer. • Test your ideas. Don’t only collect examples that show how excellent your favorite ideas are. Have people who disagree with you test your ideas and find their weaknesses. • Limited expertise. Don’t claim expertise beyond your field: be humble about what you don’t know. Be aware too of the limits of the expertise of others. • Hammers and nails. If you are good with a tool, you may want to use it too often. If you have analyzed a problem in depth, you can end up exaggerating the importance of that problem or of your solution. Remember that no one tool is good for everything. If your favorite idea is a hammer, look for colleagues with screwdrivers, wrenches, and tape measures. Be open to ideas from other fields. • Numbers, but not only numbers. The world cannot be understood without numbers, and it cannot be understood with numbers alone. Love numbers for what they tell you about real lives. • Beware of simple ideas and simple solutions. History is full of visionaries who used simple utopian visions to justify terrible actions. Welcome complexity. Combine ideas. Compromise.

Test your limits. Learn what you can endure.

There’s a fine line between being stupid and knowing you have to test your limits if you want to do any real living at all.

The challenges you face will test and strengthen you. If you’re not failing, you’re not pushing your limits, and if you’re not pushing your limits, you’re not maximizing your potential.

It is one thing to read the Scriptures and affirm their truth. But until you are in the trenches of trial, until you are faced with life circumstances that test your faith, until you are pressed to the absolute limit of your physical and emotional capacity, until you face the unrelenting stress of ongoing trauma, you never really know how you'll respond to what you may have embraced so easily during a comfortable Bible study.

Forgiveness is the best thing you can do for your well-being

When you gain the reputation of having no limits, no weaknesses, and are willing to flood the streets with blood, people don’t test your boundaries or break your rules

And how am I supposed to know what my limits are if I don’t test them out in a safe fashion with a partner who can get me medical treatment if I need it?” “Damn you and your logic.” Dani raised her arms in triumph. “Scientific method, bitch!

Pessimists, Seligman wrote, tend to react to negative events by explaining them as permanent, personal, and pervasive. (Seligman calls these “the three P’s.”) Failed a test? It’s not because you didn’t prepare well; it’s because you’re stupid. If you get turned down for a date, there’s no point in asking someone else; you’re simply unlovable. Optimists, by contrast, look for specific, limited, short-term explanations for bad events, and as a result, in the face of a setback, they’re more likely to pick themselves up and try again.

The only real way to know your limits is to just keep testing yourself.

A simple test to tell if love is healthy or not: does it limit your choices or expand them?

Dare to think the unimaginable, imagine the unthinkable, dream of that which will never happen, yet continue to aspire and to test the limits of your very being and those around you.

You won’t know what your brain can do until you test its limits and push beyond them. No matter how inefficiently you are using your brain, one thing is certain: it is the gateway to your future. Your success in life depends on your brain, for the simple reason that all experience comes to us through our brains.

He reached down and fingered his hoodie on the bed. 'You sleeping with this?' His voice grew raspy. I shrugged. 'Maybe.' He growled, wrapped his arms around me, and buried his face in my shoulder. 'You really test my limits,' he said. Then I heard him mumble, 'Already.' 'Your limits?' I asked, pulling back to look at him. 'If you were any other girl, I would already have you naked and beneath me.' His words should have shocked me. Maybe made me angry. They didn't. They turned me on. I shivered with newfound desire. He groaned and sat me aside and stood from the bed. 'You're killing me, Smalls.' 'Smalls?' I giggled. He grinned. 'That's what we call the small players on the team.' 'I'm not on your team.' I pointed out. 'No. But you are mine.'" "- Romeo & Rimmel

It must be this overarching commitment to what is really an abstraction, to one's children right or wrong, that can be even more fierce than the commitment to them as explicit, difficult people, and that can consequently keep you devoted to them when as individuals they disappoint. On my part it was this broad covenant with children-in-theory that I may have failed to make and to which I was unable to resort when Kevin finally tested my maternal ties to a perfect mathematical limit on Thursday. I didn't vote for parties, but for candidates. My opinions were as ecumenical as my larder, then still chock full of salsa verde from Mexico City, anchovies from Barcelona, lime leaves from Bangkok. I had no problem with abortion but abhorred capital punishment, which I suppose meant that I embraced the sanctity of life only in grown-ups. My environmental habits were capricious; I'd place a brick in our toilet tank, but after submitting to dozens of spit-in-the-air showers with derisory European water pressure, I would bask under a deluge of scalding water for half an hour. My closet wafter with Indian saris, Ghanaian wraparounds, and Vietnamese au dais. My vocabulary was peppered with imports -- gemutlich, scusa, hugge, mzungu. I so mixed and matched the planet that you sometimes worried I had no commitments to anything or anywhere, though you were wrong; my commitments were simply far-flung and obscenely specific. By the same token, I could not love a child; I would have to love this one. I was connected to the world by a multitude of threads, you by a few sturdy guide ropes. It was the same with patriotism: You loved the idea of the United States so much more powerfully than the country itself, and it was thanks to your embrace of the American aspiration that you could overlook the fact that your fellow Yankee parents were lining up overnight outside FAO Schwartz with thermoses of chowder to buy a limited release of Nintendo. In the particular dwells the tawdry. In the conceptual dwells the grand, the transcendent, the everlasting. Earthly countries and single malignant little boys can go to hell; the idea of countries and the idea of sons triumph for eternity. Although neither of us ever went to church, I came to conclude that you were a naturally religious person.

I find it [shibari] contagious in its pleasure. The bindings don't limit -- they define your current existence and so relax your mind. Yeah, I know. Sounds weird, but during sex I'm always thinking, wondering what I look like, worrying about how my hair must look, what I smell like, and if the fat roll is rolling. But when you're knotted up in five-thousand pound test rope, you're not going anywhere or doing anything, so you can just relax and enjoy the pleasure he's giving to him and you.

It takes courage to push yourself to places that you have never been before…to test your limits…to break through barriers. And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. —Anaïs Nin

1 One went to the door of the Beloved and knocked. A voice asked: “Who is there?” He answered: “It is I.” The voice said: “There is no room here for me and thee.” The door was shut. After a year of solitude and deprivation this man returned to the door of the Beloved. He knocked. A voice from within asked: “Who is there?” The man said: “It is Thou.” The door was opened for him. 2 The minute I heard my first love story, I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere, they’re in each other all along. 3 Love is from the infinite, and will remain until eternity. The seeker of love escapes the chains of birth and death. Tomorrow, when resurrection comes, The heart that is not in love will fail the test. 4 When your chest is free of your limiting ego, Then you will see the ageless Beloved. You can not see yourself without a mirror; Look at the Beloved, He is the brightest mirror. 5 Your love lifts my soul from the body to the sky And you lift me up out of the two worlds. I want your sun to reach my raindrops, So your heat can raise my soul upward like a cloud. 6 There is a candle in the heart of man, waiting to be kindled. In separation from the Friend, there is a cut waiting to be stitched. O, you who are ignorant of endurance and the burning fire of love– Love comes of its own free will, it can’t be learned in any school. 7 There are two kinds of intelligence: one acquired, as a child in school memorizes facts and concepts from books and from what the teacher says, collecting information from the traditional sciences as well as from the new sciences. With such intelligence you rise in the world. You get ranked ahead or behind others in regard to your competence in retaining information. You stroll with this intelligence in and out of fields of knowledge, getting always more marks on your preserving tablets. There is another kind of tablet, one already completed and preserved inside you. A spring overflowing its springbox. A freshness in the center of the chest. This other intelligence does not turn yellow or stagnate. It’s fluid, and it doesn’t move from outside to inside through conduits of plumbing-learning. This second knowing is a fountainhead from within you, moving out.

Adversity tests the limit of your strength.

You and your other half will push each others buttons and test each others limits unlike anyone else.

At a time when the limits of leadership are being tested in so many places is your time to rule in your own territory.

Love tested your limits. It was so damn easy to fall in love. So easy to love a person when times were good. The real challenge was sticking it out even when the going got rough.

But how could you know the limits of your courage if you never put it to the test?

Fear, in its many guises, is here to test you. Surrendering to fear only limits you and makes your path more difficult. Know that fear is an illusion and a trickster and that there are tools to help you resist it.

