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Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder
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June 7 - August 31, 2016
whenever I’d complain or was upset about something in my own life, my mother had the same advice: “Darling, just change the channel. You are in control of the clicker. Don’t replay the bad, scary movie.”
being connected in a shallow way to the entire world can prevent us from being deeply connected to those closest to us—including ourselves. And that is where wisdom is found.
As Turner writes, for women to be engaged in the workplace, they need to feel valued.
an amazing 84 percent of working women say that staying at home to raise kids is a financial luxury they aspire to.
the percentage of adults taking antidepressants has gone up 400 percent since 1988.
The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.
Studies show that U.S. employers spend 200 to 300 percent more on the indirect costs of health care, in the form of absenteeism, sick days, and lower productivity, than they do on actual health care payments.
When we are all heart, things can get chaotic. Both lead to stress. But when they work together, the heart leading through empathy, the mind guiding us with focus and attention, we become a harmonious human being.
The point is to find some regular activity that trains your mind to be still, fully present, and connected with yourself.
Tan went on to write a book about his principles, Search Inside Yourself. The course is divided into three parts: attention training, self-knowledge, and building useful mental habits. Richard Fernandez, the cofounder of Wisdom Labs who took Tan’s course when he was at Google, explained its value: “I’m definitely much more resilient as a leader.… It’s almost an emotional and mental bank account.
She has since founded the Institute for Mindful Leadership. “Mindfulness is about training our minds to be more focused, to see with clarity, to have spaciousness for creativity and to feel connected,” she says. “That compassion to ourselves, to everyone around us—our colleagues, customers—that’s what the training of mindfulness is really about.…
Managing compassionately includes practicing and expecting transparent communications, and practicing walking in someone else’s shoes:
When strongly disagreeing with another, most of us have a tendency to see things solely through our own world view.… In these circumstances, it can be constructive to take a minute to understand why the other person has reached the conclusion that they have. For instance, what in their background has led them to take that position? … Are they fearful of a particular outcome that may not be obvious at surface level? Asking yourself these questions, and more importantly, asking the other person these questions, can take what would otherwise be a challenging situation and transform it into a
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“We must bring love out of the corporate closet.”
The average smartphone user checks his or her device every six and a half minutes.
That works out to around 150 times a day.
A 2012 McKinsey Global Institute study found that the average knowledge economy employee spends 28 percent of his or her time dealing with email—more than eleven hours a week.
Turn off all notifications; you should control when you want information, not the reverse.
Flexible time, telecommuting, project-based work, and a company culture that does not expect employees to be wired and responsive 24/7 need to become the norm if we are to make our workplaces truly sustainable.
So, please, walk. It makes us healthier, it enhances cognitive performance, from creativity to planning and scheduling, and it helps us to reconnect with our environment, ourselves, and those around us.
Marcus Aurelius: True understanding is to see the events of life in this way: “You are here for my benefit, though rumor paints you otherwise.” And everything is turned to one’s advantage when he greets a situation like this: You are the very thing I was looking for. Truly whatever arises in life is the right material to bring about your growth and the growth of those around you. This, in a word, is art—and this art called “life” is a practice suitable to both men and gods. Everything contains some special purpose and a hidden blessing; what then could be strange or arduous when all of life is
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I had known pain before. Relationships had broken, illnesses had come, death had taken people I loved. But I had never known a pain like this. What I learned through it is that we are not on this earth to accumulate victories, or trophies, or experiences, or even to avoid failures, but to be whittled and sandpapered down until what’s left is who we truly are. This is the only way we can find purpose
“Grace isn’t something that you go for, as much as it’s something you allow,”
“My heart is at ease knowing that what was meant for me will never miss me, and that what misses me was never meant for me.”
remembering that the word “deadline” has its American origin in Civil War prison camps; instead of a physical perimeter, there would often be an imaginary line—the deadline—that the prisoners were not to cross.
No matter what people say about what they value, what matters is where they put their attention.
We are constantly made to feel that we should be prettier, thinner, sexier, more successful, make more money, be better moms, better wives, better lovers, et cetera. Though often wrapped in a “You go, girl!” message, the subtext is clear: We should feel bad because we have fallen short in so many ways from some imagined ideal—we have tummies, not abs; we are undesirable because we don’t always feel like sex kittens (or because we do); we are incompetent because we don’t have a color-coded filing system for our recipes or papers; we are not trying hard enough because we are not a senior vice
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find your own message. Don’t let your constant critic filibuster your dreams.
What you focus upon, you become. What you focus on comes to you. So hold in your mind what you want more of.
the connection that conscious breathing gives me is something I can return to hundreds of times during the day in an instant. A conscious focus on breathing helps me introduce pauses into my daily life, brings me back into the moment, and helps me transcend upsets and setbacks. It has also helped me become much more aware when I hold or constrict my breath, not just when dealing with a problem, but sometimes even when I’m doing something as mundane as putting a key in the door, texting, reading an email, or going over my schedule. When I use my breath to relax the contracted core of my body, I
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An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy. “It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil—he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” He continued, “The other is good—he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you—and inside every other person, too.” The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked
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And as Benjamin Franklin put it, “ ’Tis easier to prevent bad habits than to break them.”
To the Stoics, the most secure kind of happiness could therefore be found in the only thing that we are in control of—our inner world. Everything outside us can be taken away, so how can we entrust our future happiness and well-being to it?
For Marcus Aurelius, the quality of our day is up to each one of us. We have little power to choose what happens, but we have complete power over how we respond.
By finding something—anything—to enable us to keep the pathways of hope open and a positive attitude alive, we can deal with loss, suffering, and tragedy bit by bit. “Survivors take great joy from even their smallest successes,” writes Gonzales. “Count your blessings. Be grateful—you’re alive.”
it all starts with daily, tiny, positive changes that move us in the direction we want to go. Let me suggest three that have made a big difference in my life: 1. Listening to your inner wisdom, let go of something today that you no longer need—something that is draining your energy without benefiting you or anyone you love. It could be resentments, negative self-talk, or a project you know you are not really going to complete. 2. Start a gratitude list that you share with two or more friends who send theirs to you. 3. Have a specific time at night when you regularly turn off your devices—and
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as Kurt Vonnegut put it in his book The Sirens of Titan, “A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.”
when we give however little or much we have we are tapping into our sense of abundance and overflow.
Giving sends a message to the universe that we have all we need. We become virtuous by the practice of virtue, responsible by the practice of responsibility, generous by the practice of generosity, compassionate by the practice of compassion.
“From everyone to whom much is given, much shall be required” is
Bible goes even further and tells us that we’ll be judged by what we do for the least among us.
One study demonstrated that volunteering at least once a week yields improvements to well-being tantamount to your salary increasing from $20,000 to $75,000.
And a Johns Hopkins study found that volunteering seniors were more likely to engage in brain-building activities that lower the risk of Alzheimer’s disease.
In his best-selling book Give and Take, Wharton professor Adam Grant cites studies that show that those who give their time and effort to others end up achieving more success than those who don’t.
