Adam Callahan
@adamgcallahan
Adam Callahan
- In our everyday 3D lives, we apply force to matter and get predictable results. We unpack groceries, chop garlic, and switch on a stovetop to boil water for spaghetti. These familiar objects appear to be inert. They do what you make them do. But this model doesn’t port to inner moves. In the subtle realms of mind and emotion, applying force creates... See more
from Could you let it go by Kristin Posehn
- How difficult it is to do as one ought every day without a single interruption. How difficult it is, not to dream up a book, but to write it without lassitude—in a word to be in good heart day after day.
from My Baudelaire Summer
Most people don’t grow up. It’s too damn difficult. What happens is most people get older. That’s the truth of it. They honor their credit cards, they find parking spaces, they marry, they have the nerve to have children, but they don’t grow up. Not really. They get older. But to grow up costs the earth, the earth. It means you take responsibility
... See morefrom Maya Angelou: "Most people don't grow up" • Liberal Arts
It’s not the child’s responsibility to teach the parent who they are; it’s the parent’s responsibility to learn who their child is.
If we have problems that are unsolvable, our unconscious figures that we’re either uniquely special or uniquely defective in some way. That we’re somehow unlike everyone else and that the rules must be different for us. Put simply: we become entitled.
Often, it’s this realization—that you and your problems are actually not privileged in their severi
... See moreHappiness comes from solving problems. The keyword here is “solving.” If you’re avoiding your problems or feel like you don’t have any problems, then you’re going to make yourself miserable. If you feel like you have problems that you can’t solve, you will likewise make yourself miserable. The secret sauce is in the solving of the problems, not in
... See more- Ostaseski summarized the insights he’s learned from the dying as “five invitations to be present.” 1) Don’t wait. 2) Welcome everything, push away nothing. 3) Bring your whole self to the experience. 4) Find a place of rest in the middle of things. 5) Cultivate don’t-know mind. For 2), Ostaseski quoted James Baldwin: “Not everything that can be fac... See more
from What the Dying Teach the Living by longnow.org
The avoidance of suffering is a form of suffering. The avoidance of struggle is a struggle. The denial of failure is a failure. Hiding what is shameful is itself a form of shame.
- Don't try to work in a distinctive style. Just try to do the best job you can; you won't be able to help doing it in a distinctive way.
Style is doing things in a distinctive way without trying to. Trying to is affectation.
Affectation is in effect to pretend that someone other than you is doing the work. You adopt an impressive but fake persona, and... See morefrom How to Do Great Work