Expect, Plan, Prepare

Expect the best, plan for the worst, and prepare to be surprised.

Denis Waitley

Another Twist

God always has another custard pie up his sleeve.

Lynn Redgrave in "Georgy Girl"

The Glory of Friendship

The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when they discover that someone else believes in them and is willing to trust them.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Highway of Life

Roads? Where we’re going we don’t need roads.

Doc Brown, Back to the Future

True Renewal

Genuine beginnings depend upon inner realignment rather than on external shifts, for it is when we are aligned with deep longings that we become powerfully motivated.

William Bridges

Magnet Affects Moral Reasoning

Researchers at MIT say they’ve been able to affect people’s moral reasoning with magnets. The neuroscientists applied a magnetic field to the scalp of subjects near the the right temporoparietal junction (RTPJ). It’s highly active when individuals are faced with determining right from wrong. The magnet appeared to make them more likely to make moral judgments based on end results rather than intentions. In one case, a woman put a spoon of white powder in her friend’s coffee, thinking it’s sugar when it’s really poison. The coffee drinker dies. When people heard this story with the magnet in place, they were less empathetic to the woman and more focused on the result of her action.

Stephen Goforth

Friendship's Value

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... it has no survival value; rather is one of those things that give value to survival.

C.S. Lewis

The Song in Your Heart

A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart, and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words.

Donna Roberts

Rules of Life

Four rules of life: Show up, Pay attention, Tell the truth, Don't be attached to the results.

Angeles Arrien

The Detour

Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.

Denis Waitley

The Text & Commentary

The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary.

Arthur Schopenhauer

How Many Friends

How many friends can you have? According to Dunbar’s number, the magic number is 150. Oxford University anthropologist Robin Dunbar says 150 is the most the brain can absorb. People within that circle had a personal relationship based on history and shared experience. He explains his reasoning in the book How Many Friends Does One Person Need? The first five are people you’d go to prison for. You wouldn’t do it for most of the next 10 but you would loan them $100. You’re less emotionally engaged with them. You might lend $20 to those in the next layer out, taking you to 50 people. The final 100 are folks you might do a favor for. Some researchers are using Dunbar’s number to determine how much storage is needed for mobile phone address books. Others are using it as a guide toward building the optimum organizational structure.

Stephen Goforth

Gone to His Head

Failure has gone to his head.

Wilson Mizner

A Delighted Pre-Occupation

There may be those who have first felt mere sexual appetite for a woman and then gone on at a later stage to “fall in love with her”. But I doubt if this is at all common. Very often what comes first (with true love) is simply a delighted pre-occupation with her in totality. A man in this state really hasn’t leisure to think of sex. He is too busy thinking of a person. The fact that she is a woman is far less important than the fact that she is herself.

CS Lewis
The Four Loves

How to Change

Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.

Soren Kierkegaard

Consider it Joy

"Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds." James 1:2

What does this Bible verse tell you about our chances of running into trouble? James writes not “if” but “when” you face trials. They are inevitable. The words “many kinds” is rendered “various” in some translations. In the original, it’s the same word from which we get “polka dots”. He’s saying we are going to face trouble in all different shapes, sizes, colors and varieties. Life is dotted with trials. What does James say to do when our lives are filled with difficulties? Do we ignore our problems? No, we face our polka dot trials with outright joy because, as he goes on to tell us, "When you prove you believe, you become stronger."

Stephen Goforth

The Fault

The fault may not be so much that they hate life as that they do not hate the sinful part of themselves.
M. Scott Peck

Entitled

Do people consciously or unconsciously try to balance good and bad deeds? That’s the idea behind research at the University of Toronto. Students who chose green products were not as quick to behave nicely as those who didn’t make the environmental choice. Researchers say a decision that provides some degree of moral warmth make give the good-doer a mindset that they are entitled to a selfish act because they’ve already done their part. Details are in the journal Psychological Science.

Stephen Goforth

More Wonderful

God creates out of nothing. Wonderful you say. Yes, to be sure, but he does what is still more wonderful: he makes saints out of sinners.

Soren Kierkegaard