Weird Motivational Quotes

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You should date a girl who reads. Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes, who has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve. Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she has found the book she wants. You see that weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a secondhand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow and worn. She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book. Buy her another cup of coffee. Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice. It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas, for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry and in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does. She has to give it a shot somehow. Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world. Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who read understand that all things must come to end, but that you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two. Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series. If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are. You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype. You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots. Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads. Or better yet, date a girl who writes.
Rosemarie Urquico
No matter what you feel is holding you back in life, you can attempt anything. Repeat that motivational cup sentence until it gets in your gut and doesn’t sound like something stupid on a Hallmark card, because it is the basis for anything that will make you happy in this world.
Felicia Day (You're Never Weird on the Internet (Almost))
Because here’s something that’s weird but true: we don’t actually know what a positive or negative experience is. Some of the most difficult and stressful moments of our lives also end up being the most formative and motivating. Some of the best and most gratifying experiences of our lives are also the most distracting and demotivating. Don’t trust your conception of positive/negative experiences. All that we know for certain is what hurts in the moment and what doesn’t. And that’s not worth much. Just
Mark Manson (The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life)
He was now beginning to wonder whether the jigsaw was the correct metaphor for relationships between me and women after all. It didn't take account of the sheer stubbornness of human beings, their determination to affix themselves to another even if they didn't fit. They didn't care about jutting off at weird angles, and they didn't care about phone booths and Mary, Queen of Scots. They were motivated not by seamless and sensible matching, but by eyes, mouths, smiles, minds, breasts and chests and bottoms, wit, kindness, charm, romantic history and all sorts of other things that made straight edges impossible to achieve.
Nick Hornby (Juliet, Naked)
We reflect God's character the most when we give freely of ourselves with no strings attached, no secret motives, no hidden agenda.
Craig Groeschel (Weird: Because Normal Isn't Working)
Also, I kept thinking about Alex Fierro. You know, maybe just a little. Alex was a force of nature, like the snow thunder. She struck when she felt like it, depending on temperature differentials and storm patterns I couldn't possibly predict. She shook my foundations in a way that was powerful but also weirdly soft and constrained, veiled in blizzard. I couldn't assign any motives to her. She just did what she wanted. At least, that's how it felt to me.
Rick Riordan (Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard (Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, #1-3))
I’ve always been a bit weird, ever since I was a child. I didn’t really fit in anywhere. Then I realised it’s okay to be a bit weird, in fact it’s positively brilliant EMBRACE YOUR WEIRDNESS
Steven P. Aitchison
I stare past her at the inspirational kitten posters. There's one of a soaking-wet kitten climbing out of a toilet with the caption "it could be worse!" "Just tell me whatever it is you're thinking," Mrs. Paulsen says. "Whatever is going through your mind right now." "I hope they didn't actually drop a cat in the toilet to get that picture," I choke out. "...Pardon?" "Nothing. Sorry.
Robin Stevenson (The World Without Us)
Alex was a force of nature, like the snow thunder. She struck when she felt like it, depending on temperature differentials and storm patterns I couldn’t possibly predict. She shook my foundations in a way that was powerful but also weirdly soft and constrained, veiled in blizzard. I couldn’t assign any motives to her. She just did what she wanted.
Rick Riordan
The day will always have some bit of weirdness in it like a piece of fruit with one bad spot. Spit it out as fast as u can and eat the rest!
Raven Moore
Being wrong opens us up to the possibility of change. Being wrong brings the opportunity for growth. It means not cutting your arm open to cure a cold or splashing dog piss on your face to look young again. It means not thinking “mediocre” is a vegetable, and not being afraid to care about things. Because here’s something that’s weird but true: we don’t actually know what a positive or negative experience is. Some of the most difficult and stressful moments of our lives also end up being the most formative and motivating. Some of the best and most gratifying experiences of our lives are also the most distracting and demotivating. Don’t trust your conception of positive/negative experiences. All that we know for certain is what hurts in the moment and what doesn’t. And that’s not worth much. Just
Mark Manson (The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life)
70% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. Seven out of ten people you walk past going down the sidewalk are broke. You can model your life after them, and you will be one of them. Or you can mode your life after the weird people. Because wealth is unusual. It’s not normal. So you have to engage in unusual behaviors and habits to create unusual results
Dave Ramsey
Of course, the starting point for any discussion of motivation in the workplace is a simple fact of life: People have to earn a living. Salary, contract payments, some benefits, a few perks are what I call “baseline rewards.” If someone’s baseline rewards aren’t adequate or equitable, her focus will be on the unfairness of her situation and the anxiety of her circumstance. You’ll get neither the predictability of extrinsic motivation nor the weirdness of intrinsic motivation. You’ll get very little motivation at all. The best use of money as a motivator is to pay people enough to take the issue of money off the table.
Daniel H. Pink (Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us)
We often demand of people what only God can give us — encouragement, affirmation, strength, motivation — and we end up wringing others dry. It's okay to expect some things from people, so long as you know they're just human beings who thirst like you. They need an Infinite Well as much as you do. If you drink deeply of Him first, you'll be less controlled (and controlling) by your expectations, and you'll actually seek others not to squeeze from them but to encourage them by your overflow.
J.S. Park (The Christianese Dating Culture: On Courtship, Purity Rings, Prayer-Sex, and Other Weird Things We Do In Church)
No “normal” people find themselves in the history books... No “normal” people change the world. So get comfortable being “weird” and embrace the loneliness of unapologetic determination.
Steve Maraboli
Anger motivates as well as any other emotion in the short term. It's in longer doses that it's more poisonous than the others and will slowly eat away at you from the inside out. - The Malwatch
Scaylen Renvac
Elephants don’t belong in rooms, and damaging thoughts don’t belong in our hearts. I am going to kick the elephant out of the room, slay this shit, and embrace the most important truth I’ve ever learned. I am not what I do or what I look like. I am just who I am.
Shelley Brown-Weird Girl Adventures from A to Z
Sawyer Effect: A weird behavioral alchemy inspired by the scene in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in which Tom and friends whitewash Aunt Polly’s fence. This effect has two aspects. The negative: Rewards can turn play into work. The positive: Focusing on mastery can turn work into play.
