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January 21 - February 7, 2023
Accept Where You Are to Get You Where You Want to Go.
Be Present So You Can Own Your Attention and Energy.
Be Patient and You’ll Get There Faster.
Embrace Vulnerability to Develop Genuine Strength and Confidence.
Build Deep Community.
Move Your Body to Ground Your Mind.
Life is not easy. Things don’t always go our way. The human condition is a messy one. Much more is outside our control than we wish: aging, illness, mortality, the economy, the actions of people we care about, to name just a few. This can be a hard, and at times scary, reality to accept.
Acceptance is taking stock of a situation and seeing it clearly for what it is—whether you like it or not.
Often, this reaction is one of denial, suppression, judgment, resistance, or impulsive action—all of which tend to create more, not less, difficulty and distress.
Thousands of years ago, the Stoic philosopher Seneca warned against getting caught in a cycle of “busy idleness,” or as he said, “all this dashing about that a great many people indulge in . . . always giving the impression of being busy [while not really doing anything at all].”
The addiction is not new. It’s just that today’s dope is exponentially more accessible and powerful.
People are frugal in guarding their personal property, but as soon as it comes to squandering time they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy.”
Research increasingly shows that what is important doesn’t necessarily get our attention, but what gets our attention becomes important.
“Learning how to think really means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed.”
The things you care about make you vulnerable. The things you care about break your heart.
They learned that the mortality risks associated with loneliness exceed those associated with obesity and physical inactivity and are comparable to those associated with smoking.
“We are asking one person to give us what once an entire village of people used to provide,”
If someone is working in the same room as others who are internally driven, that person’s attitude improves.