There’s a way to break out of this bind: Don’t act as though your limited experience represents universal truths. It doesn’t. Force yourself to go outside your own experience by vigorously testing your assumptions.

Perspective - Use It or Lose It. If you turned to this page, you're forgetting that what is going on around you is not reality. Think about that. Remember where you came from, where you're going, and why you created the mess you got yourself into in the first place. You are led through your lifetime by the inner learning creature, the playful spiritual being that is your real self. Don't turn away from possible futures before you're certain you don't have anything to learn from them. Learning is finding out what you already know. Doing is demonstrating that you know it. Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you. You are all learners, doers, and teachers. Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself. Being true to anyone else or anything else is not only impossible, but the mark of a false messiah. Your conscience is the measure of the honesty of your selfishness. Listen to it carefully. The simplest questions are the most profound. Where were you born? Where is your home? Where are you going? What are you doing? Think about these once in awhile, and watch your answers change. Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years. The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof. There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands. You seek problems because you need their gifts. Imagine the universe beautiful and just and perfect. Then be sure of one thing: The Is has imagined it quite a bit better than you have. The original sin is to limit the Is. Don't. A cloud does not know why it moves in just such a direction and at such a speed, it feels an impulsion....this is the place to go now. But the sky knows the reason and the patterns behind all clouds, and you will know, too, when you lift yourself high enough to see beyond horizons. You are never given a wish without being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however. Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they're yours. If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats. The world is your exercise-book, the pages on which you do your sums. It is not reality, although you can express reality there if you wish. You are also free to write nonsense, or lies, or to tear the pages. Every person, all the events of your life, are there because you have drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you. In order to live free and happily, you must sacrifice boredom. It is not always an easy sacrifice. The best way to avoid responsibility is to say, "I've got responsibilities." The truth you speak has no past and no future. It is, and that's all it needs to be. Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you're alive, it isn't. Don't be dismayed at good-byes. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends. The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly. You're going to die a horrible death, remember. It's all good training, and you'll enjoy it more if you keep the facts in mind. Take your dying with some seriousness, however. Laughing on the way to your execution it not generally understood by less advanced lifeforms, and they'll call you crazy. Everything above may be wrong!

Whether you extrapolate from Machiavelli or Castiglione, a kind of unworthy wisdom has stood the test of time in statecraft: you should have principles to make your conduct predictable, but at the same time know that you are limiting your options. It works if you are strong because you can force others to conform; but if you are weak, then having no principles means you have limitless options for action and can adjust through flexibility to acts dictated by others.

You and your husband have, I think, been very fortunate to know so little, by experience, in your own case or in that of your friends, of the wicked recklessness with which people repeat things to the disadvantage of others, without a thought as to whether they have grounds for asserting what they say. I have met with a good deal of utter misrepresentation of that kind. And another result of my experience is the conviction that the opinion of "people" in general is absolutely worthless as a test of right and wrong. The only two tests I now apply to such a question as the having some particular girl-friend as a guest are, first, my own conscience, to settle whether I feel it to be entirely innocent and right, in the sight of God; secondly, the parents of my friend, to settle whether I have their full approval for what I do. You need not be shocked at my being spoken against. Anybody, who is spoken about at all, is sure to be spoken against by somebody: and any action, however innocent in itself, is liable, and not at all unlikely, to be blamed by somebody. If you limit your actions in life to things that nobody can possibly find fault with, you will not do much

Dweck concluded that signs of ego depletion were observed only in those test subjects who believed willpower was a limited resource. It wasn’t the sugar in the lemonade but the belief in its impact that gave participants an extra boost.

You can’t get away from your own imagination. You can’t get away from it, because that’s your own being. That is the reality. But it suffers with you. He is the Lord Jesus Christ within you. Now, test Him tonight. Test Him for the good. Do you want a better job when they say they are letting people out? Forget what the papers say. Forget what anything says. “All things are possible to the Lord Jesus Christ.” (Matthew 19:26) If you don’t have enough money, forget what the paper says, You assume that you have it. “All things are possible to God.” (Matthew 19:26) He sets no limits whatsoever on the power of believing. Can you believe it? Well, try to believe it. Try to believe, first of all, in God. Well, God is your own imagination. Well, believe in Him; that whatever you can imagine is possible. Can you imagine that you have now the kind of a job that you want? The income that would come from it? The fun in the doing of the work? Well, then, walk as though it were true; and, to the best of your ability, believe that it’s true. And that assumption, though denied by your senses, – though the world would say it is false; if you persist in it, it will harden into fact. This is the law of your own wonderful imagining. Believe it, and it will become a reality.

They say you learn by doing, but you don't have to. If you learn only from your own experience, you're limited. By reading the Internet you can find out more. What grows in what season. The best way to strip an artichoke. What type of onions work best in French onion soup. Endless detail on any topic. You can learn from people who are experimenting with Swiss buttercream, or perfecting their gluten-free pumpernickel crackers, or taste-testing everything from caviar to frozen pizza to ginger ale. All of their failures keep you from having to fail in the same way.

You were required — this was essential, a matter of survival — to know your limits, both physical and emotional. But how could you know your limits unless you tested them? And if you failed the test? You were also required to stay calm if things went wrong. Panic was the first step, everybody said, to drowning.

The only limits that exist in fantasy are your own and this is the place where you can push them safely, testing yourself to find the places in your mind you may not know exists. Deep in these recesses you may find wants you never knew you had. Here, in this place, you have the freedom to luxuriate in unsated hungers.

It takes guts to follow your dreams. Courage. Many people, even those who love you, don't understand how compelling that can be, and will try to keep you in the 'safety zone'. But f*ck that. Half the fun is venturing into the unknown, taking on the difficult task that yields new knowledge, doing more and testing your limits.

Abel, get away from him." "No, I—" Pacer took a step toward them. "Get up, now." He pointed a finger at the ground. "And come here." Abel opened and closed his mouth several times, paralyzed. "Pacer, we were just—" "I won't say it again, Abel." He hated to admit it, but Pacer's demanding tone had sent a flash of anticipation through his system. Half- wanting to keep going, to test the limits of Pacer's patience, Abel paused for just another second before standing up and walking over to Pacer. "You don't have to sound so scary," he said. Pacer snorted, grabbing hold of Abel's wrist. "Please. You should be happy I didn't just pull you over my knee." "Pacer!" Abel's eyes widening as he looked over at Eric. He was watching them avidly. "Pacer, don't be so rough. He and I were just chatting." "Are you deaf?" Pacer replied. "Why was he whispering in your ear?" Grinning, Eric shook his head. "My bad. Maybe I just wanted to see what all the fuss was about.” He stood up and walked over to them. "Abel, I just wanted you to know: I'm not a homophobe." Abel stared at him. "What?" Then, after a moment, he looked at Pacer, who was studiously observing the twig he had snapped on the ground. "I see.

Go ahead. Ask me who the father is.” He only smiled. “Do I look that stupid to you?” She pushed back her short hair with a sigh. “He doesn’t know, and you’re not to tell him. In English, Apache or Lakota,” she emphasized, covering all her bases. He nodded. “What are you going to do?” “I haven’t the slightest idea,” she confessed. “I only used the home-pregnancy test this morning, but I was pretty sure before then. I’ve got to find a place to live where Leta won’t see me for a while. I can’t risk having her tell Tate.” She glanced at him. “Where were you all this time?” she wanted to know. “Sitting calmly in a wing chair sipping coffee and trying to look invisible.” He lifted his eyebrows at her disbelieving expression. “Somebody had to keep his head.” “There’s an old saying that, if you can keep your head when everyone around you is losing theirs, you don’t have a clue what’s going on,” she misquoted. “Could be. But I’m not sporting a bruised face, like some I could name.” He leaned forward. “Want to marry me?” “Thanks, Colby,” she said softly. “I really mean it. But it wouldn’t be fair to any of us. Especially you.” He folded his arms and leaned back. “The offer doesn’t have a time limit. I really do love children.

