Writing. 

Find yourself a problem. Why write if you do not have a problem?

Problem. 

Have a desire to investigate a problem.

Investigate. 

Thinking. 

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

philosophy

Philosophy

writing

Reading & Writing

books

Books

Writing is essential. 

Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun

Start you day with the beautiful and calming quotes of Alan Watts for your mind and soul. This little book of quotes by Alan Watts covers his essential quotes on life, love, spirituality, and finding inner peace. Makes for a unique gift to those who love profound thoughts and ideas Highly quotable lines you can use (or take inspiration) for your own writing "People sometimes fail to live because they are always preparing to live." Alan Watts "To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don't grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float." Alan Watts

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

Start you day with the beautiful and calming quotes of Alan Watts for your mind and soul. <ul> <li>This little book of quotes by Alan Watts covers his essential quotes on life, love, spirituality, and finding inner peace. </li> <li>Makes for a unique gift to those who love profound thoughts and ideas </li> <li>Highly quotable lines you can use (or take inspiration) for your own writing </li> </ul> "People sometimes fail to live because they are always preparing to live." Alan Watts "To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don't grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float." Alan Watts

Little Books of Wisdom

Alan Watts

How to balance the give and take of life? A common saying in the Tamil language warns that both the one who always gives and the one who always takes will be ruined. Sadhguru responds to this aphorism, explaining that one who is in tune with the life process, who is like springtime within himself, will naturally give whatever is needed.There is a common saying in Tamil that means, “The family that always donates gets ruined, the family that always receives also gets ruined” – both the giver and the taker!

No Give & Take, Just Spring in Your Heart

<ul><li>Essentially, what they are referring to is either always receiving and living on aid, or indiscriminately giving not because of what the situation needs. </li><li>If you are giving because you feel that by giving you are being good or that you will buy a ticket to heaven, it is definitely not okay. </li><li>But when you see a need, if you are unwilling to give whatever you could give, you are not human at all.</li><li>So giving is not the problem. </li></ul>

Sadhguru On The Tamil Saying 

<ul><li>The problem arises when you give not because the situation needs it, but for your own satisfaction.</li><li>This is happening because human beings are seeking their happiness and peace in so many weird ways.</li><li>They believe that if they give today, they will get peace somewhere else.</li><li>No, peace and joy happen only within you.</li><li>If your humanity is on, you will give where you feel it is needed.</li><li>I would not even call it giving – sharing is very natural for a human being.</li><li>One’s joy multiplies in anything only by sharing.</li></ul>

Don't Give For Satisfaction 

Unfortunately, we have always tried to teach goodness to people, not human sense. Instead of stirring up the humanity in the human heart, we are always trying to teach morals of goodness.

Don’t Teach Morality, Stir up Humanity

Whether you give because you think you will go to heaven or you give because it will give you fulfillment or satisfaction, this is still a transaction. It is just business.

If you understand the process of life, there is really no give and take.<ul><li> Life is so interconnected. If you inhale and exhale, a transaction is happening between you and the plant life around you. This is not a choice. This is the way the life process happens. </li><li>If you are in tune with this constant transaction of giving and receiving – or simply sharing – in your life, you will be in tune with the life process. </li></ul>Otherwise you will create resistance against the life process by having ideas which are different from the way life happens, and slowly you will suffer.

In Tune with the Life Process

If you look at most people in this world, they do not look like springtime. They look like they are in the depths of winter. Their hearts have become frosty simply because they are not in tune with life around them. For every other creature on this planet, nature has fixed seasons. A tree flowers in a certain season. An animal mates in a certain season. For human beings, nature left you free – no seasons.

Embrace Spring Time

Nature trusted <a href="http://isha.sadhguru.org/blog/video/spirit-of-eastern-wisdom-the-intelligence-within/">your intelligence </a>and awareness that, if given a choice, you will naturally choose to be in the best possible way every day of the year.Nature believed that you will be springtime 365 days, but people have chosen to be winter for all the 365 days. Off and on, springtime flashes once in a way. They smile only when they are tickled.  These ideas of giving and taking have essentially come because we have lost our life sense. If we have some life sense, we understand that life is a constant transaction. No one can live in exclusiveness. There is something beyond, which is absolute.

Life Is A Constant Transaction 

How to balance the give and take of life? A common saying in the Tamil language warns that both the one who always gives and the one who always takes will be ruined. Sadhguru responds to this aphorism, explaining that one who is in tune with the life process, who is like springtime within himself, will naturally give whatever is needed. 


motivationandinspiration

Motivation & Inspiration

loveandrelationships

Love & Relationships

Born in New York City in 1908, Abraham Maslow was the son of Jewish-Ukrainian immigrants. Like nearly two million others from Eastern Europe, his parents had come to the New World for physical safety from pogroms and economic opportunity. But Maslow’s connection to contemporary events is far more important than merely his Kyiv ancestry.