Daniel H. Pink (Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us)
Popular authors do not and apparently cannot appreciate the fact that true art is obtainable only by rejecting normality and conventionality in toto, and approaching a theme purged utterly of any usual or preconceived point of view. Wild and “different” as they may consider their quasi-weird products, it remains a fact that the bizarrerie is on the surface alone; and that basically they reiterate the same old conventional values and motives and perspectives. Good and evil, teleological illusion, sugary sentiment, anthropocentric psychology—the usual superficial stock in trade, and all shot through with the eternal and inescapable commonplace…. Who ever wrote a story from the point of view that man is a blemish on the cosmos, who ought to be eradicated? As an example—a young man I know lately told me that he means to write a story about a scientist who wishes to dominate the earth, and who to accomplish his ends trains and overdevelops germs … and leads armies of them in the manner of the Egyptian plagues. I told him that although this theme has promise, it is made utterly commonplace by assigning the scientist a normal motive. There is nothing outré about wanting to conquer the earth; Alexander, Napoleon, and Wilhelm II wanted to do that. Instead, I told my friend, he should conceive a man with a morbid, frantic, shuddering hatred of the life-principle itself, who wishes to extirpate from the planet every trace of biological organism, animal and vegetable alike, including himself. That would be tolerably original. But after all, originality lies with the author. One can’t write a weird story of real power without perfect psychological detachment from the human scene, and a magic prism of imagination which suffuses theme and style alike with that grotesquerie and disquieting distortion characteristic of morbid vision. Only a cynic can create horror—for behind every masterpiece of the sort must reside a driving demonic force that despises the human race and its illusions, and longs to pull them to pieces and mock them.
H.P. Lovecraft
I can’t bear to wear flats, and it’s not a height thing. The rounded toe of the ballet slipper-style shoes do not appeal to me. Let’s face it, none of us over thirty, forty, fifty and on, are ballerinas. No, girls, Pilates is not ballet. I’ve been told I am built like a ballerina, but I’ve also been told I dance like a stripper. Did you ever ask someone how they thought you dance? You may be in shock, or maybe they will be.
Shelley Brown-Weird Girl Adventures from A to Z
There is a moment when you just know it and can’t deny it. It’s simply the irrefutable truth, and now you have to change the situation because it’s no longer working for you. Maybe you come to the realization gradually, or maybe you come to it like a nearly missed red light when you stomp on the brake, and it’s right there, unmistakable. It’s the moment when you realize there is only one cool person in the relationship or dating thingy, and it’s not the other person.
Shelley Brown-Weird Girl Adventures from A to Z
Could it, indeed, be that simple?! . . . Yes, it could. It felt like for the first time in my life, I had the power to decide something this big and make it happen. Without anyone’s approval, without permission, without any external motivation like getting an A in a math class. I could do this because I WANTED to, even if it was scary and might go up in flames. In that moment, I realized that I had been missing an amazing truth: No matter what you feel is holding you back in life . . .
Felicia Day (You're Never Weird on the Internet (Almost))
Scientists will discover a weak correlation between A and B, assuming C under D conditions. The university PR office will then post something for immediate release: ‘Scientists Find Potential Link Between A and B (under certain conditions)’. News organisations will pick it up and publish, ‘A causes B, say scientists’, which will then be read by The Internets and turned into ‘A causes B - ALL THE TIME!’ Which will then be picked up by TV shows that run stories like ‘A ... A Killer Among Us??’ All of this eventually leads to your grandma getting all weird about A.
Jason Fox (The Game Changer: How to Use the Science of Motivation with the Power of Game Design to Shift Behaviour, Shape Culture and Make Clever Happen)
... nothing is easier than to distance ourselves from great figures, whether through a negative interpretation or through idealization. Denigration and idealization are twins with the same basic motive: to avoid taking responsibility for the discoveries before us and to avoid taking responsibility for emulating the lives of great individuals. If we find severe flaws in the personality of the "genius," we can look upon him as some kind of genetic freak, closely linked to the madman, whose contributions were almost an incidental offshoot of his weird personality. If we consider the great man a triumphant genius with a basically unflawed personality, we can make small demands upon ourselves since we lack genius and possess flaws. Still another way of dealing with the great man is simply through indifference. One explains his loneliness and suffering through the kind of cliches Reich hated: "A genius is always one hundred years ahead of his time," or, "A genius always meets opposition in his lifetime." The need for distance from greatness is especially intense when we are dealing with persons who make the implicit demand: You must change your life if you are truly to understand what I have discovered.
Myron R. Sharaf (Fury On Earth: A Biography Of Wilhelm Reich)
With his uncanny lame instinct for publicity, he had become in four or five years one of the best known of the young `intellectuals'. Where the intellect came in, Connie did not quite see. Clifford was really clever at that slightly humorous analysis of people and motives which leaves everything in bits at the end. But it was rather like puppies tearing the sofa cushions to bits; except that it was not young and playful, but curiously old, and rather obstinately conceited. It was weird and it was nothing. This was the feeling that echoed and re-echoed at the bottom of Connie's soul: it was all flag, a wonderful display of nothingness; At the same time a display. A display! a display! a display!
D.H. Lawrence (Lady Chatterley's Lover)
It truly is a team sport, and we have the best team in town. But it’s my relationship with Ilana that I cherish most. We have such a strong partnership and have learned how we work most efficiently: I need coffee, she needs tea. When we’re stressed, I pace around and use a weird neck massager I bought online that everyone makes fun of me for, and she knits. When we’re writing together she types, because she’s faster and better at grammar. We actually FaceTime when we’re not in the same city and are constantly texting each other ideas for jokes or observations to potentially use (I recently texted her from Asheville: girl with flip-flops tucked into one strap of tank top). Looking back now at over ten years of doing comedy and running a business with her I can see how our collaboration has expanded and contracted. But it’s the problem-solving aspect of this industry, the producing, the strategy, the realizing that we could put our heads together and figure out the best solution, that has made our relationship and friendship what it is. Because that spills into everything. We both have individual careers now, but those other projects have only been motivating and inspiring to each other and the show. We bring back what we’ve learned on the other sets, in the other negotiations, in the other writers’ rooms or press situations. I’m very lucky to have jumped into this with Ilana Rose Glazer, the ballsy, curly-haired, openhearted, nineteen-year-old girl that cracked me up that night at the corner of the bar at McManus. So many wonderful things have happened since we began working together, but there are a lot of confusing, life-altering things in there too, and it’s such a relief to have someone who completely understands the good and the bad.
Abbi Jacobson (I Might Regret This: Essays, Drawings, Vulnerabilities, and Other Stuff)
The war is not over, however. Even organisations like Wikipedia succumbed to the authoritarian twitch, appointing editors with special privileges who could impose their own prejudices upon certain topics. The motive was understandable – to stop entries being taken over by obsessive nutters with weird views. But of course what happened, just as in the French and Russian revolutions, was that the nutters got on the committee. The way to become an editor was simply to edit lots of pages, and thereby gain brownie points. Some of the editors turned into ruthlessly partisan dogmatists, and the value of a crowd-sourced encyclopedia was gradually damaged. As one commentator puts it, Wikipedia is ‘run by cliquish, censorious editors and open to pranks and vandalism’. It is still a great first port of call on any uncontroversial topic, but I find Wikipedia cannot be trusted on many subjects.