Why did Allah have to create Shaitan, or God have to create Satan? Why create evil? We were told then—as I was told at home—that it was to test humanity. But why test humanity if you are all-powerful and purely good? Why not just drench humanity in pure goodness, as if in your divine rays? The answer—don't laugh at me—that I have now is this: Evil is precondition to goodness. Goodness reveals itself only in its capacity to tolerate the pettiness and dullness of evil. Goodness has to live with the possibility of evil, not eradicate it. As long as it does so, the evil that confronts goodness stays petty, dull, limited, essentially unimportant. But when goodness wants to become pure and alone, that is when it turns evil, truly evil; not the grubby evil that it has to tolerate in order to be goodness, but Evil itself.

My father gave me a penny tree when I wasn't much older than you are, and when he did, he said he believed everyone needs a special place to lick their wounds and regroup, somewhere that feels safer than anywhere else in the world. So that's what we're doing here today, We're nailing that penny to this tree because I want you to have somewhere to go that grounds you, an axis for your world to spin around, and a place that's all yours and no one else's-- for times when life throws things at you, Annie: things that test you and push you to your limits; things not unlike what you're going through right now. Only from now on, instead of running away from them, you'll have somewhere to think them through. Your own special spot where you can hurt in private when you need to be alone, and where you can weigh all of the pros and cons to make the decisions you need to make.

Miss Rook!” His chocolate brown eyes brightened as he saw me, and he crossed the room at once to sweep me into a warm embrace. I felt his chest rise and fall. I could hear his heartbeat. He smelled like cedar. “That will suffice,” Jackaby grumbled loudly from behind me. “Yes, yes. You are young and your love is a hot biscuit and other abysmally romantic metaphors, I’m sure. You do recall that you saw each other yesterday?” Charlie pulled away but paused to brush a hand gently across my neck. His smile was tired but gratified. I straightened and tried to will the flush out of my cheeks. “Normal people do occasionally express fondness for one another.” “Yes, fine. I’m familiar with the concept,” he groused. “It’s the bubbly auras and fluttering eyelashes that really test one’s limits.” “My eyelashes do not flutter,” I said. “Who said I was talking about your eyelashes? Charlie has eyelashes.” “I apologize, Mr. Jackaby, for any undue fluttering on my part,” Charlie said diplomatically.

We may believe that anxiety and fear don't concern us because we avoid experiencing them. We may keep the scope of our lives narrow and familiar, opting for sameness and safety. We may not even know that we are scared of success, failure, rejection, criticism, conflict, competition, intimacy, or adventure, because we rarely test the limits of our competence and creativity. We avoid anxiety by avoiding risk and change. Our challenge: To be willing to become more anxious, via embracing new situations and stepping more fully into our lives.

Most people never reach their limit because they are never sufficiently tested. This means I’ve got two good pieces of news for you. The first is that whenever you do something beyond your ‘comfort zone’ and realize you are still standing, the more you will believe that the impossible is actually possible. And on the road to success, belief is everything. And the second piece of news is that we all have much further to push ourselves than we might initially imagine. Inside us all, just waiting to be tested, is a better, bolder, braver version of who we think we are. All you have to

HARV appeared in front of me, arms crossed, head tilted. “You really should read your e-mails from Randy more carefully,” he lectured. “I skim them,” I protested. “Well, if you skimmed them more carefully you would know that prolonged exposure to stealth mode may lead to side effects.” “I can handle . . .” “Impotence.” HARV smiled. “Oh,” I said. “Randy hasn’t really tested it on humans. It’s extra tough to get volunteers for those types of experiments,” HARV said. “Though he has computer simulated it and the results tend to support this conclusion.” “Let’s try to limit our use of stealth mode from now on,” I said.

Groups have powerful self-reinforcing mechanisms at work. These can lead to group polarization—a tendency for members of the group to end up in a more extreme position than they started in because they have heard the views repeated frequently. At the extreme limit of group behavior is groupthink. This occurs when a group makes faulty decisions because group pressures lead to a deterioration of “mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgment.” The original work was conducted with reference to the Vietnam War and the Bay of Pigs fiasco. However, it rears its head again and again, whether it is in connection with the Challenger space shuttle disaster or the CIA intelligence failure over the WMD of Saddam Hussein. Groupthink tends to have eight symptoms: 1 . An illusion of invulnerability. This creates excessive optimism that encourages taking extreme risks. [...] 2. Collective rationalization. Members of the group discount warnings and do not reconsider their assumptions. [...] 3. Belief in inherent morality. Members believe in the rightness of their cause and therefore ignore the ethical or moral consequences of their decisions. 4. Stereotyped views of out-groups. Negative views of “enemy” make effective responses to conflict seem unnecessary. Remember how those who wouldn't go along with the dot-com bubble were dismissed as simply not getting it. 5. Direct pressure on dissenters. Members are under pressure not to express arguments against any of the group’s views. 6. Self-censorship. Doubts and deviations from the perceived group consensus are not expressed. 7. Illusion of unanimity. The majority view and judgments are assumed to be unanimous. 8. "Mind guards" are appointed. Members protect the group and the leader from information that is problematic or contradictory to the group's cohesiveness, view, and/or decisions. This is confirmatory bias writ large.

Setting limits has to do with telling the truth. The Bible clearly distinguishes between those who love truth and those who don’t. First, there is the person who welcomes your boundaries. Who accepts them. Who listens to them. Who says, “I’m glad you have a separate opinion. It makes me a better person.” This person is called wise, or righteous. The second type hates limits. Resents your difference. Tries to manipulate you into giving up your treasures. Try our “litmus test” experiment with your significant relationships. Tell them no in some area. You’ll either come out with increased intimacy—or learn that there was very little to begin with.

But there’s mounting evidence that many successful CEOs and politicians are actually psychopaths, too; or at least, fall somewhere on the psychopathic spectrum—that is, they score low on tests for remorse, conscience, and moral judgment, and high for fearlessness, quick thinking, and cold-bloodedness. And there are certain psychopathic traits that we know Miles has. Something called shallow affect, for example—having a very limited range of emotions. Getting bored easily. Impulsiveness. Charm. Not really caring about other people’s feelings, except as a tool to manipulate them by. Having very few long-term friends. Seeing life as a contest where, for you to win, others have to lose. And treating your children as trophies, flattering extensions of yourself.

The limits of your life are just creations of your own self; and in a fantasy world, even the lies become true... Only you can push your limits! Only you know what you think or imagine those limits are. No one can get inside your head to see where you've set your barriers. Analyze your internal conversation: Do you use limiting thoughts? When you think of a dream, do you kill it immediately? Is your mind set in the “tell me all the reasons why I CAN NOT” mode? If so, prepare to change your programming, and accept that THERE ARE NO LIMITS TO WHAT YOU CAN ACHIEVE. ONLY THOSE YOU IMPOSE YOURSELF… To limit yourself only builds walls and barriers where there should be none! Where there are none! The more open and barrier-free your mind is, the greater the chance of achieving what you want. So, test your supposed limits over and over and over again! Tools, people, resources… Everything will come your way, once you start trying, challenging and testing your self-imposed limits. Replace those negative limiting thoughts with positive thoughts of possibility, believe and faith. Turn on the light of your mind, and kill the darkness!

This is a very common thing among male groups of friends. There is a person who's always taking heat from everyone else for various reasons. Not that I'm defending this behavior though, fuck no, I hate it when guys are like this; it's barbaric and stupid. Unfortunately I think it's like an unconscious thing that just comes natural to guys when we're in groups. We take the piss out of each other all the time, prodding until we know the limits of each other and crossing the lines once in a while to test the boundaries. Some guys who're overly-nice or don't fully understand this dynamic get completely shit on by it. If you keep excusing small actions by others that violate your boundaries, they'll just keep pushing and pushing, giving less and less respect until they know how far they're allowed to go. Having people knowing your limits and making sure to not cross them equates to respect, which is what we're after. This doesn't mean you should to tell them all to fuck off now; that wouldn't work anymore because you've allowed them this far into your territory. It'd seem like an overreaction from you, which makes sense, right? "We were just joking around yesterday about the same things, he seemed cool with it, but now he's all pissed for some reason, this guys a whack..." The key thing to note if you want to avoid this in the future is to either find "nicer" friends, or to let people know when they cross a boundary. This may sound huge and dramatic, but it's honestly a really simple thing. "Haha great job idiot you messed up" ----> "Fuck you man haha" Simple as that; he/they poked at you and by throwing it back at him, you let him know you're not just going to take it. If they do something that crosses your boundary, you respond appropriately; a big cross, like outright disrespecting you, means a big reaction, like telling the guy off. Does this mean you can't be nice anymore? Nope, not at all. You can still be a nice guy; most interactions with others don't involve all this boundary bullshit - and that's when the niceness in your personality can shine through. Beyond that, it's also a personal image/confidence thing. If you truly respect yourself, how would you let anyone get away with the things they say/do to you? What if this was your little sister? Would you let others treat her the same way? If not, then why would you let them treat you this way?

