Jesse

“Stress mindsets are powerful because they affect not just how you think but also how you act. When you view stress as harmful, it is something to be avoided. Feeling stressed becomes a signal to try to escape or reduce the stress. And indeed, people who endorse a stress-is-harmful mindset are more likely to say that they cope with stress by trying to avoid it. For example, they are more likely to: Try to distract themselves from the cause of the stress instead of dealing with it. Focus on getting rid of their feelings of stress instead of taking steps to address its source. Turn to alcohol or other substances or addictions to escape the stress. Withdraw their energy and attention from whatever relationship, role, or goal is causing the stress. In contrast, people who believe that stress can be helpful are more likely to say that they cope with stress proactively. For example, they are more likely to: Accept the fact that the stressful event has occurred and is real. Plan a strategy for dealing with the source of stress. Seek information, help, or advice. Take steps to overcome, remove, or change the source of stress. Try to make the best of the situation by viewing it in a more positive way or by using it as an opportunity to grow. These different ways of dealing with stress lead to very different outcomes.”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Upside of Stress: Why Stress Is Good for You, and How to Get Good at It

“This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say listen to this, it is important.”
― Gary Provost

“The struggle to find a poetry in which your survival rather than your defeat is celebrated, perhaps to find your own voice to insist upon that, or to at least find a way to survive amidst an ethos that relishes your erasures and failures is work that many and perhaps most young women have to do”
― Rebecca Solnit, Recollections of My Nonexistence: A Memoir

“I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”
― Stephen Jay Gould, The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History