Matt Ridley (The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge)
The Coach’s head was oblong with tiny slits that served as eyes, which drifted in tides slowly inward, as though the face itself were the sea or, in fact, a soup of macromolecules through which objects might drift, leaving in their wake, ripples of nothingness. The eyes—they floated adrift like land masses before locking in symmetrically at seemingly prescribed positions off-center, while managing to be so closely drawn into the very middle of the face section that it might have seemed unnecessary for there to have been two eyes when, quite likely, one would easily have sufficed. These aimless, floating eyes were not the Coach’s only distinctive feature—for, in fact, connected to the interior of each eyelid by a web-like layer of rubbery pink tissue was a kind of snout which, unlike the eyes, remained fixed in its position among the tides of the face, arcing narrowly inward at the edges of its sharp extremities into a serrated beak-like projection that hooked downward at its tip, in a fashion similar to that of a falcon’s beak. This snout—or beak, rather—was, in fact, so long and came to such a fine point that as the eyes swirled through the soup of macromolecules that comprised the man’s face, it almost appeared—due to the seeming thinness of the pink tissue—that the eyes functioned as kinds of optical tether balls that moved synchronously across the face like mirror images of one another. 'I wore my lizard mask as I entered the tram, last evening, and people found me fearless,' the Coach remarked, enunciating each word carefully through the hollow clack-clacking sound of his beak, as its edges clapped together. 'I might have exchanged it for that of an ox and then thought better. A lizard goes best with scales, don’t you think?' Bunnu nodded as he quietly wondered how the Coach could manage to fit that phallic monstrosity of a beak into any kind of mask, unless, in fact, this disguise of which he spoke, had been specially designed for his face and divided into sections in such a way that they could be readily attached to different areas—as though one were assembling a new face—in overlapping layers, so as to veil, or perhaps even amplify certain distinguishable features. All the same, in doing so, one could only imagine this lizard mask to be enormous to the extent that it would be disproportionate with the rest of the Coach’s body. But then, there were ways to mask space, as well—to bend light, perhaps, to create the illusion that something was perceptibly larger or smaller, wider or narrower, rounder or more linear than it was in actuality. That is to say, any form of prosthesis designed for the purposes of affecting remedial space might, for example, have had the capability of creating the appearance of a gap of void in occupied space. An ornament hangs from the chin, let’s say, as an accessory meant to contour smoothly inward what might otherwise appear to be hanging jowls. This surely wouldn’t be the exact use that the Coach would have for such a device—as he had no jowls to speak of—though he could certainly see the benefit of the accessory’s ingenuity. This being said, the lizard mask might have appeared natural rather than disproportionate given the right set of circumstances. Whatever the case, there was no way of even knowing if the Coach wasn’t, in fact, already wearing a mask, at this very moment, rendering Bunnu’s initial appraisal of his character—as determined by a rudimentary physiognomic analysis of his features—a matter now subject to doubt. And thus, any conjecture that could be made with respect to the dimensions or components of a lizard mask—not to speak of the motives of its wearer—seemed not only impractical, but also irrelevant at this point in time.
Ashim Shanker (Don't Forget to Breathe (Migrations, Volume I))
I take my coffee-stained shirt into the bathroom down the hall. Holding the stain under the faucet, something dark on the underside of my shirt catches my eye, and I groan. Great, what bizarre stain is this now? My fingers glide under the fabric, and I feel something plastic. I am mystified, so I flip over the shirt. Stuck to my shirt is a button pinned to the side hem. It’s pale blue with white lettering. YOU CAN’T REACH WHAT’S IN FRONT OF YOU UNTIL YOU LET GO OF WHAT’S BEHIND YOU. I stare at this in disbelief. Why is there a motivational button stuck to my shirt? YOU CAN’T REACH WHAT’S IN FRONT OF YOU UNTIL YOU LET GO OF WHAT’S BEHIND YOU. The statement is crap, because some of us will never be able to let go of what chases us. YOU CAN’T REACH WHAT’S IN FRONT OF YOU UNTIL YOU LET GO OF WHAT’S BEHIND YOU. The words nearly scream at me. Against my will, I smile. This is so weird, a button showing up on my shirt. So random. And yet, I admit, sort of wonderful. It’s a nice sentiment, and I should probably take it to heart. This button is probably smarter than I am.
Jessica Park (180 Seconds)
Spies come in many shapes. Some are motivated by ideology, politics or patriotism. A surprising number act out of avarice, for the financial rewards, can be alluring. Others find themselves drawn into espionage by sex, blackmail, arrogance, revenge, disappointment, or the peculiar oneupmanship and comradeship that secrecy confers. Some are principled and brave. Some are grasping and cowardly. Pavel Sudoplatov, one of Stalin's spymasters, had this advice for his officers seeking to recruit spies in western countries: 'search for people who are hurt by fate or nature - the ugly, those suffering from an inferiority complex, craving power and influence but defeated by unfavourable circumstances... in cooperation with us, all these find a particular compensation. The sense of belonging to an influential and powerful origination will give them a feeling of superiority over the handsome and prosperous people around them.'... Espionage attracts more than its share of the damaged, the lonely and the plain weird. But all spies crave undetected influence, that secret compensation: the ruthless exercise of private power. A degree of intellectual snobbery is common to most, the secret sense of knowing important things unknown to the person standing next to you at the bus stop. In part, spying is an act of the imagination.