The movement actually managed to succeed in lobbying for the passage of involuntary sterilization laws in thirty American states. This meant that the state could neuter people who fell below a particular IQ without their having any say in the matter. That each state eventually repealed the laws is a testament to common sense and compassion. That the laws existed in the first place is a frightening indication of how dangerously limited any standardized test is in calculating intelligence and the capacity to contribute to society. IQ tests can even be a matter of life and death. A criminal who commits a capital offense is not subject to the death penalty if his IQ is below seventy. However, IQ scores regularly rise over the course of a generation (by as much as twenty-five points), causing the scale to be reset every fifteen to twenty years to maintain a mean score of one hundred. Therefore, someone who commits a capital offense may be more likely to be put to death at the beginning of a cycle than at the end. That’s giving a single test an awful lot of responsibility. People can also improve their scores through study and practice. I read a case recently about a death row inmate who’d at that point spent ten years in jail on a life sentence (he wasn’t the trigger man, but he’d been involved in a robbery where someone died). During his incarceration, he took a series of courses. When retested, his IQ had risen more than ten points—suddenly making him eligible for execution.

Society makes a peculiar offer to its citizenry: we have a job, if you want it. Here it is. You must stand between the predators and the innocents of the world and hold the line with your blood. Pay is modest—and rendered grudgingly. You will labor across hours, long and ungodly, that will test the limits of exhaustion and tedium. Family will suffer your absence. You will miss many meaningful moments. You will find yourself shipped to places far away, forbidding, forgotten or assigned to patrol streets savaged by violence, poverty, madness. Your presence will not be welcomed. You will see tragedy, hopelessness and evil at depths that will rend your soul. You will be expected somehow, some way, to keep yourself whole as you drown in these so that you may confront them again the next day. You will be called filthy names. In the course of your duties, you will be attacked, targeted, challenged. Some will try to kill you. They may succeed. The antipathy of the press and the animosity of the public will flank you without end until your final tour of duty. Your every action, every decision, every remark will be the subject of unremitting—and unforgiving—scrutiny. Politicians will exploit you—for good and ill—and sacrifice you to expediency once the exploitation is done. Your mistakes, though honest, will never be forgiven—ever. You will save many but the one you lose will haunt you until your dying day. You will form bonds of brotherhood with your comrades, wordless in their abiding depth, forged in the rough bravery that circumstance compels. You will bury many of those brothers. You will begin each day knowing that you may never see another. This is the job that society offers its citizenry. Do you want it? For most, the answer is an obvious one: no. But for a few, the answer is just as obvious: yes. This is for the few who answer yes.

Now imagine that an anthropologist specializing in primitive cultures beams herself down to the natives in Silicon Valley, whose way of life has not advanced a kilobyte beyond the Google age and whose tools have remained just as primitive as they were in the twenty-first century. She brings along with her a tray of taste samples called the Munsell Taste System. On it are representative samples of the whole taste space, 1,024 little fruit cubes that automatically reconstitute themselves on the tray the moment one picks them up. She asks the natives to try each of these and tell her the name of the taste in their language, and she is astonished at the abject poverty of their fructiferous vocabulary. She cannot comprehend why they are struggling to describe the taste samples, why their only abstract taste concepts are limited to the crudest oppositions such as “sweet” and “sour,” and why the only other descriptions they manage to come up with are “it’s a bit like an X,” where X is the name of a certain legacy fruit. She begins to suspect that their taste buds have not yet fully evolved. But when she tests the natives, she establishes that they are fully capable of telling the difference between any two cubes in her sample. There is obviously nothing wrong with their tongue, but why then is their langue so defective? Let’s try to help her. Suppose you are one of those natives and she has just given you a cube that tastes like nothing you’ve ever tried before. Still, it vaguely reminds you of something. For a while you struggle to remember, then it dawns on you that this taste is slightly similar to those wild strawberries you had in a Parisian restaurant once, only this taste seems ten times more pronounced and is blended with a few other things that you can’t identify. So finally you say, very hesitantly, that “it’s a bit like wild strawberries.” Since you look like a particularly intelligent and articulate native, the anthropologist cannot resist posing a meta-question: doesn’t it feel odd and limiting, she asks, not to have precise vocabulary to describe tastes in the region of wild strawberries? You tell her that the only things “in the region of wild strawberry” that you’ve ever tasted before were wild strawberries, and that it has never crossed your mind that the taste of wild strawberries should need any more general or abstract description than “the taste of wild strawberries.” She smiles with baffled incomprehension.

Washington University found that adding a single extra gene dramatically boosted a mouse’s memory and ability. These “smart mice” could navigate mazes faster, remember events better, and outperform other mice in a wide variety of tests. They were dubbed “Doogie mice,” after the precocious character on the TV show Doogie Howser, M.D. Dr. Tsien began by analyzing the gene NR2B, which acts like a switch controlling the brain’s ability to associate one event with another. (Scientists know this because when the gene is silenced or rendered inactive, mice lose this ability.) All learning depends on NR2B, because it controls the communication between memory cells of the hippocampus. First Dr. Tsien created a strain of mice that lacked NR2B, and they showed impaired memory and learning disabilities. Then he created a strain of mice that had more copies of NR2B than normal, and found that the new mice had superior mental capabilities. Placed in a shallow pan of water and forced to swim, normal mice would swim randomly about. They had forgotten from just a few days before that there was a hidden underwater platform. The smart mice, however, went straight to the hidden platform on the first try. Since then, researchers have been able to confirm these results in other labs and create even smarter strains of mice. In 2009, Dr. Tsien published a paper announcing yet another strain of smart mice, dubbed “Hobbie-J” (named after a character in Chinese cartoons). Hobbie-J was able to remember novel facts (such as the location of toys) three times longer than the genetically modified strain of mouse previously thought to be the smartest. “This adds to the notion that NR2B is a universal switch for memory formation,” remarked Dr. Tsien. “It’s like taking Michael Jordon and making him a super Michael Jordan,” said graduate student Deheng Wang. There are limits, however, even to this new mice strain. When these mice were given a choice to take a left or right turn to get a chocolate reward, Hobbie-J was able to remember the correct path for much longer than the normal mice, but after five minutes he, too, forgot. “We can never turn it into a mathematician. They are rats, after all,” says Dr. Tsien. It should also be pointed out that some of the strains of smart mice were exceptionally timid compared to normal mice. Some suspect that, if your memory becomes too great, you also remember all the failures and hurts as well, perhaps making you hesitant. So there is also a potential downside to remembering too much.

Scientists have found that there are two important genes, the CREB activator (which stimulates the formation of new connections between neurons) and the CREB repressor (which suppresses the formation of new memories). Dr. Jerry Yin and Timothy Tully of Cold Spring Harbor have been doing interesting experiments with fruit flies. Normally it takes ten trials for them to learn a certain task (e.g., detecting an odor, avoiding a shock). Fruit flies with an extra CREB repressor gene could not form lasting memories at all, but the real surprise came when they tested fruit flies with an extra CREB activator gene. They learned the task in just one session. “This implies these flies have a photographic memory,” says Dr. Tully. He said they are just like students “who could read a chapter of a book once, see it in their mind, and tell you that the answer is in paragraph three of page two seventy-four.” This effect is not just restricted to fruit flies. Dr. Alcino Silva, also at Cold Spring Harbor, has been experimenting with mice. He found that mice with a defect in their CREB activator gene were virtually incapable of forming long-term memories. They were amnesiac mice. But even these forgetful mice could learn a bit if they had short lessons with rest in between. Scientists theorize that we have a fixed amount of CREB activator in the brain that can limit the amount we can learn in any specific time. If we try to cram before a test, it means that we quickly exhaust the amount of CREB activators, and hence we cannot learn any more—at least until we take a break to replenish the CREB activators. “We can now give you a biological reason why cramming doesn’t work,” says Dr. Tully. The best way to prepare for a final exam is to mentally review the material periodically during the day, until the material becomes part of your long-term memory. This may also explain why emotionally charged memories are so vivid and can last for decades. The CREB repressor gene is like a filter, cleaning out useless information. But if a memory is associated with a strong emotion, it can either remove the CREB repressor gene or increase levels of the CREB activator gene. In the future, we can expect more breakthroughs in understanding the genetic basis of memory. Not just one but a sophisticated combination of genes is probably required to shape the enormous capabilities of the brain. These genes, in turn, have counterparts in the human genome, so it is a distinct possibility that we can also enhance our memory and mental skills genetically. However, don’t think that you will be able to get a brain boost anytime soon. Many hurdles still remain. First, it is not clear if these results apply to humans.

