34 Posts Found

[Tim] Ferriss distinguishes between two kinds of secrets — those we keep because we fear fleeting mortification, like accounts of embarrassing things we’ve done in sub-optimal moments, and dark secrets that paralyze us with deep shame, “the shadows we keep covered for fear of unraveling our lives.”

[…]‌

“It’s easy to blow things out of proportion, to get lost in the story you tell yourself, and to … [ Read more ]

Authors: Maria Popova, Tim Ferriss | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) (December 8, 2016) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Health & Medicine, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior

To live with sincerity in our culture of cynicism is a difficult dance — one that comes easily only to the very young and the very old. The rest of us are left to tussle with two polarizing forces ripping the psyche asunder by beckoning to it from opposite directions — critical thinking and hope. Critical thinking without hope is cynicism. Hope without critical thinking … [ Read more ]

Author: Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) (February 9, 2015) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior

In every man, heredity and environment have combined to produce a creature of certain abilities and desires—including a deeply ingrained need to function in such a way that his life will be MEANINGFUL. A man has to BE something; he has to matter.

As I see it then, the formula runs something like this: a man must choose a path which will let his ABILITIES function … [ Read more ]

Authors: Hunter S. Thompson, Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) (November 4, 2013) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Career, Excerpts, Life & Society, Meaning, Personal Improvement

“Do you have the courage to bring forth the treasures that are hidden within you?” This is among life’s most abiding questions and the history of human creativity — our art and our poetry and most empathically all of our philosophy — is the history of attempts to answer it.

There is no drearier, sorrier creature in nature than the man who has evaded his own

… [ Read more ]

Authors: Friedrich Nietzsche, Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) (September 30, 2015) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Philosophy

Chances are, your coworkers are better at rating some parts of your personality than you are.

Author: Adam Grant | Source: The Atlantic (March 1, 2018) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior

Your ambitions to improve your life do not need to be confined by your personality.

Author: Christian Jarrett | Source: BBC (February 1, 2017) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior

The secret to happiness in almost any relationship is knowing what not to say.

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The pool of knowledge is limited; it’s the pool of ignorance, speculation and misunderstanding that is infinite.

[…]‌

But one thing that happens when we acquire too much “knowledge” is that, like Othello, we sometimes fail to distinguish it from what can never be known, which may not be untrue. Another is that we’re … [ Read more ]

Author: Pico Iyer | Source: The New York Times (December 31, 2016) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Intelligence | Knowledge, Wisdom

According to Emily Esfahani Smith, happiness arises from a deep sense of contentment rather than the incessant and unyielding grasping for pleasure. This contentment can be derived by seeking, cultivating, and maintaining the four pillars of meaning,

1. Belonging. Only through focusing on others do we build the pillar of belonging for both ourselves and for them. If we want to find meaning in our own

… [ Read more ]

Author: Derek Beres | Source: Big Think (January 23, 2018) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Happiness, Meaning, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior

Conservatives are more likely to support issues like immigration and Obamacare if the message is “morally reframed” to suit their values.

Author: Olga Khazan | Source: The Atlantic (February 1, 2017) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Communication, Excerpts, Personal Improvement, Politics & Public Policy, Psychology | Behavior

The trouble with ignorance is that it feels so much like expertise. A leading researcher on the psychology of human wrongness sets us straight.

Author: David Dunning | Source: Pacific Standard (October 27, 2014) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Education | Scholarship, Excerpts, Intelligence | Knowledge, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior

The same part of the brain that allows us to step into the shoes of others also helps us restrain ourselves.

Author: Ed Yong | Source: The Atlantic (December 6, 2016) | Subjects: Excerpts, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior

If I ask you, “What do you want out of life?” and you say something like, “I want to be happy and have a great family and a job I like,” it’s so ubiquitous that it doesn’t even mean anything.

A more interesting question, a question that perhaps you’ve never considered before, is what pain do you want in your life? What are you willing to … [ Read more ]

Author: Mark Manson | Subject: Personal Improvement

Welcome the new world with open arms—and browsers.

Author: Tyler Cowen | Source: The Wilson Quarterly (Autumn2009) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Information, Life & Society, Perspective, Productivity & Time Management, Thought | Inquiry

On December 18, 1988, twenty-five years after his writing had been denounced as “anti-Soviet” in his native Russia and mere months after winning the Nobel Prize in Literature “for an all-embracing authorship, imbued with clarity of thought and poetic intensity,” prolific poet and essayist Joseph Brodsky (May 24, 1940–January 28, 1996) took the podium at Ann Arbor and addressed the graduating class at the University … [ Read more ]

Authors: Joseph Brodsky, Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) (December 18, 2013) | Subjects: Advice, Articles & Links, Excerpts, Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Wisdom