If you want your life to change, wait a year. It'll change. Of course, it may not be for the better. A study in 2008 found that happiness tends to follow a U-shaped curve, where the lowest level of happiness occurs somewhere around age 46. Yet, there are confounding factors. A death of a spouse, … Continue reading The One Year Rule
Tag: hupomnemata
Conquering Evil
"Evil can not be conquered within this world. It can only be resisted in oneself."Kung Fu (television series), Master PoThe world is full of people that look at the world they live in and see evil all around them. It's easy to point to outliers, such as Ted Kaczynski, a.k.a., the Unabomber, to illustrate the … Continue reading Conquering Evil
Social Contagion & Tolerance
In 2007, The New England Journal of Medicine had a study on obesity and social networks that has results that said: "A person’s chances of becoming obese increased by 57% (95% confidence interval [CI], 6 to 123) if he or she had a friend who became obese in a given interval. Among pairs of adult … Continue reading Social Contagion & Tolerance
Changing Reality Tunnels
Open Question: How does one cultivate the skill of evaluating our world view, assessing its strengths and weaknesses, and changing it when our situation changes? "Every kind of ignorance in the world all results from not realizing that our perceptions are gambles. We believe what we see and then we believe our interpretation of it, … Continue reading Changing Reality Tunnels
Dissection of Life
Cutting concepts, time, our perspective into fragments can help us understand some things. But, even so, the life of the frog cannot be fully explained with the dissection scalpel.
The Poor Man Sells Peace
The central idea of Buddhism is that human beings are driven by ego which tends to be dissatisfied, or when satisfied, fears change, which always comes. But, we can always choose to be satisfied, to walk our path and accept what comes our way. It's wanting things our way that creates karma, or things we're … Continue reading The Poor Man Sells Peace
Openness & Discernment
"The undiscerning mind is like the root of the tree, it absorbs equally everything it touches, even the poison that would kill it."—Kung Fu (television series) Recently, I got into an online discussion where someone was trying to convince me that I should listen to some podcast that explained some current conspiracy related to the … Continue reading Openness & Discernment
The Temple of LiLoLa
From Catholicism, I learned the value of ritual, religious practice and the power of story to shape our understanding of the world. Years after hearing a homily from one Sunday, I still think of the need to leave a series of empty tombs. The resurrection applies not to some afterlife, it applies to this one, … Continue reading The Temple of LiLoLa
One and One Sometimes Equals Eleven
We often make assumptions that are reasonable in one context, abstract it into a guideline and apply that guideline to a new situation. Often, it is difficult to assess whether these situations are close enough to apply what we know to what we don't. At base, this is the problem of induction. There is no … Continue reading One and One Sometimes Equals Eleven
Blue Moon Human
If you don't have time to do it right the first time, where are you going to find time to do it again? Or, you could be complacent. Mediocre effort. Mediocre results. Mediocre life. We all start out wanting to excel, to be good and do it right. When does the change creep in on … Continue reading Blue Moon Human
Identity & Unspoken Privileges
Privilege is frequently discussed in term of race, gender and sexual orientation. If you are white, male and heterosexual, you are one of the most privileged members of society, according to most frameworks of privilege. Intersectionality is certainly a useful way of looking at societal systems of oppression and an aid in offering critiques of … Continue reading Identity & Unspoken Privileges
Change Your Perspective: Goals & Time Frames
[Roughly paraphrasing because I don't have the book in front of me] take your ten year life plan and ask, Why can’t I do this in six months? -Peter ThielTim Ferris, "Tools for Titans." New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016 The point of the exercise of imagining a time frame twenty times shorter is to see … Continue reading Change Your Perspective: Goals & Time Frames
Words & Worldviews
I was reading another one of those end of year life hack articles yesterday, about how changing one word can change your attitude toward obligations. The crux: instead of saying, "I have to wake up to go to work at 0600," you change it to get, "I get to wake up to go to work at … Continue reading Words & Worldviews
Do X. Evaluate. Do X Differently.
"Why don't you just try X for 30 days and see if your life gets better? Today, roughly two-thirds of the population will make New Year's resolutions. The most common resolutions: Eat healthier Get more exercise Save money Take better care of ourselves Read more Make new friends Learn a new skill / hobby Looking … Continue reading Do X. Evaluate. Do X Differently.
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