SUPPLEMENT DAILY DOSAGE Vitamin A 10,000 IU or 6 mg beta-carotene (choose mixed carotenes if available)     B-complex vitamins B1, B2, B3, B5: 50 mg B6: 50 mg, or 100 mg if nauseated (can be higher: if necessary up to 250 mg to prevent nausea) B12: 400 mcg Choline, Inositol, PABA: 25 mg Biotin: 200 mcg Folic acid: 500 mcg (increase this to 1000 mcg if you have suffered a previous miscarriage, if there is a history of neural tube defects in your family, or if you are over 40 years of age)     Vitamin C 1–2 g (take the higher dose if you are exposed to toxicity or in contact with, or suffering from, infection)     Bioflavonoids 500–1000 mg (helpful for preventing miscarriage and breakthrough bleeding)     Vitamin D 200 IU     Vitamin E 500 IU (increasing to 800 IU during last trimester)     Calcium 800 mg (increasing to 1200 mg during middle trimester when your baby’s bones are forming, or if symptoms such as leg cramps indicate an increased need)     Magnesium 400 mg (half the dose of calcium)     Potassium 15 mg or as cell salt (potassium chloride, 3 tablets)     Iron Supplement only if need is proven; dosage depends on serum ferritin levels (stored iron) If levels < 30 mcg per litre, take 30 mg If levels < 45 mcg per litre, take 20 mg If levels < 60 mcg per litre, take 10 mg This test for ferritin levels should be repeated at the end of each trimester, and we give further details in Chapter 11.     Manganese 10 mg     Zinc 20–60 mg, taken last thing at night on an empty stomach (dose level to depend on results of zinc taste test, which ideally should be performed at two monthly intervals during your pregnancy; see page 172–174 for details)     Chromium 100–200 mcg (upper limit applies to those with sugar cravings or with proven need)     Selenium 100–200 mcg (upper limit for those exposed to high levels of heavy metal or chemical pollution). Selenium is best taken away from vitamin C, but can be taken with zinc.     Iodine 75 mcg (or take 150 mg of kelp instead)     Acidophilus/Bifidus Half to one teaspoonful, one to three times daily (upper limits for those who suffer from thrush)     Evening primrose oil 500–1000 mg two to three times daily     MaxEPA (or deep sea fish oils) 500–1000 mg two to three times daily     Garlic 2000–5000 mg (higher levels for those exposed to toxins)     Silica 20 mg     Copper 1–2 mg (but only if zinc levels are adequate)     Hydrochloric acid and digestive enzymes For those with digestive problems. There are numerous proprietary preparations which contain an appropriate combination of active ingredients. Ask your health practitioner, pharmacist or health food shop for guidance, and take as directed on the label.     Co-enzyme Q10 10 mg daily

Now, before you invade a foreign city. Here’s the law: Offer the fools a peace treaty. They can remain in their city as your slaves doing forced labor for you. And if they refuse your generosity? Kill every goddamned one of their men. And take their women, children, livestock, and wealth as plunder.” The same guy raised his hand and yelled, “Can we fuck these women, too?” It was a stupid question, but Moses replied patiently, “Of course. Fuck them—use them as footstools, punching bags, scarecrows—who cares? They’re slaves! Do whatever you want with them. “Just remember, all you have to do is obey Yahweh. Then you will have no worries and nothing to fear. He will take care of you. But be careful, because Yahweh will test you. He will send false prophets and phony dream interpreters. “If you encounter one? And his predictions come true? And he wants you to worship another god? Don’t be impressed! Beware! Yahweh sent him to tempt you. “So kill anyone who prophesies in the name of another god. “And kill anyone who pretends to be a prophet and is not! “And if you find a town worshipping another god—kill everyone in it! And kill their livestock! Plunder their homes! Burn that despicable town to the ground and never rebuild it! Make it a perpetual burnt offering to Yahweh. “And whatever you do, for god’s sake, do not imitate the detestable Canaanite religions! Do not incinerate your children, or practice sorcery, or witchcraft. And don’t interpret omens. These practices are detestable to Yahweh. “Above all, DO NOT worship their gods! Don’t worship the sun! Or the moon! Or the stars in the sky! Yahweh gave those to the suckers in other nations as their gods. If you worship just one of them—just one time…” Moses shuddered at the thought. “Well, let’s just say, Yahweh is jealous—real jealous! If he catches you worshipping another god, I have to tell you that the gigs up. He’ll kick your asses out of the Promised Land. And scatter you among the other nations like snake shit scattered about the desert.”   Obey Yahweh and you will live in paradise   “Just obey Yahweh. You hear me? Obey him, and you will live in paradise. He will protect you from your enemies. Send rain for your crops. Nurture your herds. You will have abundant food and wine. Maybe free dance lessons—who knows? There is no limit to Yahweh’s love! Obey him, and your lives will be perfect. Disobey him, and you are fucked! It’s just that simple.” Moses waited for the impact of this essential truth to resister in their brains. Regretfully, it did not. But he concluded, “Anyhow, I’m one-hundred and twenty years old. I cannot lead you into the Promised Land. Joshua will lead you.” He again found Joshua in the crowd. “Joshua, come on up here!” Joshua, startled awake, elbowed his way through the crowd and

The key point is that these patterns, while mostly stable, are not permanent: certain environmental experiences can add or subtract methyls and acetyls, changing those patterns. In effect this etches a memory of what the organism was doing or experiencing into its cells—a crucial first step for any Lamarck-like inheritance. Unfortunately, bad experiences can be etched into cells as easily as good experiences. Intense emotional pain can sometimes flood the mammal brain with neurochemicals that tack methyl groups where they shouldn’t be. Mice that are (however contradictory this sounds) bullied by other mice when they’re pups often have these funny methyl patterns in their brains. As do baby mice (both foster and biological) raised by neglectful mothers, mothers who refuse to lick and cuddle and nurse. These neglected mice fall apart in stressful situations as adults, and their meltdowns can’t be the result of poor genes, since biological and foster children end up equally histrionic. Instead the aberrant methyl patterns were imprinted early on, and as neurons kept dividing and the brain kept growing, these patterns perpetuated themselves. The events of September 11, 2001, might have scarred the brains of unborn humans in similar ways. Some pregnant women in Manhattan developed post-traumatic stress disorder, which can epigenetically activate and deactivate at least a dozen genes, including brain genes. These women, especially the ones affected during the third trimester, ended up having children who felt more anxiety and acute distress than other children when confronted with strange stimuli. Notice that these DNA changes aren’t genetic, because the A-C-G-T string remains the same throughout. But epigenetic changes are de facto mutations; genes might as well not function. And just like mutations, epigenetic changes live on in cells and their descendants. Indeed, each of us accumulates more and more unique epigenetic changes as we age. This explains why the personalities and even physiognomies of identical twins, despite identical DNA, grow more distinct each year. It also means that that detective-story trope of one twin committing a murder and both getting away with it—because DNA tests can’t tell them apart—might not hold up forever. Their epigenomes could condemn them. Of course, all this evidence proves only that body cells can record environmental cues and pass them on to other body cells, a limited form of inheritance. Normally when sperm and egg unite, embryos erase this epigenetic information—allowing you to become you, unencumbered by what your parents did. But other evidence suggests that some epigenetic changes, through mistakes or subterfuge, sometimes get smuggled along to new generations of pups, cubs, chicks, or children—close enough to bona fide Lamarckism to make Cuvier and Darwin grind their molars.

