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September Pointers (8th of 8 posts)

zzz learn to surfHere’s the 8th of 8 posts this September highlighting five random pointers or ideas I’ve come across over the years.

They’re from print or are things I’ve overheard. Each one stands alone and they aren’t in any order of importance. I feel that without attributions, each pointer is more impactful and useful. Because they ring true, they don’t need a known name for validation, plus I’ve often modified the wording to make it more clear to me.

– Affluence breeds impatience and impatience undermines well being. You don’t see many impatient poor people.

– What does the resistance to different stuff generated by our lizard brain feel like? First, unhappiness. We feel like hell. A low-grade misery pervades everything. We’re bored, we’re restless. Now, we live in a consumer culture acutely aware of this unhappiness and uses its profit-seeking artillery to exploit it, by selling us a product, a drug, a distraction.

– You can determine how your life plays out by deciding where you live.

– The quality of a society is more important than your place in that society. In other words, better to be a small fish in a clean pond than a big fish in a polluted lake.

– What upsets people is not things themselves, it’s their judgments about things. For example, take the insults from others. Treat them like the barks of a dog. When a dog barks, you make a mental note that the dog appears to dislike you, but you’d be a fool to get upset by it.

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September Pointers (7th of 8 posts)

zzz patternsHere’s the 7th of 8 posts this September highlighting five random pointers or ideas I’ve come across over the years.

They’re from print or are things I’ve overheard. Each one stands alone and they aren’t in any order of importance. I feel that without attributions, each pointer is more impactful and useful. Because they ring true, they don’t need a known name for validation, plus I’ve often modified the wording to make it more clear to me.

 

– Jonas Salk, inventor of the polio vaccine, said when asked what the main aim of his life had been: “To be a good ancestor.”

– Individuals who are realized in their own lives almost never criticize others. If they speak at all, it is to offer encouragement.

– Our minds tend to put off the habit we want to create. So make it so easy you can’t say no. Actually doing the habit is much more important than how much of it you do. If you want to start exercising, just do three pushups every other day. It’s so dumb and easy you can’t not do it, and after two weeks or so the habit will be set and you can add on to your “routine.” Establish a habit first then add in volume.

– It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write.

– “It comes down to trustworthiness.” Trust is a prerequisite for happiness. Trust not only of your government, of institutions, but trust of your neighbors. Several studies found that trust – more than income or even health – is the biggest factor in determining our happiness.

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September Pointers (6th of 8 posts)

zzz hitchHere’s the 6th of 8 posts this September highlighting five random pointers or ideas I’ve come across over the years.

They’re from print or are things I’ve overheard. Each one stands alone and they aren’t in any order of importance. I feel that without attributions, each pointer is more impactful and useful. Because they ring true, they don’t need a known name for validation, plus I’ve often modified the wording to make it more clear to me.

 

– Why is self-discipline worth possessing? Because people possessing it have the ability to determine what they do with their life. Those lacking self-discipline will have the path they take through life determined by someone or something else.

– Memory is like velcro. Your brain hosts loops. The more hooks an idea has, the better it will cling to memory.

– The bitterness of low quality stays with you, but the sweetness of a low price dissipates fast.

– The simple act of staying still is part of what makes meditation training effective. You’re learning not to automatically follow every single impulse that arises.

– “In general, people can be trusted.” People who agree with this are happier than those who don’t. Trusting your neighbors is especially important. Simply knowing them can make a real difference in your quality of life. Of all factors affecting the crime rate for a given area, the one that made the biggest difference wasn’t the number of police patrols or anything like that but, rather, how many people you know within a fifteen-minute walk of your house.

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September Pointers (5th of 8 posts)

saying behave betterHere’s the 5th of 8 posts this September highlighting five random pointers or ideas I’ve come across over the years.

They’re from print or are things I’ve overheard. Each one stands alone and they aren’t in any order of importance. I feel that without attributions, each pointer is more impactful and useful. Because they ring true, they don’t need a known name for validation, plus I’ve often modified the wording to make it more clear to me.

