All trust is, in a sense, a handshake of predictability, and every breach of trust is devastating precisely because the other person has unpredictably withdrawn their hand.
Author: Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Psychology | Behavior, Relationships, Trust
it’s really easy to build bad models. A model is supposed to describe something in the real world, and if you lose sight of the real world and it fails to describe the real world, then it’s the model’s fault and your fault for building the model, and not the real world’s fault. And that’s a lesson that people, I think, have a lot of … [ Read more ]
Author: Nate Silver | Source: The New York Times | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Life & Society
Inequality, we’re taught to believe, is the necessary price of civilization.
Author: David Wengrow | Source: TED | Subjects: Economics | Economy, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy
People imagine that they would prefer variety more than they do. The reality is that they only prefer variety if habituation sets in. Otherwise, in episodes separated by time, they strongly prefer favorites.
Author: Jonathan Byrnes | Source: Chief Executive | Subjects: Consumerism, Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior
In any human association that has earned the right use the word love, we must be in relationship with both the light and the shadow in ourselves and each other. All authentic relationship is therefore a matter of clear sight — of seeing through the shining pane of the other’s self-concealment and removing the mirror of our own projections.
Author: Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Concepts, Love, Personal Improvement, Relationships
One of the hardest things to learn in life is that the heart is a clock too fast not to break. We lurch into loving, only to discover again and again that it takes a long time to know people, to understand people — and “understanding is love’s other name.” Even without intentional deception, people will surprise you, will shock you, will hurt you — … [ Read more ]
Author: Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Concepts, Love, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior, Relationships
The people who are happiest with their lives encounter plenty of suffering too. They don’t seek it, but they also do not consider it to be some sort of sickness; nor are they afraid of it. On the contrary, they know that suffering is necessary to learn and grow. Research shows that experiences of sadness can improve memory, judgment, motivation, and goodness toward others.
Author: Arthur C. Brooks | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: Experience, Happiness, Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior
The eternal problem of the human being is how to structure his waking hours.
Author: Eric Berne | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Productivity & Time Management
It’s so simple, yet makes such a difference. Pretend that every single person you meet has a sign around his or her neck that says, “Make me feel important.”
Author: Mary Kay Ash | Subjects: Personal Improvement, Relationships
Larry Summers said that events are mostly negative and trends are mostly positive. Well, we [the news] cover events. If we want to be the first rough draft of history, it’s worthwhile to do a better job covering those positive trends.
Authors: Larry Summers, Nicholas D. Kristof | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, History, Journalism, Life & Society
We must always remember that possessions have no inherent value. They become what we make them. If they increase our capacity to give, they become something good. If they increase our focus on ourselves and become standards by which we measure other people, they become something bad.
Author: Kent Nerburn | Subjects: Demographics, Life & Society, Material Possessions, Personal Improvement
Because our locus of choice is so narrow against the immensity of chance, nothing haunts human life more than the consequences of our choices, nothing pains more than the wistful wish to have chosen more wisely and more courageously — the chance untaken, the love unleapt, the unkind word in the time for tenderness. Regret — the fossilized fangs of should have sunk into the … [ Read more ]
Author: Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Concepts, Life & Society, Pain & Suffering, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior
At the end of my life, I know I won’t be wishing I’d held more back, been less effusive, more often stood on ceremony, forgiven less, spent more days oblivious to the secret wishes and fears of the people around me.
Author: George Saunders | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Happiness, Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior
There is, therefore, no mightier spell against unhappiness than moving through the present in a way that preempts regret in the future — with integrity, with humility, with wholeheartedness.
Author: Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Happiness, Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior
Fairness comprises outcomes (distributive justice) and process (procedural justice), and these are judged differently depending on a few predictable conditions.
Authors: Marco Bertini, Oded Koenigsberg | Source: Harvard Business Review (HBR) | Subjects: Concepts, Law | Legal, Life & Society, Sociology | Anthropology
Connectedness is a biological imperative, and at the top of the autonomic hierarchy is the ventral vagal pathway that supports feelings of safety and connection. The ventral vagus (sometimes called the “smart vagus” or “social vagus”) provides the neurobiological foundation for health, growth, and restoration. When the ventral vagus is active, our attention is toward connection. We seek opportunities for co-regulation. The ability to soothe … [ Read more ]
Author: Deb Dana | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior, Relationships
If our earliest template of connection is marked by rupture and deficient co-regulation, our very notion of reciprocity may be warped, leading us to tolerate immense asymmetries of affection and attention, to mistake deeply imbalanced relationships for reciprocal.
Author: Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior, Relationships
l have come to think that care of the soul requires a high degree of resistance to the culture around us, simply because that culture is dedicated to values that have no concern for the soul.
Author: Thomas Merton | Subjects: Concepts, Culture, Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Soul
Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared that the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance… In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what … [ Read more ]
Author: Neil Postman | Subjects: Communication, Concepts, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy, Psychology | Behavior, Truth | Right | Wrong
If you do not feel aligned with the worldview (values and beliefs) of your parents or the community in which you were raised, you will begin to search for a new identity when you reach the individuating stage of development, one that is more in alignment with who you truly are. This can present many challenges to how you relate to your parents, your friends … [ Read more ]
Author: Richard Barrett | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior