The Only Thing to Do
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The Only Thing to Do
To adapt an analogy from the Austrian philosopher Otto Neurath, we’re like sailors on a ship that long ago left port and now urgently needs repair. We’d love to return to dock and get it kitted out perfectly – setting up our lives so they’re just as we’d like them – then start the journey again. Instead we have to patch things up mid-voyage as best
... See moreFundamental personal change is often painful because it is so very transformational. And we cannot become everything we are meant to be without leaving behind who we once were.
Robin Sharma • The Everyday Hero Manifesto: Activate Your Positivity, Maximize Your Productivity, Serve The World
It's a fallacy that people change due to "ideas"—as if you just need to get the right book into someone's hands, the right "mental model", and viola! The change starts to happen.
Change is the result of a process, and an idea is only one small part of that process.
In an electronic age, in which everything is connected and can practically be pres... See more
we are simply incapable of imagining ourselves on the other side of a profound change, because the present self doing the imagining is the very self that needs to have died in order for the future self being imagined to emerge.
This is why the profoundest changes tend to happen not willed but spawned by fertile despair — the surrender at the rock bo
... See more“The practices that carry the greatest potential for transformative change are usually counter- instinctual.” I take him to mean that if you’re trying to get better at life in some way– more patient, or better at listening, or less prone to procrastination or anxiety or self- sabotage– the necessary actions are pretty much guaranteed not to feel es
... See moreOliver Burkeman • The Awkwardness Principle
Whether people change their mindset in order to further their career, heal from a loss, help their children thrive, lose weight, or control their anger, change needs to be maintained. It’s amazing—once a problem improves, people often stop doing what caused it to improve. Once you feel better, you stop taking your medicine. But change doesn’t work
... See moreCarol S. Dweck • Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
This is, I think, why being a creative or an entrepreneurial person is one of the steepest paths to self-actualization. To succeed at what you are doing, you HAVE to manage yourself wisely (and thus face and break patterns that no longer serve you) to make the path work. Your ability to thrive is dependent on your ability to make what is unconsciou... See more