Maslow? The “Hierarchy Of Needs” Maslow???

Because in 1943, Maslow wrote The Authoritarian Character Structure, a brilliant academic paper that helps us understand Vladimir Putin perhaps better than any recent psychological work. Though largely forgotten now, it influenced a host of social thinkers, including Theodor Adorno’s team that produced The Authoritarian Personality, a treatise with massive cultural impact in the 1950s and after.

How So?

Certainly, Maslow is best known for self-actualization, peak experiences, synergy, and growth mindset. These all present an optimistic view of humanity that continues to resonate throughout healthcare, education, business, and social sciences today. Yet Maslow was also a realist who recognized that people differ vastly from one another in their motivations and goals - including what he termed the “authoritarian person.”

The “Authoritarian Person”

Writing amid World War II with an unspoken nod to Stalin, Maslow began his paper with the wry observation that, “In this war, it is difficult to differentiate our friends from our enemies.” He decried that political analysts had failed to incorporate psychology into a full understanding of the global war–and then he focused on the central feature of authoritarians: namely, their worldview.

The Psychology Of War-Makers

Essentially, Maslow argued that it’s nonsense “to consider an authoritarian as simply an eccentric or ‘crazy person’” who is ultimately incomprehensible. In this light, few can forget the popular notion in the 1930s that Hitler was a ludicrous “madman,” hardly to be taken seriously by his rants. Rather, Maslow stressed, “Such people have a logic of their own which integrates all life for them in such a way as to make their actions not only understandable but from their point of view, quite justifiable and correct.” And this logic, Maslow explained, emanates from their specific worldview.

What’s Insane To Us, Is Sane To The Autoritarian

What is it? Maslow’s key formulation was that “The authoritarian person lives in a world… pictured by him as a sort of jungle, in which the whole world is conceived of as dangerous, threatening, or at least challenging, and in which human beings are conceived of as primarily selfish or evil or stupid. To carry the analogy further, this jungle is peopled with animals who either eat or are eaten… to be feared or despised. One’s safety lies in one’s strength, and this strength lies in the power to dominate… In the last analysis, the alternatives are to fear or be feared.”

The Specific Worldview Of Authoritarians

Maslow’s depiction of the authoritarian’s worldview seems chillingly accurate. But his genius in this 1943 paper was to seize Adler’s notion that our unconscious metaphors for life always reflect the reality of our own experience. “Once granted this worldview," Maslow crucially argued, “everything that the authoritarian person does is logical and sensible… We can easily see for ourselves if we can only imagine ourselves in an actual jungle.” To speak of love, kindness, and cooperation in such a situation, Maslow noted, would be absurd.

“It’s A Jungle Out There”

If the world is jungle-like for an individual, then the authoritarian is perfectly justified in all his suspicions (and) hostilities. Once we understand this point, matters look very different. And among the chief characteristics of authoritarians that Maslow identified was the embrace of power, and “especially when challenged, to use it in a hard, cruel or even sadistic fashion.” Putin’s decisions in the past month certainly fit this pattern.

Eat Or Be Eaten

Maslow was temperamentally an optimist and ended his influential paper by answering, “We can say ‘yes’ with the utmost assurance… (but) where there is no will or desire to become well, cure is very difficult.” It seems unlikely that Putin at age 69 will relinquish his worldview—and so the West must act accordingly.

Can The Authoritarian Person Be Changed?

Though Abraham Maslow is best known for his growth mindset and self-actualization concepts, he also wrote about the authoritarian personality. Maslow argued that the key to understanding authoritarians is their worldview: a metaphoric jungle.

Maslow's work on authoritarians remains timely and vital today.

problemsolving

Problem Solving

Maslow, Putin, and Ukraine

Vera Rubin is responsible for discovering dark matter, which makes up 84% of the material that exists in the universe. Her approach to problem-solving and innovation holds many lessons for us today.Visual thinking: Use various strategies to represent complicated problems or projects visually.

Visual Thinking

Vera Rubin's thinking strategies include:<ul><li>Practising visual thinking.</li><li>Trusting the evidence.</li><li>Seeing the bigger picture.</li><li>Focus on creating the most useful visuals.</li><li>Follow the evidence.</li><li>Look for factual information.</li><li>Analyze data from different perspectives.</li><li>Step up for others.</li></ul>

How to Think Like Vera Rubin

Vera Rubin was a powerhouse in astrophysics, though she rarely gets the credit she deserves. Rubin is responsible for discovering dark matter, which makes up 84% of the material that exists in the universe.

creativity

Creativity

scienceandnature

Science & Nature

Vera Rubin: The power of evidence-based visual thinking

Set yourself a period of some days in which you will be content with very small amounts of food, and the cheapest kind, with coarse clothing, and say to yourself 'is this what I was afraid of?'