You have unfairly tasked me with three very difficult questions. I was very interested in your comments about Christ’s atheism on the cross. That final moment of atheism, that’s something I have never thought about in that way. It’s a very interesting thought because what it really ….it’s an unbelievably merciful idea in some sense. That the burden of life is so unbearable and you see in the Christian passion, of course, torture, unfair judgement by society, betrayal by friends and then a low death. That’s about …as bad as it gets. Right? Which is why it is an archetypal story. It’s about as bad as it gets. And the story that you describe points out that it’s so bad that even God himself might despair about the essential quality of being. Right? Right. So that is merciful in some sense because it does say that there is something that’s built into the fabric of existence, that tests us so severely in our faith about being itself that even God himself falls prey to the temptation to doubt. So that’s…ok now… There is a very large critical literature that suggests that if you want to develop optimal resilience, what you do is lay out a pathway towards somewhere better, someone comes in, they have a problem, you try to figure out what the problem is and then you try to figure out what might constitute a solution. So you have a map. And it’s a tentative map of how you get from where things aren’t so good to where they are better. And then you have the person go out in the world and confront those things that they are avoiding, that are stopping them from moving to that higher place. And there’s an archetypal reality to that, you’re in a fallen state, you are attempting to redeem yourself and there is a process by which that has to occur. And that process involves voluntary confrontation with what you’re afraid of, disgusted by and inclined to avoid. And that’s works. Every psychological school agrees upon that exposure therapy, psychoanalysts expose you to the tragedies of your past, and redeem you in that manner, the behaviourists expose you to the terrors of the present and redeem you in that manner, but there is a broad agreement between psychological schools that that works. My sense is that we are called upon as individuals precisely to do that in our life. We are faced by this unbearable reality, that you made reference to when you talked about the situation on the cross, life itself is fundamentally - and this is a pessimism that we might share - it’s fundamentally suffering and malevolence. But this is I think where we differ, I believe that the evidence suggests that the light that you discover in your life is proportionate to the amount of darkness that you are willing to forthrightly confront and that there is no necessarily upper limit to that. So I think that the good that people are capable of it’s a higher good than the evil that people are capable of. And believe me that I do not say that lightly, given that I know about the evil that people are capable of. And I believe that the central psychological message of the biblical corpus fundamentally it’s that. That’s why it culminates in some sense with the idea that it is necessary to confront the devil and to accept the unjustness of your tortured mortality. If you can do that, and that’s a challenge sufficient to challenge even God himself, you have the best chance of transcending it, and living the kind of life that would set your house in order and everyone’s house in order at the same time. And I think that’s true even in states like North Korea...

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INTRODUCTION AND CHAPTER ONE IN ONE PAGE The Four Villains of Decision Making 1. Danny Kahneman: “A remarkable aspect of your mental life is that you are rarely stumped.” • Should Shannon fire Clive? We form opinions effortlessly. 2. What’s in our spotlight = the most accessible information + our interpretation of that information. But that will rarely be all that we need to make a good decision. 3. Our decision “track record” isn’t great. Trusting our guts or conducting rigorous analysis won’t fix it. But a good process will. • Study: “Process mattered more than analysis—by a factor of six.” 4. We can defeat the four villains of decision making by learning to shift our spotlights. 5. Villain 1: Narrow framing (unduly limiting the options we consider)     •  HopeLab had five firms work simultaneously on stage 1; “Can I do this AND that?” 6. Villain 2: The confirmation bias (seeking out information that bolsters our beliefs) • The tone-deaf American Idol contestant … • Lovallo: “Confirmation bias is probably the single biggest problem in business.” 7. Villain 3: Short-term emotion (being swayed by emotions that will fade) • Intel’s Andy Grove got distance by asking, “What would our successors do?”     8. Villain 4: Overconfidence (having too much faith in our predictions) • “Four-piece groups with guitars, particularly, are finished.” 9. The pros-and-cons process won’t correct these problems. But the WRAP process will. • Joseph Priestley conquered all four villains. 10. To make better decisions, use the WRAP process: Widen Your Options. Reality-Test Your Assumptions. Attain Distance Before Deciding. Prepare to Be Wrong.

We should at least /talk/ about it. You're mad at me. Admit it. It was completely my fault we were even there." But I didn't blame him for his curiosity. I'd been curious too. And it wasn't up to him to know my limits, especially when I'd been testing them myself.

I often suggest they think about making a limited investment, putting aside maybe only 1 percent of their budget for special projects to test out a new idea. In this way, risk stops being scary and becomes R&D. Talk to private sector CEOs and they will be quick to point out that R&D is the lifeblood of innovative companies. Yes, some things will fail as you discover what works and what doesn’t. But as Einstein reportedly said, “You never fail until you stop trying.” This is true whether you’re launching a program, developing a product, or starting a movement. I’ve often heard people from the social sector protest, “But we don’t have funding for R&D!” My response is to remind them of the words of one of our greatest modern-day innovators, Steve Jobs: “Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least one hundred times more on R&D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it.” You don’t need a big budget in order to experiment. “You never fail until you stop trying.” —ALBERT EINSTEIN Realistically, budgets are often stretched and funding for programs “locked.” I see this especially with foundations or government programs, which can have rigid protocols. When nonprofits or governments experiment and fail, those failures are often labeled as waste or fraud or abuse, which discourages more risk taking.

A few years ago, I led an expedition to return to Mount Everest, the mountain I had climbed aged 23, a mountain where I had risked everything and survived - just. I had always held a secret dream to return and attempt to fly over the mountain in a small one-man paramotor - like a paraglider, only with a backpack engine strapped to your body. At the time, the highest altitude that one had been flown was around 17,000 feet (5,180 metres). But being an enthusiast (and an optimist!), I reckoned we shouldn’t just aim to break the record by a few feet, I thought we should go as high as it was possible to go, and in my mind that meant flying over the height of Mount Everest. This in turn meant we needed to build a machine capable of flying to over 29,000 feet (8,840 metres). Most of the people we spoke to about this thought a) we were crazy, and b) it was technically impossible. What those naysayers hadn’t factored in was the power of yes, and specifically the ability to build a team capable of such a mission. This meant harnessing the brilliance of my good friend Gilo Cardozo, a paramotor engineer, a born enthusiast, and a man who loves to break the rules - and to say yes. Gilo was - and is - an absolute genius aviation engineer who spends all his time in his factory, designing and testing crazy bits of machinery. When people told us that our oxygen would freeze up in minus 70°, or that at extreme altitudes we would need such a heavy engine to power the machine that it would be impossible to take off, or that even if we managed to do it, we would break our legs landing at such speed, Gilo’s response was: ‘Oh, it’ll be great. Leave it with me.’ No matter what the obstacle, no matter what the ‘problem’, Gilo always said, ‘We can do this.’ And after months in his workshop, he did eventually build the machine that took us above the height of Everest. He beat the naysayers, he built the impossible and by the Grace of God we pulled it off - oh, and in the process we raised over $2.5 million for children’s charities around the world. You see, dreams can come true if you stick to them and think big. So say yes - you never know where it will lead. And there are few limits to how high you just might soar.

I count a hundred steps and start again. My da used to say it’s good to test your limits now and then, learn what the body is capable of, what you can endure. He said this when we were in the throes of sickness on the Agnes Pauline, and again in the bitter first winter in New York, when four of us, including Mam, came down with pneumonia. Test your limits. Learn what you can endure. I am doing that.

One of the people who’d cheered him tested the limits later when Trump referenced the recent Orlando nightclub shooting and made the case that Clinton wouldn’t help the LGBTQ community because of her ties to countries that openly discriminated against women and gays, all the while belaboring the shooter’s Muslim immigrant parents from Afghanistan. “And she’s no friend of L . . . G . . . B . . . T Americans,” Trump said. “She’s no friend. Believe me.

