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

Use the Graveyard

Everyone should keep a fair-sized cemetery in which to bury the faults of his friends.
Henry Ward Beecher

Sweet Daydream

Want to increase your brain power? Spend more time daydreaming. That's the implication of a new brain scan study by New York University neuroscientists. They found if people were allowed to rest their minds after looking at pictures, they were better able to recall what they saw later. In other words, daydreaming improved recall. The researchers conclude that if you don’t give yourself a break, then you may be “hindering your brain’s ability to consolidate memories and experiences.” Their suggestion: Less multitasking and more opportunities for your brain to breath.

Stephen Goforth

Authentic Moves

Everyone needs a time to question, ponder and launch out without walls in order to make authentic moves.

The Game of Death

Reality TV has taken dark turns but none more sobering than the Game of Death. Documentary film makers in France tricked 80 people into believing they were contestants on a game show in which they administered electric shocks to contestants. Echoing the famed experiments of psychologist Stanley Milgram in the 1960s, were told to "electrocute" a fellow contestant - actually an actor - if he got answers wrong while the audience chanted “punishment.” All but 16 of the volunteers punished the contestant until he appeared to die.

Is this a demonstration of the power of television? An indication that most people will submit to the commands of an authority figure no matter how evil (as with the Nazi death camps) in a fit of blind obedience? Or an example that contestants on what appears to be a reality TV show are savvy enough to assume the producers won’t really let someone die. So, they “play along” in a make-believe world of performance for the camera?

Here's a video about the experiment.

Ignorance

Everyone is ignorant, only on different subjects.