Discover What You Can Do Without

The Stoics greatly valued hardship, they routinely practiced poverty or put themselves through mild hardship.Benefits Of Self Imposed Hardship:

Why value hardship?

<ul><li>To discover what we can do without, and reduce the fear of losing these things.</li></ul>

<ul><li>To better reflect upon our true goals, or to work towards them.</li></ul>

<ul><li>To empathise with less fortunate people.</li></ul>

<ul><li>To be reminded that the simple things in life can be just as enjoyable and profitable.</li></ul>

<ul><li>To increase appreciation and enjoyment of the things that we normally enjoy.</li></ul>

<ul><li>To take a break from normal routine, and reinvigorate the mind while exercising and reinforcing our freedom.</li></ul>

<ul><li>To be prepared for future hardship, which is all but a certainty.</li></ul>

<ul><li>To understand that the greater part of our suffering lies not in fact, but in our attitude towards it.</li></ul>

<ul><li>To practice self discipline.</li></ul>

Do not lament (complain) about misfortune.Instead, rejoice that you are the sort of person who can undergo misfortune without letting it upset you.

If you want to have time for your mind, you must either be poor or resemble the poor.

Frugality is just voluntary poverty.

Why the Stoics greatly valued hardship 💫

Why the Stoics, like their ancestors the Cynics, greatly valued hardship.

mindfulness

Mindfulness

mentalhealth

Mental Health

longevity

Longevity

The Surprising Benefits of Self-Imposed Hardship

<ul>
<li>While negative thoughts create "limiting beliefs", and in turn prevent positive things from happening, positive thoughts - when focused on specific goals and outcomes - can make those things happen.</li>
<li>You are co-creating with the universe.</li>
<li>One key caveat: "You can only manifest in line with your higher purpose."</li>
<li>Silicon Valley tapped into millennial ennui by taking astrology into the app age. Subscriptions services such as Sanctuary boomed by billing themselves as an "Uber for astrological readings".</li>
<li>If you don't believe what you're saying, you're blocking it with negative thoughts.</li>
</ul>

Manifesting takes the idea of a positive mental attitude and runs with it

<ul><li>Most manifesting sessions end with palms pressed together in a prayer-like pose, though it's "the universe" we're told to give thanks to.</li><li>The idea is to look both at the thing we want to manifest and at ourselves from an outsider's perspective.</li><li>Part of manifestation involves looking at the positive side of everything.</li></ul>

Manifesting is religion without the altruism

It's clearly a growth subsection of a wellness market now said to be worth a staggering $1.5tr.<ul><li>Natalie Benmayor, the founder of the wellness jewelry label Capsule Eleven, launched her brand in the pandemic.</li><li>She had the idea for a company selling high-end "spiritual" jewelry items, which, she says, she subsequently manifested.</li><li>People did need it, they felt hopeless and manifesting became a way to take back control.</li><li>House of Roxy, a manifestation company, started selling do-it-yourself manifestation kits and began hosting professional sessions once lockdown ended.</li></ul>

The business of manifesting is tough to quantify

<ul><li>On YouTube, teen manifesters teach things like the “3-6-9” method.</li><li>on Instagram, they’ve taken to crowdsourcing - remarkably specific posts circulate saying things like “A huge check of $118,811 is about to land in your hand tomorrow! Type YES to Affirm” under which hundreds of people write “YES”.</li></ul>

Gen Z manifesting has taken on some curious quirks

Can hopes become reality just through the power of positive thinking? Yes, say the latest new age gurus and their – suggestible – audiences

religionandspirituality

Religion & Spirituality

Making dreams come true: inside the new age world of manifesting

If he thinks that his work is difficult and that he is not equal to his tasks, he finds that really his tasks are difficult and beyond his powers. Yet on the other hand, if he believes his work is easy, or, at any rate, within his powers, he finds that such is the case, and that he can do his work with ease.

If we meet adversities in the wrong way, they break us. If, however, we meet them in the right way we become stronger through discipline and experience, thus becoming better fitted to bear life's responsibilities and to overcome its difficulties and temptations.

If a man refuses to give in to the influences around his path where he meets with influences that are sometimes favorable and at other times, adverse, then he shall remain standing during periods of adversity and relying upon the great Power within to carry him through, and will find that he can weather all the storms in life and come out of his trials greatly strengthened.