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Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us. EPHESIANS 3: 20 NKJV Beware in your prayer, above everything, of limiting God, not only by unbelief, but by trying to figure out what He will do. Expect unexpected things, above all that we ask or think. Each time you intercede, be quiet first and worship God in His glory. Think of what He can do, of how He delights to hear the Christian pray, of your place in Christ; and expect great things. ANDREW MURRAY Pray About It: A test of true relinquishment in prayer is to so abandon our own plans that when God answers, it exceeds our expectations. Expect Him to do above all that you can ask or think. Give God room to create a miracle. Thou art coming to a King, Large petitions with thee bring For His grace and power are such None can ever ask too much. JOHN NEWTON

Before I climbed Everest, I saved up to make an attempt on a peak called Ama Dablam, one of the classic and more technically difficult climbs in the higher Himalayas. For many of the weeks I was there, I climbed alone, plugged into my headphones and utterly absorbed in each step, each grip. I was in tune with myself. I was in tune with the mountain. It was just the mountain and me. During those times, I really had the chance to push my own boundaries a little. I found myself probing, being willing to push the risk envelope a bit. I started to reach a little further for each hold, finely balanced on my crampons, taking a few extra risks - and I made swift, efficient progress. I was exploring my climbing limits and loving it. When I reached the summit and watched in awe as the distant peak of Everest came into view, ten miles to the north, I knew I had the skills to scale that mountain, too. William Blake said: Great things are done when men and mountains meet. This is not done by jostling in the street. He was right. We need time and space and adversity to really get to know ourselves. And you don’t always find that in the grind, when your head is down and you are living someone else’s dreams. Wherever you are in your life, it is possible to find your own challenge and space. You don’t have to go to the jungle or the Himalayas - it is much more a state of mind than a physical location. Mountains of the mind are around us all everywhere. And it is when we test ourselves that we begin to know ourselves.

57. Every Time You Surprise Yourself…You Inspire Yourself SAS selection is designed to test you. Any mental flaw, any physical failing will be exposed by the relentless series of challenges aimed at finding your breaking point. Lung-bursting cross-mountain marches through the snow, uphill sprints, carrying another recruit in a fireman’s lift up and down steep hills, often in driving rain, sometimes in sub-zero temperatures. As selection goes on, these ‘beasting’ sessions get harder and harder. And yet I also found that the more of them I came through in one piece (albeit exhausted and battered), the more easily I could cope with them. It was the SAS way of testing our mental resolve through physical battering. Selection is all about realizing that the pain never lasts for ever. And every time I was tested and I hung on in there, the better I understood that it was just a question of doing it again - one more time - until someone eventually said it was the end, and I had passed. I now know that unless you really, truly test yourself, you’ll never have any idea just how capable you can be. And with each small achievement, your confidence will grow. Most people never reach their limit because they are never sufficiently tested. This means I’ve got two good pieces of news for you. The first is that whenever you do something beyond your ‘comfort zone’ and realize you are still standing, the more you will believe that the impossible is actually possible. And on the road to success, belief is everything. And the second piece of news is that we all have much further to push ourselves than we might initially imagine. Inside us all, just waiting to be tested, is a better, bolder, braver version of who we think we are. All you have to do is give it an opportunity to be unleashed. So pick big targets and surprise yourself with how capable you really are deep down. Remember David and Goliath? Rather than David, the young shepherd boy, looking at this giant of a warrior and thinking, ‘Yikes, he’s huge, I’m beat’ - he thought, ‘With a target that big, how can I possibly miss!’ Success, in life and adventure, is dependent on the retraining of our mind.

Communication is important to me, River. I’ll test your limits and introduce you to new things, but I will never do anything to truly hurt you. And the moment you don’t like something, I’ll stop, and it will never happen again.

Blood glucose instability is a huge problem that affects the moods of millions of people. The brain accounts for only about 2 percent of body weight, but requires 25 percent of all blood pumped by the heart (up to 50 percent in kids). Therefore, low blood sugar hits the brain hard, causing depression, anxiety, and lassitude. If you often become uncomfortably hungry, you’ve got a serious problem and should solve it. Eat high-protein, nutrient-dense meals, and snack enough to keep your blood sugar up, but not with insulin-stimulating sweets or starches. Remember that hunger kills brain cells, just like getting drunk. Be careful of caffeine, which causes blood sugar swings, and never crash diet. Food sensitivities are common reactions that are not classic food allergies, so most conventional allergists underestimate the damage they do. They play a major role in mood disruption, much more frequently than most people realize. They cause chemical reactions in the body that destabilize blood sugar and wreak havoc upon hormonal and neurotransmitter balance. This can trigger depression, anxiety, impaired concentration, insomnia, and hyperactivity. The most common sensitivities, unfortunately, are to the foods people most often overconsume: wheat, milk, eggs, corn, soy, and peanuts. The average American gets about 75 percent of her calories from just 10 favorite foodstuffs, and this narrow range of eating disrupts the digestive process and causes abnormal reactions. If a particular food doesn’t agree with you and commonly causes heartburn, gas, bloating, water weight gain, a craving for more, or a burst of nervous energy, you’re probably reactive to it. There are several good books on the subject, and there are many labs that test for sensitivities. Ask a chiropractor, naturopath, or doctor of integrative medicine about them. Don’t expect much help from a conventional allergist. Exercise and Mood Dozens of studies indicate that exercise is often as effective for depression as medication, partly because it increases production of stimulating hormones, such as norepinephrine, and also because it increases oxygen flow to the brain. Exercise can, in addition, help relieve and prevent anxiety, creating a so-called tranquilizer effect that persists for about 4 hours after exercising. Exercise also decreases the biological stress response, which dampens the automatic fear reaction. It is also uniquely effective at causing secretion of Nerve Growth Factor, one of the limited number of substances that cause brain cells to grow. Another benefit of exercise is that it increases endorphin output by about 500 percent and decreases the incidence of major and minor illnesses. For mood, the ideal amount is 30 to 45 minutes of cardiovascular exercise daily. Studies show that exercising less than 30 minutes or more than 1 hour decreases mood benefits.

feedback on quality, and bug fixing. These accelerate beneficial changes entering production, limit issues deployed, and enable rapid identification and remediation of issues introduced through deployment activities or discovered in your environments. Adopt approaches that provide fast feedback on quality and enable rapid recovery from changes that do not have desired outcomes. Using these practices mitigates the impact of issues introduced through the deployment of changes. Plan for unsuccessful changes so that you are able to respond faster if necessary and test and validate the changes you make. Be aware of planned activities in your environments so that you can manage the risk of changes impacting planned activities. Emphasize frequent, small, reversible changes to limit the scope of change. This results in easier troubleshooting and faster remediation with the option to roll back a change. It also means you are able to get the benefit of valuable changes more frequently. Evaluate the operational readiness of your workload, processes, procedures, and personnel

Yoga engages both the mind and body by combining the regulatory power of our breath with movement. As we advance in the practice, increasingly challenging poses begin to test our body’s physical limits, further stressing our system, and offering an opportunity to reconnect with the calming power of our breath.

Designing is thinking with your hands. Start with a scribble. See what’s missing, what could be improved, what else it reminds you of. Make more scribbles. Work the best scribbles into low-fidelity prototypes—limited function mockups, models, or experiences that you can test in the real world. The goal isn’t to impress your customers, but to let them impress you with their reactions, knowledge, and insights. Think of design as a rich conversation that brings you closer to the truth of your brand.

