Giving Others Room to Walk

No man walks with dignity who’s steps are rushed.

Being Good

No man knows how bad he is until he has tried to be good. There is a silly idea about that good people don't know what temptation means.

C.S. Lewis

Smile

The nice part about wearing a smile is that one size fits all.

Taking the opportunity

Never miss a good chance to shut up.

Looking forward

Never let the sense of failure corrupt your new action.
Oswald Chambers

Going against the flow

Never forget that only dead fish swim with the stream. Malcolm Muggeridge

Clever and Pleasent

"My mother used to say to me, 'Elwood' - she always called me Elwood - 'Elwood, in this world you must be oh-so clever, or oh-so pleasant.' For years I was clever. I'd recommend pleasant - and you may quote me." Jimmy Stewart as Elwood P. Dowd in HARVEY

A complete life

My life would be complete if, before I die, I...

Your project

The most important do-it-yourself project is your life.

If it feels easy, then you’re doing it wrong

Jonah Lehrer has some advice for would-be creative thinkers, said Brian Braiker in USA Today. In his new book, Imagine, the Wall Street Journal’s brain-science columnist explores how innovation occurs. To activate the areas of the brain responsible for creativity, says Lehrer, it’s best to find an escape from stress. “When we’re not relaxed—when we’re really vigilant—our attention is focused on the problem,” he says. “That means we can’t hear the quiet voice in the back of our head trying to tell us what the answer is.” The best artists and innovators, from Bob Dylan to Steve Jobs, says Lehrer, have a sense of when to focus and when to take a shower or drink a cup of coffee and wait for that voice to come.

That’s not to say that you can down an espresso and come up with the iPod, said Bill Tipper in BNRreview.com. Lehrer says that the capacity to create isn’t just about the “aha” moment. “Because creativity has long been associated with the Muses, we’ve assumed that it should feel easy and effortless, that if we’re truly inventive then the gods will take care of us,” he says. “But nothing could be further from the truth.” Lehrer argues instead that creativity is a talent that, like any other human talent, can only be developed through an expenditure of effort. “Even after we’ve learned to effectively wield the imagination, we still have to invest the time and energy needed to fine-tune our creations,” he says. “If it feels easy, then you’re doing it wrong.”

The Week magazine

Mental Health

Mental health is an on-going process of dedication to reality at all costs. M Scott Peck

A Wish

May you live all the days of your life.

Jonathan Swift

Really in Love

A man (really in love) 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

Going with Our Gut

Every feeling is like a summary of data, a quick encapsulation of all the information processing that we don’t have access to. When it comes to making predictions about complex events, this extra information is often essential. It represents the difference between an informed guess and random chance.

How might this work in everyday life? Let’s say, for example, that you’re given lots of information about how twenty different stocks have performed over a period of time. You’ll soon discover that you have difficulty remembering all the financial data. If somebody asks you which stocks performed the best, you’ll probably be unable to give a good answer. You can’t process all the information. However, if you’re asked which stocks trigger the best feelings – your emotions are now being quizzed – you will suddenly be able to identify the best stocks. According to Tilmann Betsch, the psychologist who performed this clever little experiment, your feelings will “reveal a remarkable degree of sensitivity” to the actual performance of all of the different securities. The investments that rose in value will be associated with the most positive emotions, while the shares that went down in value will trigger a vague sense of unease.

But this doesn’t meant we can simply rely on every fleeting whim. The subjects had to absorb all that ticker-tape data, just as Pham’s volunteers seemed to only benefit from the emotional oracle effect when they had some knowledge of the subject. If they weren’t following college football, then their feelings weren’t helpful predictors of the BCS championship game.

The larger lesson, then, is that our emotions are neither stupid nor omniscient. They are imperfect oracles. Nevertheless, a strong emotion is a reminder that, even when we think we know nothing, our brain knows something. That’s what the feeling is trying to tell us.

Jonah Lehrer

Darkness

A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, 'darkness' on the walls of his cell.

C.S. Lewis