Ben Macintyre (The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War)
The best advice came from the legendary actor the late Sir John Mills, who I sat next to backstage at a lecture we were doing together. He told me he considered the key to public speaking to be this: “Be sincere, be brief, be seated.” Inspired words. And it changed the way I spoke publicly from then on. Keep it short. Keep it from the heart. Men tend to think that they have to be funny, witty, or incisive onstage. You don’t. You just have to be honest. If you can be intimate and give the inside story--emotions, doubts, struggles, fears, the lot--then people will respond. I went on to give thanks all around the world to some of the biggest corporations in business--and I always tried to live by that. Make it personal, and people will stand beside you. As I started to do bigger and bigger events for companies, I wrongly assumed that I should, in turn, start to look much smarter and speak more “corporately.” I was dead wrong--and I learned that fast. When we pretend, people get bored. But stay yourself, talk intimately, and keep the message simple, and it doesn’t matter what the hell you wear. It does, though, take courage, in front of five thousand people, to open yourself up and say you really struggle with self-doubt. Especially when you are meant to be there as a motivational speaker. But if you keep it real, then you give people something real to take away. “If he can, then so can I” is always going to be a powerful message. For kids, for businessmen--and for aspiring adventurers. I really am pretty average. I promise you. Ask Shara…ask Hugo. I am ordinary, but I am determined. I did, though--as the corporation started to pay me more--begin to doubt whether I was really worth the money. It all seemed kind of weird to me. I mean, was my talk a hundred times better now than the one I gave in the Drakensberg Mountains? No. But on the other hand, if you can help people feel stronger and more capable because of what you tell them, then it becomes worthwhile for companies in ways that are impossible to quantify. If that wasn’t true, then I wouldn’t get asked to speak so often, still to this day. And the story of Everest--a mountain, like life, and like business--is always going to work as a metaphor. You have got to work together, work hard, and go the extra mile. Look after each other, be ambitious, and take calculated, well-timed risks. Give your heart to the goal, and it will repay you. Now, are we talking business or climbing? That’s what I mean.
Bear Grylls (Mud, Sweat and Tears)
If the human race ever wishes to master time travel then the answer is through chemical and not mechanical means. Speed is time travel. It will pilfer away at the space-time around you without your consent, propelling you forward through time. The human body is a vehicle of flux. It is exhilarating to move rhythmically, pulsing, stepping through pockets of your existence in fluid motions. The time that speed steals from you, it gives back with interest, cold and hard on a Monday morning. It brings with it a terrifying despair that creeps upon you. It is a black, slow-motion suicide. The ceiling begins to drip and ooze grey-brown sludge. Aural hallucinations, the demons of psychosis, speak wordless words of pure dread... Sometimes I would laugh and giggle hysterically at inane nonsensical stories that would play out in my mind. I would watch them unfold, like a lucid dream, weird images, Boschian forms, twisted nightmares... And I would weep. I would weep for nothing with salty tears, rivers of anguish and existential pain running down my face, dripping quietly onto the carpet. Day after day, I would unravel myself, dissect, and analyse my life over and over until I was exhausted and insane. Speed is not an insightful drug. It will not delude you into a false sense of spirituality like hallucinogens. It is the aftermath and the come down from speed that will rip open your ego and show you the bare, horrible bones of yourself. It will open the beautiful black doorway inside you and it will show you nothing. Through the darkness of internal isolation, the amphetamine comedown will show you no god, no spirituality, no soul, just your own perishable flesh, and your own animal self-preservation. It will show you clearly just how ugly you really are inside. In the emptiness of yourself, there is only the knowledge of your eventual death. When you have truly faced yourself and recognised yourself as purely animal then you become liberated from the societal pretence that you are above or better than any other creature. You are a human animal. You are naturally motivated to be selfish. Everything you do, every act you partake of, is in its essence an act of survival. No act of the human-animal happens without the satisfaction of the ego’s position in existence…
Steven LaVey (The Ugly Spirit)
Want to have better and more effective meetings? Get rid of the tables in your meeting room. It's weird but it works.
Alexander Kjerulf (Happy Hour is 9 to 5)
So Jesus came and fulfilled the requirements of it to satisfy God. He lived it perfectly. And then instead of the Old Testament law becoming our standard or law, Jesus himself became our law. He gave us his perfect standing by fulfilling God’s righteous requirements and then on the cross took all our sin, failure, guilt, and shame. A pretty sweet exchange, if you ask me. And now we no longer solely live up to an external code, but rather live in relationship with a person who then shows us how to properly view that code. Jesus became the face of the Law rather than the concrete tablets Moses is always holding in those ancient depictions. Love is the new law. The way I think about it is this: if I’m ever tempted to cheat on Alyssa, I could motivate myself by the law—I won’t cheat on her because I might go to hell, etc.—or I could motivate myself with love—I don’t want to cheat on her because she is better than anything out there. So it is with us and God. Jesus ushered in a more beautiful covenant. One that is perfected in love, not in hateful and fearful obedience. The law was just a foretaste of Jesus. To know all the shadows and pictures in the Old Testament were simply a picture of him is astounding. Sacrificing a goat seems a little weird and disgusting until you see it actually had a reason. The sacrificial system was God’s way of saying sin breeds death. Someone must die when there is sin. All the mandates and requirements God laid out for the Israelites were ultimately mini arrows pointing to Jesus. The lamb the Israelites needed to sacrifice for sin was God’s way of saying, “There is one coming after you who will not only be a picture of sacrifice and forgiveness like these lambs, but one who will actually be able to take away your sin and cleanse you forever.
Jefferson Bethke (Jesus > Religion: Why He Is So Much Better Than Trying Harder, Doing More, and Being Good Enough)
didn’t know what they were looking for, but I’m a seventeen-year-old girl (eighteen in a month, and I guess I’d say woman, but I don’t feel like one – is that weird?) and there were two strange men in my home, so I guessed their motives were not pure. How did they get in? The front door is always locked – see rule number
Robert J. Crane (Alone, Untouched, Soulless (The Girl in the Box, #1-3))
To make matters worse, most companies use the same standards for evaluating both routine and innovative work. They use conventional idea #6: Reward success, punish failure and inaction. This is fine for routine tasks. When known procedures are used by well-trained people, failure does signal improper training, weak motivation, or poor leadership. But applying this standard to innovative work stifles intelligent risks. The usual reward scheme means that, because people who do routine work succeed most of the time, they are glorified as winners. In contrast, people who do innovative work fail a lot. So they not only get few rewards, they may be denigrated as losers. In many companies, people who do routine work complain that “if those creative types just acted more like us, they would be more efficient and wouldn’t make all those mistakes!
Robert I. Sutton (Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation)
Recall that it is hard to change behavior when it becomes ingrained and mindless. Also recall that “mere exposure” research shows that people will have positive reactions to anything familiar and negative reactions to anything unfamiliar. The longer a group has been together, the stronger these forces become. What happens inside the group becomes increasingly familiar to members, while what outsiders do seems less familiar or interesting. As time passes, motivation, experimentation, and learning may diminish so gradually that no one on the team realizes that these changes are actually taking place.22 To make matters worse, I’ve noticed that after a group of people have been together for a long time, they spend more and more time talking about things outside of work—their families, sports, hobbies, and so on—and less and less time talking about their work. After all, they don’t really think about the work; they have decided who in the group is good at what, and they don’t feel compelled to waste time talking with outsiders, so they have plenty of time to talk with their pals about other things!
Robert I. Sutton (Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation)
It is weird to me on how people will come to church frequently and have absolutely no desire or intention to change anything about their life based on what they experienced in the church.
