change
The reason this is so liberating, for anyone with even a hint of perfectionism, is that it means you get to give up on the exhausting struggle to take charge of your life, so as to steer it in a new direction. You get to abandon all hope of one day finding the perfect time management system– or perfect relationship, job, neighborhood, etcetera– and
... See moreOliver Burkeman • There's No Such Thing as a Fresh Start
Most of our attempts to become better people, fitter and healthier, more moral/ productive/ organised, and so forth, make this problem worse– because it's basically impossible to pursue any program of personal change without the thought, somewhere in the back of your mind, that successfully completing the change will catapult you into a new and
... See moreOliver Burkeman • What if You Never Sort Your Life Out?
In our everyday life we are usually trying to do something, trying to change something into something else, or trying to attain something. Just this trying is already in itself an expression of our true nature. The meaning lies in the effort itself. We should find out the meaning of our effort before we attain something. So Dogen said, “We should
... See moreShunryu Suzuki • Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind
But it’s worse than a mere contradiction– because what we are really doing when we attempt to achieve fixity in the midst of change, Watts argues, is trying to separate ourselves from all that change, trying to enforce a distinction between ourselves and the rest of the world. To seek security is to try to remove yourself from change, and thus from
... See moreOliver Burkeman • The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Cant Stand Positive Thinking
You are accustomed to authority, or to the atmosphere of authority, which you think will lead you to spirituality. You think and hope that another can, by his extraordinary powers—a miracle—transport you to this realm of eternal freedom, which is Happiness. Your whole outlook on life is based on that authority. You have listened to me for three
... See moreKrishnamurti • Total Freedom: The Essential Krishnamurti
It turns out that even when students understand that retrieval practice is a superior strategy, they often fail to persist long enough to get the lasting benefit. For example, when students are presented with a body of material to master, say a stack of foreign vocabulary flashcards, and are free to decide when to drop a card out of the deck
... See morePeter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III, Mark A. McDaniel • Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning
I had always thought my best sessions were the ones where I explained things clearly. It turned out my patients liked the ones where I was passionate about change. It mattered less to them what I said than what they sensed stirring in my soul. I stopped trying to emulate the detached, cerebral style of the shrinks I’d grown up with. Instead, I
... See morePhil Stutz, Barry Michels • Coming Alive
“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
... See moreOliver Burkeman • The Awkwardness Principle
The moment we deny ourselves some gratification, we feel deprived. Part X appeals to our selfishness, telling us we should never have to feel deprived.
The only way to fight this is to have an equally selfish reason not to give in to our impulses. In other words, we need to find a reward in depriving ourselves. In the lower-channel, purely material