Inspiration from Edith Wharton, Joshua Waitzkin, Mandy Hale and More

Posted On Jan 13, 2020 By admin With Comments Off

Once a month( or so ), I share a dozen things that have inspired me to greater personal, professional, and monetary success in my life. I hope members can creating similar success to your life. Please enjoy the archives of earlier collectings of inspirational things.

1. Edith Wharton on trying to be happy

” If exclusively we’d stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time .” — Edith Wharton

For a long time, I felt like happiness was something that is a life goal, that there were ways to work toward ” becoming ” glad. Yet, epoch and time again, I realized that happiness wasn’t something that came about on its own. Happiness is something that comes about as a result of something else- an accomplishment, a tie, an experience. Happiness is actually be available on the road to those things.

Don’t try to be happy today. Instead, try to do something that you’ve always wanted to do or something big you’ve been putting off. Give yourself a walled-off block of time to engage in a diversion that’s meaningful to you that you don’t give enough time to. Go play with a child or listen to a friend. Help someone.

Make those things routine, and you’ll find happiness along the way. You can’t aim for it, but it will find you.

2. Shannon Lee on what Bruce Lee can teach us about living fully

From the specific characteristics 😛 TAGEND

Most of us know Bruce Lee as the famed martial artist and act movie star — but he was also a philosopher who learnt “self-actualization”: the practice of how to be yourself in the most efficient way possible. In this inspiring talk, Bruce’s daughter Shannon Lee takes us inside the mind of her father, exploring how to use his thinking in your daily life to achieve profound personal growing and make a survive impact.

This video is incredibly potent and a great overview of the concept of ” self-actualization” and living conditions of Bruce Lee, and well worth watching.

I used to have a poster of Bruce Lee on the wall of my dormitory room. I bought it at an on-campus poster sale when I was a freshman during a period when I was enamored with his movies and other ” kung fu” movies of the 1970 s. He was patently best known as a movie star and a martial arts practitioner, but it’s not why the poster bided on my wall for two years.

Rather, I watched a short documentary about Lee that was shown after one of his movies at a student phenomenon on campus. That documentary discussed his idea that knowledge leads to self-knowledge and how your actions are an expression of your values and beliefs. If I believed in a particular idea or importance- or thought that I did- and I didn’t say it through activity, I didn’t certainly believe it, or I believed in some other value more. What is it that I actually value?

It’s questions like these that are certainly driven “peoples lives” since I was … well, older and younger, and the idea that knowledge translates into self-knowledge, that it was necessary to never stop learning and changing, and your actions are an expression of what you know and evaluate was something that I’ve considered for a lot of my adult life. In a room, most of my life has been a process of learning, honing what I repute, and weeding out actions that aren’t in line with what I belief and resting into actions that are in line with it, and that Bruce Lee poster was a piece of that journey.

3. Mandy Hale on where you don’t belong

” Growth is agonizing. Change is unpleasant. But nothing is as unpleasant as abide deposit somewhere you don’t belong .”- Mandy Hale

There are few things more annoying and terrible than seeing someone you care about stuck in a hard situation that exclusively they can get themselves out of. You know they have the ability to do so, but it’s a hard route to travel. You want to help, but it honestly comes down to their choice, because while you can lead a mare to water, you can’t meet them drink.

The thing is, if you’re not happy with the course you’re on, doing good-for-nothing and standing on that path will never make it better. If you look around your life and aren’t happy with some aspect of it , not changing anything is not procreate that aspect better.

Change is hard. Emergence is hard. But nothing ever gets better without going through that process. You can’t get over the hill without descending it.

4. Serene

Serene is an app I’ve been using to help me stay focused when I’m working and not at my desk. I is of the view that I can focus pretty well when I’m at my table at home. I can shut out distractions and really get down to business there.

Unfortunately, some periods, for various reasons, I need to( or want to) labour elsewhere, and I run into hardship elsewhere.

I’ve put-upon Serene multiple times when working away from home( with my noise-cancelling headphones and my phone on” do not disturb, but vibrate for specific emergencies” mode) and I noticed it really helpful for retaining me on enterprise. It blocks some apps of my select and some websites of my choice( equipped I install the browser add-ons) while I’m working on my enterprise, helps me break down today’s main task into smaller cases and work seminars, and feet me through some steps to get in a good statu for work.

The app’s idea is that there’s one large-hearted task you want to complete today and that exercise can be broken down into some smaller slice that are individual work seminars. So, for example, if my goal today is to write two articles, I might have six cultivate periods- outline clause A, write a good sketch of article A, and revise& defer clause A, and the same tasks for article B. The implement then fastens down your computer( according to what you set up) while you work through each of those periods, with transgress in between them.

I’m not a big fan of the audio( more) — I usually use other audio for focus — but the tool does a really nice job outside of that in terms of creating a focused work environment wherever I’m at. I sometimes really need to get out of the house, even at the cost of productivity.

This app has a permanent place on my laptop. It helped me get a lot of writing done over numerou times in an environment where I’ve struggled to work in the past. Highly recommended if you sometimes work on a laptop in different environments and struggle to focus.

5. Richard Feynman on questions and rebuttals

” I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned .”- Richard Feynman

Part of the appeal of the world is the mystery about it, how the integrity of the human race exclusively knows a fraction of what there is to know about the universe, and I can only ever maybe know a small sliver of that.

Life is like laying on your back on a country pasture in the nighttime and staring up at millions of starrings. I can’t perhaps know the story of each of them, but I can sit back and be awed by their collective beauty.

There doesn’t need to be an answer to everything.

6. Planet Money and rethinking channel channel-surf

As of late, I’ve been watching Youtube videos while gobbling lunch. I’ll meet a direct that’s interesting and well-executed, turn it on while I’m prepping lunch, and watch a few videos while dining and cleaning up.

The channel I’ve been binging on as of late is Planet Money from NPR, which is a large collection of short videos on specific monetary topics, chiefly economics, but done in an entertaining way.

I think that channels like this are the ideal replacement for” canal channel-surf .” They’re free( if you have an internet connection ), they’re generally reasonably short and bite-sized so they’re good to watch if you’re eating lunch or something, and it’s not a big deal if you miss an episode.

I can roster tons of these- Binging with Babish, Pro Home Cooks( formerly Brother Green ), Marques Brownlee, Kurzgesagt, CGP Grey– but there are so many individuals and small groups out there conclude genuinely musing and thought-provoking and engaging material if you look for it. A lot of Youtube is waste, but if you can find a few canals that actually bring value to you, they provide a pretty good bite for your subconsciou to withdraw while your speak is immersing lunch.

7. Brianna West on self-care and self-improvement

” True self-care is not salt soaps and chocolate cake, it is inducing the choice to build a life you don’t need to regularly fled from .[?]”- Brianna West

If I is common knowledge that things make me unhappy about my life and I taken the decision to do nothing to fix them, I’m essentially choosing to keep that unhappiness in “peoples lives”. Any “self-care” I do is merely a short term distraction, because the problem remains. Leisure is good for relaxation, but it doesn’t take care of problems.

True self-care comes from doing the hard work to fix difficulties in your life and make real changes. Self-care isn’t a distraction from a problem, it’s solving a problem( or at least were seeking to ).

If you feel overtook by life, don’t be returned to luxuries that disconcert you from their own problems. Identify what’s wrong and work to actually choose it.

8. Jeremy Binns on our picture of life

” What fastens us up “the worlds largest” in life is the picture in our is chairman of what it’s supposed to be .”- Jeremy Binns

I have this slide in my head of what an” standard life” should be like. Perfect affairs, perfect union, excellent babies, perfect design, perfect live, and so on.

Whenever I compare my life to that” model life ,” my life gapes … shall we say, highly imperfect by comparison. Nothing in my life is perfect. Nothing in my life is ideal.

Yet, lots of things in my life are good, even huge. Spates of things in my life are beautiful.

That ideal life cannot exist in the real world. If I perpetually compare myself to that, I can’t enjoy what I already have, and what I previously have is quite good.

9. Mark Rosewater on twenty years and twenty ” lessons

From the description 😛 TAGEND

Magic the Gathering foreman designer Mark Rosewater shares twenty ” lessons over twenty years of designing one of the world’s most popular collectible card plays. Watch to learn lessons such as” Restrictions Breed Creativity ,”” Fighting Human Nature Is a Losing Battle” and” If Everyone Likes Your Game, But No One Loves It, It Will Fail “.

