Just One More

Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.

Thomas Edison

Banish the Traitors

Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.

Shakespeare

The Marshmallow Test

The marshmallow test turned out to be a better predictor of SAT results than the IQ tests given to the four-year-olds. The ability to wait for a second marshmallow reveals a crucial talent of the rational brain. When Mischel looked at why some four-year-olds were able to resist ringing the bell, he found that it wasn't because they wanted the marshmallow any less. These kids also loved sweets. Instead, Mischel discovered, the patient children were better at using reason to control their impulses. They were the kids who covered their eyes, or looked in the other direction, or managed to shift their attention to something other than the delicious marshmallow sitting right there. Rather than fixating on the sweet treat, they got up from the table and looked for something else to play with. It turned out that the same cognitive skills that allowed these kids to thwart temptation also allowed them to spend more time on their homework. In both situations, the prefrontal cortex was forced to exercise its cortical authority and inhibit the impulses that got in the way of the goal.

Jonah Lehrer
How We Decide

Broken Hearts

Only the heart that hurts has a right to joy.

Lewis Smedes

Yale Students Outsmarted By a Rat

A rat was put in a T-shaped maze with a few morsels of food placed on either the far right or left side of the enclosure. The placement of the food is randomly determined, but the dice is rigged: over the long run, the food was placed on the left side sixty per cent of the time. How did the rat respond? It quickly realized that the left side was more rewarding. As a result, it always went to the left, which resulted in a sixty percent success rate. The rat didn't strive for perfection. It didn't search for a Unified Theory of the T-shaped maze, or try to decipher the disorder. Instead, it accepted the inherent uncertainty of the reward and learned to settle for the best possible alternative.

The experiment was then repeated with Yale undergraduates. Unlike the rat, their swollen brains stubbornly searched for the elusive pattern that determined the placement of the reward. They made predictions and then tried to learn from their prediction errors. The problem was that there was nothing to predict: the randomness was real. Because the students refused to settle for a 60 percent success rate, they ended up with a 52 percent success rate. Although most of the students were convinced they were making progress towards identifying the underlying algorithm, they were actually being outsmarted by a rat.

The danger of random processes-things like slot machines and basketball shots-is that they take advantage of a defect built into the emotional brain. Dopamine neurons get such a visceral thrill from watching a hot player sink another jumper or from winning a little change from a one-armed bandit or from correctly guessing the placement of a food morsel that our brains completely misinterpret what's actually going on. We trust our feelings and perceive patterns, but the patterns don't actually exist.

John Lehrer
How We Decide

Powerful Words

Words have profound suggestive power, and there is healing in the very saying of them. Utter a series of panicky words and your mind will immediately go into a mild state of nervousness. You will perhaps feel a sinking in the pit of your stomach that will affect your entire physical mechanism. If, on the contrary, you speak peaceful, quieting words, you mind will react in a peaceful manner.

Use such a word as “tranquility.” Repeat that word slowly several times. Tranquility is one of the most beautiful and melodic of all English words, and the mere saying of it tends to induce a tranquil state.

Another healing word is “serenity.” Picturize serenity as you say it. Repeat it slowly and in the mood of which the word is a symbol. Words such as these have a healing potency when used in this manner.

It is also helpful to use lines from poetry or passages from the Scriptures. The words of the Bible have a particularly strong therapeutic value. Drop them into your mind, allowing them to “dissolve” in consciousness, and they will spread a healing balm over your entire mental structure. This is one of the simplest processes to perform and also one of the most effective in attaining peace of mind.

Norman Vincent Peale
The Power of Positive Thinking

Stepping on Toes

The one who never steps on toes is probably standing still.

Peaks & Valleys

One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.

GK Chesterton

The Goal

Not a grand performance but an act of love.

Mistakes

The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.

John Powell

Delayed Living

One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon-instead of enjoying the roses blooming outside our windows today.

Dale Carnegie

Resisting

One must face the fact: the power of Evil in the world is not finally resistible by incarnate creatures, however 'good.'

J.R.R. Tolkien

Looking Foward

One of the sure signs of growth is that you are no longer impressed with how you did it yesterday.

John Maxwell

Launching Out

One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.

Andre Gide

Greatness

Not in his goals but in his transitions man is great.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

2011 Resolution

One resolution I have made, and try always to keep, is this: "To rise above little things."

John Burroughs