Patience Johnson (Why Does an Orderly God Allow Disorder)
seventeen-year-old girl (eighteen in a month, and I guess I’d say woman, but I don’t feel like one – is that weird?) and there were two strange men in my home, so I guessed their motives were not pure. How did they get in? The front door is always locked – see rule number one. I peeked around the doorframe and saw them. The one that hit the coffee table looked to be in his forties, had a few extra pounds,
Robert J. Crane (Alone, Untouched, Soulless (The Girl in the Box, #1-3))
Spoiler alert, but I need to skip forward and address something. They figure out eventually that the reason Dennis Hopper made this extremely overcomplicated weird bus bomb is because he used to be a police bomb sexpert supercop just like Keanu. Unfortunately, his hand got fucked up in the line of duty, andn ow he's mad that his pension isn't luxurious enough. Can you imagine that story line being presented as a comprehensible motivation for terrorism in the year of our lord two thousand and twenty????? Hahahahaha! To a kid born in, say, 2001 that's like a fish threatening to blow up the ocean because he's thirsty. You're an already-comfortable yet inexplicably enraged middle-aged white guy in 1994 *with a government pension* who's prepared to kill a bunch of working-class people on public transit so you can squeeze millions of dollars of fun-money out of the US taxpayer coffers *because you want it?* LOL.
Lindy West (Shit, Actually: The Definitive, 100% Objective Guide to Modern Cinema)
Religion, politics, and fear have always had this weird underestimated algorithmic relationship.
Chaker Khazaal (Ouch! A memoir with a twist…)
When we let go of concern or worry about what others think about us, we free ourselves to be the weird and wonderful people we were born to be.
Sheri Fink (InstaGrateful: Finding Your Bliss in a Social Media World)
If I become like others, I will lose my ability to be unique. The lesson I learned to Create like you, Write like you and most of all don't be defined by others. To me, you will get lost in the crowd. Riddle me weird and I graciously accept. Yet, I choose to forever and day to stand out. -Tamyara Brown
Tamyara Brown
Because here's something that's weird but true: we don't actually know what a positive or negative experience is. Some of the most difficult and stressful moments of our lives also end up being the most formative and motivating. Some of the best and most gratifying experiences of our lives are also the most distracting and demotivating. Don't trust your conception of positive/negative experiences. All that we know for certain is what hurts in the moment and what doesn't And that's not worth much.
Mark Manson (The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life)
Date: 27th of Feb, 2021 What is Love ? Is it something you feel, vibe or exhibit ? Or is it in caring, sharing or sacrifices L.O.V.E Love is in small details, everywhere around, the sun loves the sky amidst it colours, the sky loves the clouds inspite of its darkness, the darkness loves the light inspite of its own capabilities to lighten, Love is not something that can be talked or explained, but then what am i trying to do so?? Weird. Despite the running thoughts right now i have to share what i feel before that thought would never strike again (Ps: You are a constant thought that runs in my mind) For me what love really is ! For me, love is a gift, that feeling is magical, being in that feeling is lucky, Love is not something you fall for, how can u fall in love, when you feel embraced and butterflies, in your stomach you are actually lifted in love, you are actually strong when you love. You admire the person with all its possibilities to be with her and its goodness and makeup your mind about the righteous of the person and imagine and day dreaming of being with them. That's the first sip. Love is true, when you demand no change and when u accept her the way she is with all her negativity and positivity, with her moods and habits, accepting and going with her choices, supporting her beyond the support you expect from her, pushing yourself to make efforts to see her smile, taking her stand in public, respecting her thoughts despite having different opinions. love is not about being right every time about everything, its about making her feel right about things that are not, its about sacrificing your thoughts to hear hers, its about sacrificing your last bite to look her smile, its about starring into your partner eyes and talk without a word, holding hands until you go home, hold her mood until she's back, and being insecured about her safety until she's home This is the only feeling that makes me feel special, its the only feeling that helps me finds happiness in sacrificing too, That's the only feeling that lifts my mood by seeing her or motivating her when i m having a bad day, its tough though sometimes, love can make you think for possibilities and impossibilities that may never occur and give you a hard time, sometimes you push yourself and them away. But cannot really stay away, then why do we do that, Sharing of emotions will be the best part of the journey of love You don't shy accepting, being in love, coz not everybody is lucky to have it, You embrace it, You love being in Love ❤️ but then why do they not talk about love Its a complex simple feeling. 05:19 AM (the moon was still so pretty)
Aagam Haran
... nothing is easier than to distance ourselves from great figures, whether through a negative interpretation or through idealization. Denigration and idealization are twins with the same basic motive: to avoid taking responsibility for the discoveries before us and to avoid taking responsibility for emulating the lives of great individuals. If we find severe flaws in the personality of the "genius," we can look upon him as some kind of genetic freak, closely linked to the madman, whose contributions were almost an incidental offshoot of his weird personality. If we consider the great man a triumphant genius with a basically unflawed personality, we can make small demands upon ourselves since we lack genius and possess flaws. Still another way of dealing with the great man is simply through indifference. One explains his loneliness and suffering through the kind of cliches Reich hated: "A genius is always one hundred years ahead of his time," or, "A genius always meets opposition in his lifetime." The need for distance from greatness is especially intense when we are dealing with persons who make the implicit demand: You must change your life if you are truly to understand what I have discovered.
Myron Sharaf (Fury on Earth: A Biography of Wihelm Reich)
We are not perfect. We are going to argue sometimes & have our problems but I'm never going to stop loving you. We are in this together. I think of you so often you have no idea. Just imagine a boy praying to god most of the time that he gets marry to you. I instatly smile when i see a message from you. To be honest, you are the only one who motivates me to become a better person and show me the potential i don't see in me. you know your eyes gives me chill in my core when i look into them. I feel insecure sometimes because i am afraid of losing you. I just want to spend the rest of my life with someone who makes me mile, laugh, feel special, and supports me.Stay with me, I promise to make you smile everyday with my weird jokes and random kisses. I promise to hold your hand when you need someone to walk with you through the storm. I promise to share my food with you, give you good massages and laugh at your stupid jokes. I will listen when you tell me about how horrible your day was when you come home. I promise to hold you in my arms when you feel like your whole world is crashing down. I will make you see that there are a million reasons why you should stay with me. I LOVE YOU... I love the way you love me. I love the way you call me Yours.. I love the way you care for me. I love the way you treat me. I just love the way who you are. I LOVE YOU....