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Aza [Raskin] said: 'For instance, Facebook tomorrow could start batching your notifications, so you only get one push notification a day ... They could do that tomorrow.' ....So instead of getting 'this constant drip of behavioural cocaine,' telling you every few minutes that somebody liked your picture, commented on your post, has a birthday tomorrow, and on and on - you would get one daily update, like a newspaper, summarising it all. You'd be pushed to look once a day, instead of being interrupted several times an hour. 'Here's another one,' he said 'Infinite scroll. ...it's catching your impulses before your brain has a chance to really get involved and make a decision.' Facebook and Instagram and the others could simply turn off infinite scroll - so that when you get to the bottom of the screen, you have to make a conscious decision to carry on scrolling. Similarly, these sites could simply switch off the things that have been shown to most polarise people politically, stealing our ability to pay collective attention. Since there's evidence YouTube's recommendation engine is radicalising people, Tristan [Harris] told one interviewer: 'Just turn it off. They can turn it off in a heartbeat.' It's not as if, he points out, the day before recommendations were introduced, people were lost and clamouring for somebody to tell them what to watch next. Once the most obvious forms of mental pollution have been stopped, they said, we can begin to look deeper, at how these sites could be redesigned to make it easier for you to restrain yourself and think about your longer-term goals. ...there could be a button that says 'here are all your friends who are nearby and are indicating they'd like to meet up today.' You click it, you connect, you put down your phone and hang out with them. Instead of being a vacuum sucking up your attention and keeping it away from the outside world, social media would become a trampoline, sending you back into that world as efficiently as possible, matched with the people you want to see. Similarly, when you set up (say) a Facebook account, it could ask you how much time you want to spend per day or per week on the site. ...then the website could help you to achieve your goal. One way could be that when you hit that limit, the website could radically slow down. In tests, Amazon found that even 100 milliseconds of delay in the pace at which a page loads results in a substantial drop-off in people sticking around to buy the product. Aza said: 'It just gives your brain a chance to catch up to your impulse and [ask] - do I really want to be here? No.' In addition, Facebook could ask you at regular intervals - what changes do you want to make to your life? ...then match you up with other people nearby... who say they also want to make that change and have indicated they are looking for the equivalent of gym buddies. ...A battery of scientific evidence shows that if you want to succeed in changing something, you should meet up with groups of people doing the same. At the moment, they said, social media is designed to grab your attention and sell it to the highest bidder, but it could be designed to understand your intentions and to better help you achieve them. Tristan and Aza told me that it's just as easy to design and program this life-affirming Facebook as the life-draining Facebook we currently have. I think that most people, if you stopped them in the street and painted them a vision of these two Facebooks, would say they wanted the one that serves your intentions. So why isn't it happened? It comes back... to the business model.

Communication is important to me, River. I’ll test your limits and introduce you to new things, but I will never do anything to truly hurt you. And the moment you don’t like something, I’ll stop, and it will never happen again. I want to show you what sex between two people is supposed to be like. Two people who respect and understand each other.

The other rule, however, balancing the first, is that as long as a decision meets that litmus test, it can be as tiny a decision as you like. Grand gestures aren’t required. There’s no need to leap directly from thinking about a career change to marching into your manager’s office to quit. Baby steps are fine; they just have to be real ones. (What the novelist E. L. Doctorow said about novel-writing applies to everything else, too: it’s ‘like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.’)

When failure is a positive part of the game you play, it's much less scary to search for the limits of your ability— whether that's speaking English, acting in big movies, or tackling big social problems— and then once you've found those limits, to grow beyond them. The only way to do that, though, is to constantly test yourself in a manner that risks repeated failure.

Here’s a classic case in point: Eva had been taking an antidepressant for two years but wanted to get off it because she was planning to get pregnant. Her doctor advised her not to stop taking the drug, which motivated her to see me. Eva explained that her saga had begun with PMS, featuring a week each month when she was irritable and prone to crying fits. Her doctor prescribed a birth control pill (a common treatment) and soon Eva was feeling even worse, with insomnia, fatigue, low libido, and a generally flat mood dogging her all month long. That’s when the doctor added the Wellbutrin to “pick her up,” as he said, and handle her presumed depression. From Eva’s perspective, she felt that the antidepressant helped her energy level, but it had limited benefits in terms of her mood and libido. And if she took it after midnight, her insomnia was exacerbated. She soon became accustomed to feeling stable but suboptimal, and she was convinced that the medication was keeping her afloat. The good news for Eva was that with careful preparation, she could leave medication behind—and restore her energy, her equilibrium, and her sense of control over her emotions. Step one consisted of some basic diet and exercise changes along with better stress response strategies. Step two involved stopping birth control pills and then testing her hormone levels. Just before her period, she had low cortisol and progesterone, which were likely the cause of the PMS that started her whole problem. Further testing revealed borderline low thyroid function, which may well have been the result of the contraceptives—and the cause of her increased depressive symptoms. When Eva was ready to begin tapering off her medication, she did so following my protocol. Even as her brain and body adjusted to not having the antidepressant surging through her system anymore, her energy levels improved, her sleep problems resolved, and her anxiety lifted. Within a year she was healthy, no longer taking any prescriptions, feeling good—and pregnant.

As much as we hate them, tantrums are very much a part of almost every child’s development. As soon as children are old enough to hold an idea in their head, that is, to remember what it was they wanted, they are old enough to have a tantrum about not getting it. Tantrums can begin as early as six months, but you don’t usually see the classic tantrum until the child is around fifteen to eighteen months old. When they end is a bit less predictable, as that variable has to do with your child’s development and with you, but they usually begin to ease up after three or three and a half years, and they certainly diminish in frequency. What causes a tantrum? Usually it is due to frustration or anger. In their mission to learn about the world, test limits, try out their autonomy, and be in control, young children will be thwarted at every turn. Their frustration level is certainly exacerbated by their lack of language skills and their inability to make things work the way they want. Tantrums are completely normal. And they really do make sense when you keep the young child’s agenda in mind: I know what I want. Yesterday at the birthday party I had ice cream. It was great. I want it again…now. You explain why ice cream is not a choice, and he has a screaming fit. But he hasn’t forgotten, and an hour later he tries again. Yes. Ice cream. That’s what I want. And each time he asks, you thwart his desire, over and over again, until he is exhausted and totally frustrated. Here comes the tantrum. It is universally accepted that the worst time of day is from around 5:00 P.M. to 7:00 P.M. or so. Many a parent complains about her child’s behavior being particularly challenging then. Your house becomes a “whinery.” I call it the “Piranha Hour”—that’s when mothers want to eat their young! At the end of the day, everyone in the family is at his worst. Your children have held it together all day, either at school or home, accepting various limits and basically doing what is expected of them. But this can only go on for so long, and there comes a boiling point. The limit testing, the sibling fighting, the back talk has to come out sometime. At the end of the day, it’s game over. Get ready, here it comes. You too have held it together all day long.

Your tests don’t have to define you. Your compatibility doesn’t have to be a ceiling over which your relationship can never rise. Your past hurts don’t have to constitute the first steps in a journey toward divorce court. We worship, serve, and are empowered by a supernatural God who can lift us above our scientific limitations and create something special out of something very ordinary. These tests don’t account for the power of a magnificent obsession.

Don’t be stupid, but test your boundaries. Do what bothers you. Do some things that hurt. Let yourself be afraid, and uncomfortable, and at your limit. If you’re scared of something, dive in the next time you experience that fear and revel in it, sampling it like a rare delicacy. Look at everything you’ve been trying not to feel and say, “Let’s try this on for size.” I don’t know about you, but I want to see what’s out there in the world. And within limits, within reason, I don’t mind if it hurts.

One of the most effective guidelines is not to get stuck on a single approach. If diagramming the design in UML isn't working, write it in English. Write a short test program. Try a completely different approach. Think of a brute-force solution. Keep outlining and sketching with your pencil, and your brain will follow. If all else fails, walk away from the problem. Literally go for a walk, or think about something else before returning to the problem. If you've given it your best and are getting nowhere, putting it out of your mind for a time often produces results more quickly than sheer persistence can. You don't have to solve the whole design problem at once. If you get stuck, remember that a point needs to be decided but recognize that you don't yet have enough information to resolve that specific issue. Why fight your way through the last 20 percent of the design when it will drop into place easily the next time through? Why make bad decisions based on limited experience with the design when you can make good decisions based on more experience with it later? Some people are uncomfortable if they don't come to closure after a design cycle, but after you have created a few designs without resolving issues prematurely, it will seem natural to leave issues unresolved until you have more information (Zahniser 1992, Beck 2000).

A child who perpetually pesters her parents is still searching for the limits she needs to grow straight. Her demanding and disruptive behavior is, to a great degree, meant to test you, to find out what outrageous action will finally get you to react—constructively.

Executives need to understand the basic challenges of their current architecture and work to improve it over time. The build process needs to support managing different artifacts in the system as independent entities. Additionally, a solid, maintainable test automation framework needs to be in place so developers can trust the ability to quickly localize defects in their code when it fails. Until these fundamentals are in place, you will have limited success effectively transforming your processes.

The child who knows his parents have sturdy end stops will not have to push and test to find the limits and boundaries.

ENDURANCE SPORTS are about testing the limits. You work your body to a breaking point, then step away from the brink, let the work absorb, and repeat.

Only Will Power can overcome FEAR and diminish DOUBT. Only you can test your Limits, in a way that it results in Success. Only your Dreams will lead you to Success Don’t stop chasing them.