Supritha S

If you feel tempted to live a more polymathic life, Ahmed suggests that you can use your time more efficiently to make space for multiple interests.

But it would help us to remember that what we really want isn’t the thing itself. What we want is the experience of ease and unfettered enjoyment that is promised, falsely, by the thought of acquiring the thing—the restaurant meal, the cruise, the raise, the loving relationship—even though everything comes with its own pains and complications and... See more

For example…Getting healthy — is eating junk food really a way to “treat yourself” and “enjoy the good stuff in life” … or are you telling yourself a story that isn't really true?

On the surface, these phrases sound inspiring. What we fail to realize, however, is that any quest for rapid growth contradicts every stabilizing force in our lives. Remember, the natural tendency of life is to find stability. Anytime equilibrium is lost, the system is motivated to restore it.

And precisely for that reason, I haven’t had trouble sticking to it. There are extra-challenging days, but because they aren’t the norm, I can always be ready to meet them. Excited even. The improvement has been very consistent. There’s no more bargaining, no dread, and no compromise. I can live here.

But here's the thing: automaticity only occurs as the result of lots of repetition and practice. The more reps you put in, the more automatic a behavior becomes.

As far as I can tell, interpreting problems as the crimes of clear perpetrators is the only way we attempt to justify real hatred for people. We need that sense of simplicity – the bad thing comes from the bad people — to hate a person or group without reservation, and history is full of examples.

First, if you can convince yourself that a given problem is caused by bad people, then it means someone else is responsible for it.