Himanshu Kohli
Boy meets girl, they butt heads, he falls for her, she misconstrues his motivations, they work it out, and live happily ever after. Bah.” “Nailed it. You sure you didn’t watch it?” I ask. “Call me Mr. Darcy if you want.” He does a weird bow, then puts his hand over his heart. “‘You have bewitched me, body and soul.
Ilsa Madden-Mills (I Promise You (Waylon University, #4))
Being wrong opens us up to the possibility of change. Being wrong brings the opportunity for growth. Because here's something that's weird but true: we don't actually know what a positive or negative experience is. Some of the most difficult and stressful moments of our lives also end up being the most formative and motivating. Some of the best and most gratifying experiences of our lives are also the most distracting and demotivating.
Mark Manson (The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life)
[Creation is first about attention;] Making something that people are going to pay attention to, and that's going to affect someone; it's going to make them laugh or make them think; and that's all that matters. That's where almost every Tiktoker is right now. And then at some point it gets to be that your graphs change a little bit and being able to sustain this activity is more important: to find ways to make money off of it; to have it be your job. [And then you get to a stage when you have an audience for your creations, you make money from your creations and at some point] it's almost as if you have enough of this to realize 1.) You have enough and 2.) Having more isn't going to make you much happier. You have to have enough before you can realise that more isn't going to make you much happier. That happens with audience, and that happens with money, and eventually you get to a point (and not everyone gets here), where it's like: "what's FUN though? What do I LIKE doing? What is the weird thing I can do that's interesting?
Hank Green
Because here’s something that’s weird but true: we don’t actually know what a positive or negative experience is. Some of the most difficult and stressful moments of our lives also end up being the most formative and motivating. Some of the best and most gratifying experiences of our lives are also the most distracting and demotivating. Don’t trust your conception of positive/negative experiences. All that we know for certain is what hurts in the moment and what doesn’t. And that’s not worth much.
Mark Manson (The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life)
The present is the place to live, the past is to fade, and the future is to dream. Become weird, unique, and different - don't follow the crowd. A successful life is defined by living the life you desire.
D.L. Lewis
There is no motivation for this action. It seems like this story is missing a part because people just aren’t this nonsensically cruel. But where you see no motivation, you understand racism a little more. It’s this weird, unprovoked lashing-out, and it never makes any sense. It’s why it’s so easy for people to believe the police when they beat someone up--because no one would be that cruel just because the person was Black. But they are!
Amber Ruffin (You'll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey: Crazy Stories about Racism)
However, I am equal parts “hedonistic goblin” and “people-pleasing chameleon,” and how I think other people see me is perhaps my greatest motivator. I want to do absolutely nothing, and then I want to be recognized for all my hard work.
Mia Mercado (Weird but Normal: Essays)
November 30th What do you know? For once I favourably surprise myself. After I'd read Howard's exemplary "White Ship" on Friday night and spent yesterday idling about in Providence - woolgathering, I suppose - I've finally made up my mind to sit down and attempt to lick this novel into some kind of functional shape. The central character I'm thinking, is a young man in his early thirties. He's well educated, but if forced by economic circumstance to leave his home in somewhere like Milwaukee (on the principle of writing about somewhere that you know) to seek employment further east. I feel I should give him a name. I know that details of this sort could wait until much later in the process, but I don't feel able to flesh out his character sufficiently until I've at least worked out what he's called. There's been a twenty minute pause between the end of the foregoing sentence and the start of this one, but I think his first name should be Jonathan. Jonathan Randall is the name that comes to me, perhaps by way of Randall Carver. Yes, I think I like the sound of that. So, young Jonathan Randall realises that his yearnings for a literary life have to be put aside to spare his parents dwindling resources, and that he must make his own way in the world, through manual labour if needs be, in order to become the self-sufficient grownup he aspires to be. During an early scene, perhaps in a recounting of Jonathan's childhood, there should be some striking incident which foreshadows the supernatural or psychological weirdness that will dominate the later chapters. Thinking about this, it seems to me that this would be the ideal place to introduce the bridge motif I've toyed with earlier in these pages: since I'm quite fond of the opening paragraphs that I've already written, with that long description of America as a repository for all the world's religious or else occult visionaries, I think what I'll do is largely leave that as it is, to function as a kind of prologue and establish the requisite mood, and then open the novel proper with Jonathan and a school friend playing truant on a summer's afternoon at some remote and overgrown ravine or other, where there's a precarious and creaking bridge with fraying ropes and missing boards that joins the chasm's two sides. I could probably set up the story's major themes and ideas in the two companions' dialogue, albeit simply expressed in keeping with their age and limited experience. Perhaps they're talking in excited schoolboy tones about some local legend, ghost story or piece of folklore that's connected with the bridge or the ravine. This would provide a motive - the eternal boyish fascination with the ghoulish - for them having come to this ill-omened spot while playing hooky, and would also help establish Jonathan's obsession with folkloric subjects as explored in the remainder of the novel.
Alan Moore (Providence Compendium by Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows Hardcover)
November 30th What do you know? For once I favourably surprise myself. After I'd read Howard's exemplary "White Ship" on Friday night and spent yesterday idling about in Providence - woolgathering, I suppose - I've finally made up my mind to sit down and attempt to lick this novel into some kind of functional shape. The central character I'm thinking, is a young man in his early thirties. He's well educated, but is forced by economic circumstance to leave his home in somewhere like Milwaukee (on the principle of writing about somewhere that you know) to seek employment further east. I feel I should give him a name. I know that details of this sort could wait until much later in the process, but I don't feel able to flesh out his character sufficiently until I've at least worked out what he's called. There's been a twenty minute pause between the end of the foregoing sentence and the start of this one, but I think his first name should be Jonathan. Jonathan Randall is the name that comes to me, perhaps by way of Randall Carver. Yes, I think I like the sound of that. So, young Jonathan Randall realises that his yearnings for a literary life have to be put aside to spare his parents' dwindling resources, and that he must make his own way in the world, through manual labour if needs be, in order to become the self-sufficient grownup he aspires to be. During an early scene, perhaps in a recounting of Jonathan's childhood, there should be some striking incident which foreshadows the supernatural or psychological weirdness that will dominate the later chapters. Thinking about this, it seems to me that this would be the ideal place to introduce the bridge motif I've toyed with earlier in these pages: since I'm quite fond of the opening paragraphs that I've already written, with that long description of America as a repository for all the world's religious or else occult visionaries, I think what I'll do is largely leave that as it is, to function as a kind of prologue and establish the requisite mood, and then open the novel proper with Jonathan and a school friend playing truant on a summer's afternoon at some remote and overgrown ravine or other, where there's a precarious and creaking bridge with fraying ropes and missing boards that joins the chasm's two sides. I could probably set up the story's major themes and ideas in the two companions' dialogue, albeit simply expressed in keeping with their age and limited experience. Perhaps they're talking in excited schoolboy tones about some local legend, ghost story or piece of folklore that's connected with the bridge or the ravine. This would provide a motive - the eternal boyish fascination with the ghoulish - for them having come to this ill-omened spot while playing hooky, and would also help establish Jonathan's obsession with folkloric subjects as explored in the remainder of the novel.
