Rob Tourtelot
I’m going to settle for small, random stabs of extreme interestingness – moments of intense awareness of the things I’m about to lose, and of gladness that they exist
from Helen Garner on Happiness: ‘It’s Taken Me 80 Years to Figure Out It’s Not a Tranquil, Sunlit Realm’ by Helen Garner
- We are all engaged in two projects: living life, and telling stories about it. Our lives as lived are often chaotic, jumbled, aimless. They suggest no obvious purpose. Think of William James’s “blooming, buzzing confusion,” or what Joan Didion called “the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.” We make this chaos workable, as Didio... See more
from Why Frame Problems? — Frame Problems by Jake Orthwein
But getting older is hard. It is a gift, yes, but it is also heavy. Just as the doors of possibility become fewer and farther between, the burden of grief gets bigger. As the years pass, our losses in life accumulate, threatening to weigh us down. It takes active effort—breaths, walks, conversations with friends, rest—to slow down and remember tha
... See morefrom Is This It? This is It. by Katie Hawkins Gaar
- In both the art and the business worlds, the difference between the amateurs and the professionals is simple: The professionals know they’re winging it. The amateurs pretend they’re not.
from The Art of Asking: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help by Amanda Palmer
How do you know? It’s a question we need to ask more often, both of ourselves and of others. The power lies in its frankness. It’s nonjudgmental—a straightforward expression of doubt and curiosity that doesn’t put people on the defensive.
from Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know by Adam Grant
- It begins to feel as though you’re failing at life, in some indistinct way, if you’re not treating your time off as an investment in your future. Sometimes this pressure takes the form of the explicit argument that you ought to think of your leisure hours as an opportunity to become a better worker (“Relax! You’ll Be More Productive,” reads the hea... See more
from Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
- "But it is true as a matter of conscious experience. The reality of your life is always now. And to realize this, we will see, is liberating. In fact, I think there is nothing more important to understand if you want to be happy in this world."
from Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion by Sam Harriss
The success of Morning Pages hinges on our doing them as close to awakening as we can.
from The Miracle of Morning Pages: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About the Most Important Artist's Way Tool: A Special from Tarcher/Penguin by Julia Cameron
Meditation is not about manufacturing a state of mind that’s clear, calm or full of insight. It’s about interfering less and less with what is actually here.
from John Tarrant : Articles by John Tarrant