 

– Make haste, slowly.

– Telling stories using real people is the most compelling way to get an idea across to someone.

– An opening line should invite the reader to begin the story. It should say: Listen. Come in here. You want to know about this.

– Most health advice can be summed up like this: Eat less, move more, sleep enough, and relax.

– So here’s something true, although it’s a little corny: What I regret most in my life are my failures of kindness. Those moments when another person was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded…sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly. Or ask yourself, “Who, in your life, do you remember most fondly, with the most undeniable feelings of warmth?” Those who were kindest to you, I bet. It’s a little bit neat and tidy maybe, and certainly hard to implement, but I’d say, as a goal in life, you could do worse than: Try to be kinder.

 

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September Pointers (4th of 8 posts)

worryHere’s the 4th of 8 posts this September highlighting five random pointers or ideas I’ve come across over the years.

They’re from print or are things I’ve overheard. Each one stands alone and they aren’t in any order of importance. I feel that without attributions, each pointer is more impactful and useful. Because they ring true, they don’t need a known name for validation, plus I’ve often modified the wording to make it more clear to me.

 

– Remove all the space within the atoms making up the human body, and every person who’s ever lived will fit inside a baseball.

– The best advice is this: Keep your living expenses LOW. The smaller you live materially, the bigger you can live creatively. You’ll be able to stretch and grow with the most possible freedom. It’s the reason to work really hard to avoid all debts, and to keep your lifestyle really manageable. If I’d been saddled with a big life, I don’t think I ever could have found my way to the freedom I have now.

– When you make another human being say, ‘What happens next?’ you’ve told a good story.

– Not at work? Don’t check work emails. Any work problems that arise will linger in your mind making your free time useless due to preoccupation. You won’t experience relaxation or productivity. So focus on work or something else, but not in between because time without attention is worthless. Value attention over time.

– Winning an auction is the right to pay more for something than everyone else thought it was worth.

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September Pointers (3rd of 8 posts)

Saying - victim ofHere’s the 3rd of 8 posts this September highlighting five random pointers or ideas I’ve come across over the years.

They’re from print or are things I’ve overheard. Each one stands alone and they aren’t in any order of importance. I feel that without attributions, each pointer is more impactful and useful. Because they ring true, they don’t need a known name for validation, plus I’ve often modified the wording to make it more clear to me.

 

– When you’re able to transfer emotion to another person, whatever it is you use to do that’s what art is.

– Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

– Learn from everyone, follow no one, look for patterns, and work hard.

– Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakens.

– Most people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.

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September Pointers (2nd of 8 posts)

saying on enthusiasm Here’s the 2nd of 8 posts this September highlighting five random pointers or ideas I’ve come across over the years.

They’re from print or are things I’ve overheard. Each one stands alone and they aren’t in any order of importance. I feel that without attributions, each pointer is more impactful and useful. Because they ring true, they don’t need a known name for validation, plus I’ve often modified the wording to make it more clear to me.

 

 

– Email, calls, and meetings are really someone else’s agenda for your time.

– Die young, as late as possible.

– A good question is better than a bad answer.

– Live simply and pay as you go, debt is slavery.

– Peoples’ lives are made up of stories. Stories are what people relate to, it’s probably been true since we began communicating. Information provides a meaningful pattern for data, but a story provides an even more meaningful pattern for information, making it easier to take in.

 

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September Pointers (1st of 8 posts)

taking ideasHere’s the 1st of 8 posts this September highlighting five random pointers or ideas I’ve come across over the years.

They’re from print or are things I’ve overheard. Each one stands alone and they aren’t in any order of importance. I feel that without attributions, each pointer is more impactful and useful. Because they ring true, they don’t need a known name for validation, plus I’ve often modified the wording to make it more clear to me.

– Create your own system, or be enslaved by another’s.

– Are you shooting for comfort and luxury, when all you need to make yourself happy is something to be enthusiastic about?

– There’s probably no god. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.

– Be wary of keeping up with the Joneses which is really just the fear of missing out. Comparison is the thief of joy.

– Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued.