“Strangely, life gets harder when you try to make it easy.
Exercising might be hard, but never moving makes life harder. Uncomfortable conversations are hard, but avoiding every conflict is harder. Mastering your craft is hard, but having no skills is harder.
Easy has a cost.”
Choosing a new habit
“When choosing a new habit many people seem to ask themselves, “What can I do on my best days?”
The trick is to ask, “What can I stick to even on my worst days?”
Start small. Master the art of showing up. Scale up when you have the time, energy, and interest.”
Poet Mary Oliver on living a curious, engaged life:
“When it’s over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real. I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.”
Source: When Death Comes
“You don’t need to predict how everything will play out.
Just master the next step and continue moving in the right direction.”
“Prediction depends on events outside your control.
Creation depends on events within your control.
Don’t guess about the future. Shape it.”
Work Harder?
“In many cases, the outcome you want will continue to elude you—even if you try harder.
But it may be possible if you try differently.
Can your current choices carry you to your desired future? If not, something has to change. You can’t get there from here. You have to get on a different trajectory.”
Get to work
“You don’t need a better computer to become a writer.
You don’t need a better guitar to become a musician.
You don’t need a better camera to become a photographer.
What you need is to get to work.”
The economist John Kenneth Galbraith on the challenge of being open-minded:
“Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.”
Source: Economics, Peace and Laughter
2020 Politics in a Nutshell
“Most people don’t want accurate information, they want validating information.
Growth requires you to be open to unlearning ideas that previously served you.”