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Many of the world’s ‘best’ people understood that to change their lives, they had to change their minds.
Why did our ancestors develop agriculture, society, medicine, and the like? To survive. The elements of our world were once just solutions to fears.
When things don’t work out the way you want them to, you think you’ve failed only because you didn’t re-create something you perceived as desirable. In reality, you likely created something better, but foreign, and your brain misinterpreted it as “bad” because of that. (Moral of the story: Living in the moment isn’t a lofty ideal reserved for the Zen and enlightened; it’s the only way to live a life that isn’t infiltrated with illusions. It’s the only thing your brain can actually comprehend.)
There is nowhere to “arrive” to. The only thing you’re rushing toward is death. Accomplishing goals is not success. How much you expand in the process is.
When you consider doing something that you truly love and are invested in, you are going to feel an influx of fear and pain, mostly because it will involve being vulnerable.
Bad feelings should not always be interpreted as deterrents. They are also indicators that you are doing something frightening and worthwhile.
The pattern of unnecessarily creating crises in your life is actually an avoidance technique. It distracts you from actually having to be vulnerable or held accountable for whatever it is you’re afraid of.
If you want to change your life, change your beliefs. If you want to change your beliefs, go out and have experiences that make them real to you.
You think “problems” are roadblocks to achieving what you want, when in reality they are pathways.
You think your past defines you, and worse, you think that it is an unchangeable reality, when really, your perception of it changes as you do.
This doesn’t mean to disregard or gloss over painful or traumatic events, but simply to be able to recall them with acceptance and to be able to place them in the storyline of your personal evolution.
Most negative emotional reactions are you identifying a disassociated aspect of yourself.
The things you love about others are the things you love about yourself. The things you hate about others are the things you cannot see in yourself.
The point is not what the routine consists of, but how steady and safe your subconscious mind is made through repetitive motions and expected outcomes.
Whatever you want your day-to-day life to consist of doesn’t matter, the point is that you decide and then stick to
Yet there is a way to nullify the feeling of “sacrifice” when you integrate a task into the “norm” or push through resistance with regulation.
Your habits create your mood, and your mood is a filter through which you experience your life.
An untamed mind is a minefield.
Happiness is not how many things you do, but how well you do them.
Happiness is not experiencing something else; it’s continually experiencing what you already have in new and different ways.
When you regulate your daily actions, you deactivate your “fight or flight” instincts because you’re no longer confronting the unknown.
As children, routine gives us a feeling of safety. As adults, it gives us a feeling of purpose.
You feel content because routine consistently reaffirms a decision you already made.
As your body self-regulates, routine becomes the pathway to “flow2.”
A lack of routine is just a breeding ground for perpetual procrastination.
These are the things that emotionally intelligent people do not do.
They don’t assume that the way they think and feel about a situation is the way it is in reality, nor how it will turn out in the end.
They recognize their emotions as responses, not accurate gauges, of what’s going on. They accept that those responses may have to do with their own issues, rather than the objective situation at hand.
Their emotional base points are not external.
Their emotions aren’t “somebody else’s doing,” and therefore “somebody else’s problem to resolve.”
They don’t assume to know what it is that will make them truly happy.
They don’t think that being fearful is a sign they are on the wrong path.
The presence of indifference is a sign you’re on the wrong path.
They know that happiness is a choice, but they don’t feel the need to make it all the time.
They don’t allow their thoughts to be chosen for them.
They recognize that infallible composure is not emotional intelligence.
They don’t suppress it; they manage it effectively.
They’ve developed enough stamina and awareness to know that all things, even the worst, are transitory.
They don’t confuse a bad feeling for a bad life.
We find souls made of the same stuff ours are.
We are all just waiting for another universe to collide with ours, to change what we can’t ourselves.
We all start as strangers, but we forget that we rarely choose who ends up a stranger, too.
People who are socially intelligent think and behave in a way that spans beyond what’s culturally acceptable at any given moment in time. They function in such a way that they are able to communicate with others and leave them feeling at ease without sacrificing who they are and what they want to say.
They do not try to elicit a strong emotional response from anyone they are holding a conversation with.
They do not speak in definitives about people, politics, or ideas.
They don’t immediately deny criticism, or have such a strong emotional reaction to it that they become unapproachable or unchangeable.
They do not confuse their opinion of someone for being a fact about them.
They never overgeneralize other people through their behaviors.
they root their arguments in statements that begin with “I feel” as opposed to “you are.” They do this because choosing language that feels unthreatening to someone is the best way to get them to open up to your perspective and actually create the dialogue that will lead to the change you desire.
They speak with precision.