Alan Moore (Providence Compendium by Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows Hardcover)
word you’re telling yourself, I love you. I see you. I believe in you. Let’s go. Don’t rush it. Revel in it. This moment is for you. Q: Why do it first thing in the morning? There are two reasons to make it the start of your day: It will impact your productivity and how you show up all day. When you high five yourself first thing in the morning, you set a positive tone for your day—and research shows your mood in the morning impacts your productivity for the rest of the day. You may be surprised by the shift. Caroline told me that she was amazed by how “weirdly motivated” she felt all day after doing the high five.
Mel Robbins (The High 5 Habit: Take Control of Your Life with One Simple Habit)
We can't see beauty. We have eyes!
Deepak Kripal (Sense of a Quiet)
Loyalty is non-negotiable. Slavery is the same.
Deepak Kripal (Sense of a Quiet)
The passion and excitement that I get from life, when immersed in studying something weird or unconventional, is amazing. It feels as though I’ve found a new toy to play with.
Robin S. Baker
Bring the big kid in you out to play more often. Take the sandbox into the boardroom and invite others in your team to think inside the box. Stay curious, imaginative, weird, daring, playful, and open because it's these very qualities that have spurred every innovation that we consider standard today.
Leena Patel (Raise Your Innovation IQ: 21 Ways to Think Differently During Times of Change)
When it’s said that quantum mechanics is ‘weird’, or that nobody understands it, the image tends to invite the analogy of a peculiar person whose behaviour and motives defy obvious explanation. But this is too glib. It’s not so much understanding or even intuition that quantum mechanics defies, but our sense of logic itself. Sure, it’s hard to intuit what it means for objects to travel along two paths at once, or to have their properties partly situated some place other than the object itself, and so on. But these are just attempts to express in everyday words a state of affairs that defeats the capabilities of language. Our language is designed to reflect the logic we’re familiar with, but that logic won’t work for quantum mechanics.
Philip Ball (Beyond Weird)
It is rather weird in essence anyone understanding you has to be able to comprehend a form of your outer consciousness, the expressive formation of actions and speech that display who you are, in itself a task of extreme difficulty. But yet we still expect more and how could anyone understand you deeper or more intimately when even you yourself do not?
Sayed H Fatimi
The bottom line is you don’t have to understand something to like it, and you don’t have to understand someone to like them.
Shelley Brown-Weird Girl Adventures from A to Z
I am a latchkey kid who gets relentlessly teased every day at school. I want to die. I try to overdose on four aspirin.
Shelley Brown-Weird Girl Adventures from A to Z
If you love me and I’m feeling sad, please buy me paper towels, preferably Bounty in a six-pack or greater. Having a cabinet full of paper towels gives me a feeling of abundance, so please do this for me if you love me. Won’t you? Paper towels equals happy Weird Girl.
Shelley Brown-Weird Girl Adventures from A to Z
Growing up with a feminist mother was confusing and, at times, felt simply abnormal. But if my mom wasn’t who she was, I wouldn’t be who I am. As matter of fact, women like my mother were the pioneers who taught many of us perseverance and endurance.
Shelley Brown-Weird Girl Adventures from A to Z
I cleaned out my closet and threw out the clothes that didn’t fit, the clothes that were old, the clothes that were stained, the clothes that were tight, and the clothes that were loose until there was nothing in my closet. I stand here naked, and see who I really am.
Shelley Brown-Weird Girl Adventures from A to Z
I want to thank the friend who went under that bathroom stall for reminding me that when you are a friend, you just do…
Shelley Brown-Weird Girl Adventures from A to Z
I have this craving to be some ball-buster chick who, when you look at her, think, “She likes her rock hard, her cock hard, and her liquor harder,” yet I know that this striving has everything to do with the what’s lurking behind my softer feminine side. Hard and edgy. I know them well. I sought them out, tried them on and wore them in the many forms so many of us do, from fuck me to fuck you, and everything in between.
Shelley Brown-Weird Girl Adventures from A to Z
My teeth were now as white as Chiclets, but hey you can never be too thin, too rich or have white enough teeth. If you ever want to see the results, I’ll send you some of my wedding photos where I am straining to get the most teeth visibility possible.
Shelley Brown-Weird Girl Adventures from A to Z
Friendship equals no appointment required.
Shelley Brown-Weird Girl Adventures from A to Z
I was fourteen years-old, singing and strumming away on my six-string acoustic guitar to the songs of the sixties and seventies limited to the aforementioned “Cocaine,” “Leaving on a Jet Plane,” and “House of the Rising Sun.” I had no idea Lola was a man and someone else was glad they were a man. I always tell people, “I’ve been to that desert. I’ve been on that horse and he did have a name, I just was never allowed to tell anyone.
Shelley Brown-Weird Girl Adventures from A to Z
My personal hell is a place filled with loud, cocky, inked hipster—millennials. It’s a place where every guy looks like a member of Mumford & Sons, and all the women shun makeup. No, it isn’t Lollapalooza, nor an Arcade Fire concert. No, it isn’t some hipster independent coffee shop serving the latest trend in cold brewed coffee and a donut. No, not a craft cocktail lounge playing Daft Punk on vinyl while everyone sits on low striped cushions and corduroy couches wearing color schemes of pants and tops that make no sense. I’ll give you a hint. A woman walked around wearing a t-shirt stating, “Data is the new bacon.” Excuse me, but fuck you, it is not! Okay, fine. Last hint. All the Mumford & Sons dudes and non-makeup wearing inked millennials are wearing the exact same shirt. Slap yourself if you get this wrong. My hell is the APPLE STORE!
Shelley Brown-Weird Girl Adventures from A to Z
Besides being a low, loud talker and a fast walker, I am a chain breaker. If you send me something to repost because it’s going to cure cancer or save someone’s life, I will break every chain. I’m sorry that I’m responsible for the continued suffering of so many.