Yes, this is a video that’s ostensibly about game motif, but it’s about so much more than that. Almost everything Mark Rosewater was talking about in this video be applied to some real behavior to living and, well, to every single innovative struggle we take on in life.

I watched this video recently because of a burgeoning personal interest in game design, but I couldn’t help but guess, as I was listening to it, of how many of the ideas actually apply to The Simple Dollar and to other creative work I’ve done in my life and, sincerely, to a lot of things in my life.

For example,” limited spawns invention .” The Simple Dollar’s topic opening is a relatively narrow wheelhouse. I try to expand on the concept of” expend less than you earn so you can achieve life goals”- that’s really the core message of the site- in each direction while keeping it as simple as I can. I try to delve into complex meanings, but to the absolute best of my ability, I try to avoid jargon or complicated expression( for better or worse ). That restricts my topics that I could write about quite a lot and that restriction impels me to be imaginative. What’s a new tilt on this idea? What element haven’t I probed into before, or in a long while?

Or, for example,” if everyone likes your game, but no one kindness it, it will neglect .” From the get-go, I’ve had a vision in judgment of accurately who I’m writing for, and it’s basically myself right at the detail when I was passionately starting my business turnaround. I was absorbing everything I could about personal finance and what I demanded was clear and friendly voices to give me lots of hypothesis that I could plug into my life and turn this ship around. The Simple Dollar is a site I would have been able to enjoyed at that point in “peoples lives”, and I figure that if it’s a site I would have adoration, there are probably some people who would love it extremely. That doesn’t mean that everyone cherishes it or even that everyone likes it( though that’s nice ). I’d rather change one life than mildly gratify a hundred people.

That trash applies to my life, too. I perpetually find that my best solutions for life problems and my best decisions come when there’s a limitation. When I have infinite selects, I time closed down, so I make a restriction right off the bat. Only store brands, perhaps, or only stuff without contributed sugar.

Also, I’ve learned that having a few really close friends and family members — people that love me — is better than a truckload of acquaintances and people who vaguely like me. I’ll take one person that passions me over 50 acquaintances, and that molds how I build relationships.

You can find really good life tasks in the most unusual of places.

10. Anne Frank on regret versus grateful

” Dead people receive more heydays than the living ones because mis is stronger than gratitude .”- Anne Frank

It’s strange how dejection is a stronger feeling than gratitude. I think that part of it is that we feel feeble when carrying grateful and have liked to parties in our life, however often feel more free to express regret because that other person is silent. We’re not expressing that feeling to their face.

It can be hard to express to others what they mean to us now, when they’re living. What if they don’t feel the same way? What if they repute I’m silly or foolhardy?

Trust me, there’s very rarely a time when such an look won’t at least be very meaningful to them, even if it’s not fully returned. You’ll feel better and so will they.

Don’t accommodate the gratitude and appreciation in. Let it out before it turns into regret.

11. The Art of Learning: The Inner Journey to Optimal Performance by Joshua Waitzkin

I’ve read this book four or five times since it was initially published in 2008. It’s a awesome record on how to get better at pretty much anything and a wonderful guide to lifetime learning and deliberate practice.

I recently picked it up again, nearly on a quirk, and speak the majority of members of it in a single sitting. It reminded me again of the true joy of learning something better and surmounting a science, and it replaced a little fire in my belly for learning and practice, as it does every time.

You cannot get better at the things you dream about by time sitting there.

12. Terry Pratchett on developing older

” Inside every old person is a young person wondering what happened here .”- Terry Pratchett

I swear that it was just yesterday that I was 25 years old and working in data mining. It feels like yesterday that I started this site on a fad rather than writing daily substance for it as a well-oiled practice. It feels like yesterday that I was holding my first progeny in my arms rather than teaching him how to drive.

What happened? It’s easy to lose track of the endless flow of hours and days until you wake up one day and look around and the situation is guided you by.

The one thing I can say about that feeling is this: it should be a reminder to us all to live in the moment, to say the things we want to say but are afraid to, to hug someone and to tell someone they material, to apologize for a mistake. Leave those things ruin and you’ll wake up in a few years wondering what happened.

The post Inspiration from Edith Wharton, Joshua Waitzkin, Mandy Hale and More performed first on The Simple Dollar.