If, however, man's ambition is to serve and to give, instead of to grasp and to grab: if, also, he seeks success through merit and not through the misuse of his spiritual powers, he can go forward and the Power will go with him and will help him. When this Power has been brought into expression, it must only be used in love, for if it is used otherwise it will destroy the user.

If he thinks he is separate from God and cut off from His Power, then it is as though this were really the case, and he is just as impotent and miserable as though he actually existed apart from God. On the other hand, if he thinks and believes that he is one with the Infinite, he finds that it is gloriously true, and that he is really a son of God.

If it were possible that life is always easy, then life would not worth living, for the sole object of life is the building of character and the attainment of wisdom through experience.

If a man's faith in the Power within him is small, then his life will be feeble and lacking in achievement. If his faith in the Power is large, then great will be the power manifesting in his life. The Power of the Infinite is illimitable and inexhaustible: all that is required is an unquenchable belief and trust in it.

I am a person who sees and understands things on a very much deeper level. Hence, I tend to look for answers, but then I have realized that all the answers to my questions can be found within me. 

Ifs in life 

A key component of Stoicism is practicing mindfulness. Recognize the events in your life that you do and don’t have control over. If you become frustrated with events outside of your control, you are wasting energy and fostering negative emotion.

1. Attitude Towards changing things outside your control,

Our constant exposure to media and advertising keeps us wanting and seeing better out there — we spend our hard earned money on the latest fad, convinced it will leave us fulfilled until version 2.0 comes out next year. If we strive to want less, our desire decreases and we become more satisfied with what we have.

2: Don’t fall prey to modern society’s materialistic nature

The key lies in gratitude. We must appreciate all that we have and find joy in it. We live in an incredible period of history with easy access to necessities and technology that provides a standard of living that was unforeseeable just a few generations ago. Instead of appreciating this, we take it for granted. One stoic practice is to imagine that you lost some of your valuable possessions. It may sound depressing initially, but by imagining these losses we come to appreciate what we have more. ﻿

3 Pictur Life Without People And Possession You Truly Appreciate

If we desired more, we could allow ourselves to be disappointed. This doesn’t mean that stoics can’t enjoy the finer things in life — it just means we shouldn’t think of them as necessary for our happiness. Only providing goodness to the world through helping people and advancing society — something we each are able to do on a daily basis — can make us truly fulfilled

4. Be Genuinely Cheerful In all your Interactions. 

Stoic philosophy requires a great deal of personal responsibility. It’s not that you should be insanely hard on yourself, but you should understand that every decision that you make throughout the day contains a moral dimension.

5. Practicing your values beats preaching them.

The Greeks put a lot of thought into how life should be lived, from Aristotle to Socrates to Plato, but one of their most practical philosophies remains misunderstood by the majority of people…

5 Stoic Principles for Modern Living

The world is full of outsiders: students at university far from home, immigrants to a new country. Many American workers became outsiders when they quit their jobs in the Great Resignation. But because it was voluntary doesn't make it easy. Being an outsider can be lonely and difficult. Yet, there is little evidence that being an outsider creates long-term problems for happiness or lowers your chance of success. When people are thrust between places and cultures, they tend to develop strength, flexibility, and resiliency.

Being an Outsider


Many older theories of philosophy and psychiatry would predict difficult outcomes for outsiders and would recommend against being one if possible. Plato believed that acculturation, which is the psychological change that takes place when a person blends into an unfamiliar culture, was damaging to one's sense of self. This reasoning was continued by psychologists such as Abraham Maslow, Erik Erikson, and Carl Rogers. Outsiders often face particular hardships, like distrust by insiders. People at the margins of society often bear the brunt of hostility.

Difficulties outsiders face

Outsiders may suffer somewhat in the short term, but evidence shows that in the long run, being an outsider may be one of the best investments you will ever make, and you should embrace it, pain and all. <ul><li>A 2018 study showed that outsiders grow to be happier and more resilient than their peers and are less prone to age-related cognitive decline. </li><li>A 2012 review found being raised in at least two cultures leads to greater psychological and emotional well-being and higher social competence.</li><li>Outsiders further develop a superpower; they develop multiple cultural identities that they can use flexibly,</li></ul>

Outsiders do very well

<ul><li>Being an outsider is a feature, not a bug. When you are new in a group, you might view your unfamiliarity as a cost of doing business, but it is making you stronger and more resilient.</li><li>Find regular ways to be an outsider. Find opportunities to be on the margins; go to a new church, club or gym where you don't know anyone.</li><li>Make new friends with outsiders. It's a way to practice creating your own culture. Even if you aren't an outsider, you can learn these skills by joining those who are.</li></ul>

How to incorporate an outside ethos

Doing so may feel painful, but it’s one of the best investments you will ever make.

career

Career

Find More Ways to Be an Outsider

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