Shelley Brown-Weird Girl Adventures from A to Z
Some people put years into their heroic accomplishments; assassins do not. While stalking Richard Nixon, Bremer wrote, “I’m as important as the start of WWI. I just need the little opening, and a second of time.” Such narcissism is a central feature of every assassin, and like many of their characteristics, it is in us all to some degree. In his Pulitzer Prize winning book Denial of Death, Ernest Becker observes that narcissism is universal. Becker says every child’s “whole organism shouts the claim of his natural narcissism. It is too all-absorbing and relentless to be an aberration, it expresses the heart of the creature: the desire to stand out, to be the one in creation.” Becker says we all look for heroics in our lives, adding that in some people “it is a screaming for glory as uncritical and reflexive as the howling of a dog.” But the howls for glory of assassins had been unanswered in their mundane pre-attack lives. The assassin might be weird or unusual, but we cannot say we don’t understand his motives, his goal. He wants what Americans want: recognition, and he wants what all people want: significance. People who don’t get that feeling in childhood seek ways to get it in adulthood. It is as if they have been malnourished for a lifetime and seek to fix it with one huge meal. The same search for significance is part of the motivation for the young gang member who kills, because violence is the fastest way to get identity. Murderer Jack Henry Abbott describes the “involuntary pride and exhilaration all convicts feel when they are chained up hand and foot like dangerous animals. The world has focused on us for a moment. We are somebody capable of threatening the world.” Ernest Becker writes, “The urge to heroism is natural, and to admit it honest. For everyone to admit it would probably release such pent-up force as to be devastating to society.
Gavin de Becker (The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence)
Some people put years into their heroic accomplishments; assassins do not. While stalking Richard Nixon, Bremer wrote, “I’m as important as the start of WWI. I just need the little opening, and a second of time.” Such narcissism is a central feature of every assassin, and like many of their characteristics, it is in us all to some degree. In his Pulitzer Prize winning book Denial of Death, Ernest Becker observes that narcissism is universal. Becker says every child’s “whole organism shouts the claim of his natural narcissism. It is too all-absorbing and relentless to be an aberration, it expresses the heart of the creature: the desire to stand out, to be the one in creation.” Becker says we all look for heroics in our lives, adding that in some people “it is a screaming for glory as uncritical and reflexive as the howling of a dog.” But the howls for glory of assassins had been unanswered in their mundane pre-attack lives. The assassin might be weird or unusual, but we cannot say we don’t understand his motives, his goal. He wants what Americans want: recognition, and he wants what all people want: significance. People who don’t get that feeling in childhood seek ways to get it in adulthood. It is as if they have been malnourished for a lifetime and seek to fix it with one huge meal. The same search for significance is part of the motivation for the young gang member who kills, because violence is the fastest way to get identity. Murderer Jack Henry Abbott describes the “involuntary pride and exhilaration all convicts feel when they are chained up hand and foot like dangerous animals. The world has focused on us for a moment. We are somebody capable of threatening the world.
Gavin de Becker (The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence)
I didn’t think my own chart was weird, but in January, I showed it to my team, thinking they’d find it really inspiring and motivating. But people respond to mortality in very different ways. It was the worst meeting I’ve ever run. I don’t think they knew what I was trying to convey. Some people see that as, “Hey, every year is really exciting and valuable,” and some people react with, “Oh wow, I’m gonna die.” It didn’t go over well, so I don’t share that chart anymore. Experiment failed.
Timothy Ferriss (Tribe Of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World)
If someone’s baseline rewards aren’t adequate or equitable, her focus will be on the unfairness of her situation and the anxiety of her circumstance. You’ll get neither the predictability of extrinsic motivation nor the weirdness of intrinsic motivation. You’ll get very little motivation at all. But once we’re past that threshold, carrots and sticks can achieve precisely the opposite of their intended aims. (Pink, 2009, p. 35)
Larry Ferlazzo (Helping Students Motivate Themselves: Practical Answers to Classroom Challenges)
Numbers 12: 6 - 8 When there is a prophet among you, I, the Lord, reveal myself to them in visions, I speak to them in dreams. But this is not true of my servant Moses; he is faithful in all my house. With him I speak face to face, clearly and not in riddles; he sees the form of the Lord. So, unless you're Moses, this verse makes it obvious that God will not always speak clearly. Often he speaks softly and in riddles. He will reveal something supernaturally to us, but it's always something we need to pay close attention to. We usually need to then carefully interpret and apply what we hear. We are convinced that God's motivation behind this - as with all he does - is to draw us into relationship.
Mike Pilavachi (Everyday Supernatural: Living a Spirit-Led Life without Being Weird)
One of the books that has had the most influence on me is a little manual called Rhinoceros Success by Scott Alexander. I know, it’s a weird title, but give it a read. I read it first when I was 12 years old and I still read it once a year to this day. It teaches you in life to be like a rhino - to have a single purpose, to charge at obstacles and goals with total commitment and to develop a thick skin to deal with the slings and arrows that try to slow you down. Still to this day, Shara loves to buy me things for my birthday with a rhino on. Lampshades, slippers, cushions, door knobs…you name it. In fact, it’s become a bit of a family joke to get me the most obscure rhino trinket they can find. But it means that at home wherever I look I am reminded of the simple (and fun!) truths of the book. They are all daily reminders to me to be a rhino in life. So find a way, whatever way works for you, of making motivation part of your daily life. Write notes to yourself on your bathroom mirror, keep a book that inspires you next to the loo, and feed your mind with the good whenever you can. If you do this every day, it’ll soon become a habit. A good habit. One that empowers you every day to climb high, aim big, and have fun along the way.
Bear Grylls (A Survival Guide for Life: How to Achieve Your Goals, Thrive in Adversity, and Grow in Character)
Dear God, When I think about all the bad things that have happened to me over the course of those years, I can only thank you for making me aware of the fact that the world is not a safe place for fools like me. Hurt always came from those people that I considered my family. Girls always ended up stabbing me in the back. Boys somehow surprisingly transformed from mere brothers to something else I can’t understand, because I’ve never seen a boy getting married to his sister. Magic! Goodness came to me as a curse more than a blessing, and I’ve always ended up with wolves with ulterior motives. They tell their own stories, spin a web of lies, give you a character and oblige you to assume that role even when you keep telling them you don’t fit in that role. Unfortunately, I’ve always mastered the role of the fool, though doing it unconsciously, but always ended up wiser each time. Weird, huh?
Friends
Wings can be used for more than flying. Fan the flames of inspiration with them. - The Malwatch
Scaylen Renvac
You are not weird for wishing to be great. You were inherently wired for greatness by the Heavens. Embrace your desire for greatness and work on it until it manifests.
Gift Gugu Mona (365 Motivational Life Lessons)
You are not weird for wishing to be great. You were inherently wired for greatness by the Heavens. Embrace your desire for greatness, and work on it until it manifests.
Gift Gugu Mona (365 Motivational Life Lessons)