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If we hope to change our karma, it means we have to stop making those things happen that cloud mind and body and color our every action. It doesn’t mean doing good deeds. It means knowing who you are and that you are not your karma, whatever it may be at this moment. It means aligning yourself with the way things actually are. It means seeing clear

To summarize, the story-editing approach tries to change people’s personal interpretations of themselves and the social world in ways that make them happier and lead to more desirable behaviors. It is a family of approaches developed by social psychologists that includes writing exercises, such as the one developed by James Pennebaker; the story-pr

I often only feel I have worked enough if, at the end of the day, I am bone-tired and wrung out. The team who designed the original Macintosh computer wore T-shirts boasting WORKING 90 HOURS A WEEK AND LOVING IT! This could be the insane slogan for our professional class. Many of us have built our identities around working to the point of exhaustio

Equally crucial, clear goals are an important flow trigger.12 The state requires focus, and clear goals tell us where and when to put our attention. When goals are clear, the mind doesn’t have to wonder about what to do or what to do next—it already knows. Thus, concentration tightens, motivation heightens, and extraneous information gets filtered

Long practice teaches an artist to direct their gaze in an unusually focused way; it trains them to repurpose areas of their brain; and it changes the very structure of the brain’s neural networks. Ocean’s unusual patterns of thought – and his unusually developed brain – were normal in trained artists. Other neurological researchers have shown that

Morning Pages ask us to have courage. When we do, they give us positive reinforcement. On an “off” day, we can still tell ourselves, “At least I did my pages.” Most days, we can count some small forward motion. Pages lead us to large changes by very small steps.

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

First, you give a task or a goal the power to determine your worth and happiness. You think, “Getting this job, passing this test, dating this person will change my life and make me happy.” When a perfect performance or the achievement of a specific goal becomes the sole measure of your self-worth, too much is at stake to just start working without

Many people do not believe that it takes a person approximately 10 seconds to switch contexts; the time is measured between the final command executed in the previous context and the first command issued in the new context. The hiatus is not noticed because the minds of the users are occupied; they are not aware of the passage of time. However, thi