Merce Cardus's Blog, page 50

The Dao of Letting Go (and Not Trying)

Dr. Edward Slingerland, author ofTrying Not to Try: Ancient China, Modern Science, and the Power of Spontaneityon “wu wei,” the Confucians and the Daoists’ key to political and spiritual success.

Wu wei is an early Chinese term that means literally no doing or no trying. But I think a better translation is effortless action. And it’s the central spiritual ideal for these early thinkers I look at. So the Confucians and the Daoists. And what it looks a little bit like flow or being in the zon...

The Courage To Create

In The Courage To Create, Rollo May helps all of us find those creative impulses that, once liberated, offer new possibilities for achievement.

What is courage?

This courage will not be the opposite of despair. We shall often be faced with despair, as indeed every sensitive person has been during the last several decades in this country. Hence Kierkegaard and Nietzsche and Camus and Sartre have proclaimed that courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead...

The Art of Receiving Feedback

Douglas Stone, a Managing Partner at Triad Consulting Group and a Lecturer at Harvard Law School, on the importance of feedback in business. Stone is the co-author of Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well.

So the ability to turn down feedback and create boundaries is crucial to receiving feedback well and really to creating healthy relationships. One of the paradoxes of receiving feedback well is that in order to be able to say yes you also have to be able...

Drinking From Infinity: The Art Of Mastering Time

The Urban Monk, a New York Times bestseller, reveals the secrets to finding an open heart, sharp mind, and grounded sense of well-being, even in the most demanding circumstances.

The Problem: Time Compression Syndrome

We’re all overcommitted and have too many things to do in too little time. We suffer from Time Compression Syndrome. This is when we’ve committed more things to a given timeline than can reasonably be done.

Time Compression Syndrome leads to stress and a strained consciousness,...

How Travel Opens Your Mind and Your Language Defines Who You Are

Novelist and Life of Pi author Yann Martel has lived a life of travel and multilingual adventure. Nothing opens the mind like travel, he says, and nothing defines the self, or how we relate to one another, quite like language. Martel adroitly compares the linguistic practices of different nations, noting how the French are often hungry to adopt English words, but French Canadians resist such intrusion. And he dispels linguistic myths, such as the Inuit having more words for “snow” than other...

Do You Have a Life Plan (Created by You and For You)?

In Living Forward, New York Times bestselling author Michael Hyatt and executive coach Daniel Harkavy show us how to do: to design a life with the end in mind, determining in advance the outcomes we desire and path to get there.

A story about a wise old man who lived high in the Himalayan mountains

Periodically he ventured down into the local town to entertain the villagers with his special knowledge and talents. One of his skills was to psychically tell them the contents in their pockets,...

What Makes A Good Life? Lessons From The Longest Study On Happiness

What keeps us happy and healthy as we go through life?

The How of Happinessis a comprehensive guide to understanding the elemetns of happiness based on years of groundbreaking scientific research.

If you think it’s fame and money, you’re not alone – but, according to psychiatrist Robert Waldinger, you’re mistaken. As the director of a 75-year-old study on adult development, Waldinger has unprecedented access to data on true happiness and satisfaction. In this talk, he shares three important...

The Call To Adventure: Becoming The Hero Of Your Own Story

Underpants gnomes Small creatures from South Park that have to go to work. They work all night and they search for underpants! They won’t stop until they have underpants. Why do they do that you may ask. For profit, of course. They have just not quite figured out phase 2. They can mostly be observed in Tweak’s room all hours of the night.

Phase 1-Get underpants

Phase 2-?????????

Phase 3- $$$PROFIT$$$

If you have always dreamed of adventure and growth but can’t seem to leave your hobbit-ho...

LinkFest ~ Best Reads on Writing, Screenwriting & Self-Publishing: Drama

WRITING

Scene Structure: Establishing Your Setting, Live Write Thrive | Tweet

Establishing Shots are critical in a film. They clue the viewer where this next scene is about to take place. Each time the location of a scene shifts, a new establishing shot does exactly what its name implies: it establishes where the story will now continue, and fiction writers need to do the same thing. The purpose is to give a general impression rather than specific information.

Related content:

Descript...

The Psychology Of Narcissism

Narcissism isn’t just a personality type that shows up in advice columns; it’s actually a set of traits classified and studied by psychologists. But what causes it? And can narcissists improve on their negative traits?

In Why is it always about you?: The seven deadly sins of narcissism, clinical social worker and psychotherapist Sandy Hotchkiss shows you how to cope with controlling, egotistical people who are incapable of the fundamental give-and-take that sustains healthy relationships.

W....