…if you can forgive as well as forget, if you can keep from growing sour, surly, bitter and cynical… You’ve got it half-licked.
http://www.raptitude.com/2010/05/never-forget-your-rights/
You have the right to a purpose. If you do not have a purpose, one will be appointed for you.
~ David Cain
What a delightful riff on the standarized wording commonly known as the “Miranda rights”!
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The fountain of content must spring up in the mind, and he who hath so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happines by changing anything but his own disposition, will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the grief he proposes to remove.
Eat like a human being, drink like a human being, dress up, marry, have children, get politically active — suffer abuse, bear with a headstrong brother, father, son, neighbor, or companion. Show us these things so we can see that you truly have learned from the philosophers.
~ Epictetus
https://www.raptitude.com/2009/08/should-we-have-compassion-for-killers/
All of these desperate and depraved acts we see ‘bad people’ do, we are all ultimately capable of them too. Under different circumstances, with a different upbringing and different experiences, every one of us could be a killer. But if you got lucky, and that’s not the way it turned out, you might be inclined to put yourself on a distinctly higher plane.
~ David Cain
I’ve learned to use venom and outrage as indicators. When I taste venom… when I feel outraged… that’s when I redouble my efforts to use my brain and be rational.
I’m not convinced (one way or the other) as to wether it’s even possible to never feel outraged–or if that’s even a good end-goal.
But I am certain that–without exception–if ever I let my outrage direct my actions, I regret it later.
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Ambition means tying your well-being to what other people say or do.
Self-indulgence means tying it to the things that happen to you.
Sanity means tying it to your own actions.~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
http://zenhabits.net/2008/08/whats-wrong-with-the-world-not-a-damn-thing/
This type of view of the world — and like I said, I think it’s the prevailing view — stems from an ideal that many people have in their heads of what the world should be like. They might not realize they have that ideal, but it’s there. And the world will never reach this Platonic ideal, because it’s just this image of perfection that does not match reality. Reality and this ideal are incompatible.
~ Leo Babauta
This ties in with yesterday’s comments about the Beatles’ Let It Be. There’s certainly a peculier passion associated with youth. But there’s a much nicer circumspection of age. When things are going badly, relax for they will not last. Whent things are going well, relax for they will not last. The error is in not relaxing, not in the circumstances being observed.
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https://www.raptitude.com/2009/03/protect-your-dreams-from-contamination/
In fact, I’ve let years of my life go by this way. I could be working on something I truly love, and then I’d hit a snag. I’d get frustrated, then avoid it for the rest of the day. I just wouldn’t want to be frustrated anymore, so I wouldn’t touch it. There’s always later. Perhaps if a better mood came along I’d be willing to tackle it.
~ David Cain
I’m not sure I agree with how easy it sounds the way he puts it. But he’s dead on with the point.
Here’s another spin on it, the late, great, Jack Vance as Curly.
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https://www.raptitude.com/2011/09/how-to-walk-across-a-parking-lot/
I aspire to one day look back and say: I wrote a single thing which is as good as the above.
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http://www.asianefficiency.com/productivity/coveys-time-management-quadrant/
The caveat is that this quadrant can be mistaken as something that shouldn’t be part of life, but that is not true. It is really important to have a balanced life between work and your personal life. You need downtime to not get burnt out and that is where quadrant four comes into the picture. The challenge is you allocate most of your time to quadrant two, with just enough of time spent in quadrant four to get by.
~ Thanh Pham
I disagree.
Everything in the UN-important half (the lower half in the diagrams) of the quadrant is the Bad Lands to be avoided. There’s no such thing as “work life balance.” I spent decades trying to fiddle with that balance. There is only life. I strive to do only important things. I strive to only do NON-urgent things by paying attention to what I should be doing. I strive for a wide variety of activities which are all necessary, important and not urgent. One might even say: “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
I have control over only two things: My thoughts and my actions.
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