Many paths up the mountain...

Yep

I loved her against reason,
against promise, against peace,
against hope, against happiness,
against all discouragement
that could be.

~ Charles Dickens, from Great Expectations

As usual!

Brenda: Are you drunk?

George: [scoffs] Not nearly enough!

~ from Young Sheldon

To appreciate the beauty of a snowflake, it is necessary to stand out in the cold.

~ Unknown

I kissed her neck and shoulders. I felt faint with loving her so much.

~ Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

My life used to be full of everything. Now if you aren't with me I haven't a thing in the world.

~ Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

One of the most cowardly things ordinary people do is to shut their eyes to facts.

~ C. S. Lewis

The differentiator

The biggest factor for success in any pursuit:

Consistency

It can be the smallest, seemingly insignificant habit

But if you do it everyday, those results compound

Very few people have that level of consistency and discipline

It will set you apart

~ Mackenzie Smith

The man makes a good point

The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.

~ Plato

Working on it...

There are three things you have to know:
What you desire
What you believe
What you have to do

~ St. Thomas Aquinas

Meditating on this

The more you know, the more you realize how much you don’t know.

The less you know, the more you think you know everything.

Knowledge is humbling. Ignorance is arrogant.

~ Richard Feynman

Not a bit surprising...

If I said what I know about both candidates, they’d have to cancel the (2016) election.

~ Jeffrey Epstein

Good advice!

Don't eat anything your great grandmother wouldn't consider as food.

~ Michael Pollan

Aspirational!

The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically.

Intelligence plus character - that is goal of true education.

~ Dr. Martin Luther King

Reflective Listening - try these phrases

What I'm hearing you say is...

Did I hear you well?

Is there more?

Every day...

If you quit now,

You will end up back where you first began...

And when you first began,

you were desperate to be

where you are right now!

Keep going!

~ @raise.the.vibe.tribe

Seems reasonable...

If you want to understand how to fix a problem in the world, you have to ask yourself who is profiting from the problem...

... not who is suffering from it.

~ internet wisdom

Political explanation from Ann Landers (probably from the '60s)

Socialism: You have two cows. Give one cow to your neighbor.

Communism: You have two cows. Give both cows to the government, and they may give you some milk.

Fascism: You have two cows. You give all of the milk to the government, and the government sells it.

Nazism: You have two cows. The government shoots you and takes both cows.

Anarchism: You have two cows. Keep both cows, shoot the government agent and steal another cow.

Capitalism: You have two cows. Sell one, buy a bull.

This has been my experience.

Most people aren't looking for your opinion and solution, they are looking for validation and sympathy.

~ found on the interwebs

Keep hope alive!

I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.

~ Anne Frank

Stop talking about what the good man is like, and just be one.

~ Marcus Aurelius

OG words to ponder

At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: "I have to go to work - as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I'm going to do what I was born for - the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?"

- But it's nicer here...

So you were born to feel "nice"? Instead of doing things and experiencing them? Don't you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can? And you're not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren't you running to do what your nature demands?”

~ Marcus Aeurelius

Fulfillment - wouldn't that be nice?

You'll never be truly satisfied with where you are It's life - there's always another level

That's why putting off your happiness until you reach "X" goal is dangerous

It's about falling in love with the process, growth and pursuit of your goals

That's where fulfillment lies

~ Mackenzie Smith

Good advice...

The Gell-Mann Razor:

Assume every media article contains a non-zero percentage of false information.

Sandbox the article from your worldview until you've:

Seen primary sources
Spoken to 3 domain experts

One of JFK's favorite sayings - still applies to many of today's situations

Chesterton's fence

Do not remove a fence until you know why it was put up in the first place.

leaving the other problems unresolved...

Money can only solve money problems.

~ found on the internet

And that was many years ago!

You go talk to kindergartners or first grade kids, you find a class full of science enthusiasts. They ask deep questions. They ask, "What is a dream, why do we have toes, why is the moon round, what it the birthday of the world. why is grass green?" These are profound, important questions! They just bubble right out of them.

Then you go talk to 12th graders and there's none of that. They've become incurious. Something terrible has happened between kindergarten and 12th grade.

~ Carl Sagan

Also agreed

It is not that we have too little time, but that we waste too much of it.

~ Seneca

Agreed

No one ever grew wise by chance.

~ Seneca

Yikes!

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

~ Albert Einstein

Indeed...

A fit body, a calm mind, a house full of love. These things cannot be bought — they must be earned.

~ Naval Ravikant

New concepts I will apply

Amy Poehler’s Nine Rules for Improv (and life)

Keep saying yes
Be a good listener
Find your team
Find the game (what is the purpose of this situation)
Take up space (believing you belong here, advocate for yourself, don’t shrink, be fearless). But ask yourself, “does the scene need you?”
Can’t be halfway in (life is a parade, you can watch from the sidelines, waiting to join the perfect float, or you can jump in and rock out!).
Don’t bail on your partners. Everyone remembers, when things are at their worst, the people who scram. Conversely, you are closest to the people that go down with the ship with you.
Don’t worry about being cool.
Playing with status. Being aware of status (Who you are in relation to other people) in social or professional situations can be entertaining or elucidating.

Let’s dance!

Somewhere, there is the ideal soil for growing mangoes. Or the best possible wave for surfing. Or the most romantic sunset for a proposal.

But it’s not right here and it’s not right now.

Our success has a lot to do with how we dance with conditions that aren’t quite perfect.

~ Seth Godwin

They don't write 'em like they used to...

Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind.

With such persons, gullibility, which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason and the mind becomes a wreck.

~ Thomas Jefferson (1822)

Seems reasonable enough

Be stronger than those that hate you, so that they cannot destroy you. Then forgive them.

~ Elon Musk

Indeed

Science is like sex. Sometimes something useful comes out of it, but that's not why we are doing it.

~ Richard Feynman

Terrifying!

Compulsive liars shouldn't frighten you. They can harm no one, if no one listens to them.
Compulsive believers, on the other hand - they should terrify you.
Believers are the liars' enablers.

~ Nick Cohen

Good plan!

Bop ‘till you drop.

~ Danny DeVito

Do not use your energy to worry. Use your energy to believe, to create, to learn, to think and to grow.

~ Richard Feynman

Been there, done that...

She was the super destructive cruel beautiful dark-haired woman that I eternally write about.

~ Philip K. Dick, author of Blade Runner, describing actress Sean Young, who played the replicant Rachael

Yep

The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.

~ Neil deGrasse Tyson

Decent advice

When your opponent tells you that they will kill you, believe them.

~ Golda Meir

Yep

There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river.
We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.

~ Bishop Desmond Tutu.

Spicy!

"Wokeness" gives people a shield to be mean and cruel, armored in false virtue.

~ Elon Musk

Everybody needs a good plan!

A Good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.

~ General George Patton

Fear

We often fear what we don't understand.
Our best defense is knowledge.

~ Tuvok, on Star Trek: Discovery

Self awareness

Love yourself. But also analyze and be critical of how you think, act & behave.

Self love without self awareness is useless.

Be accountable.

~ Richard Feynman

How to improve your standing...

Most people will tell you it starts in the mind, but I'm a big believer that everything starts with the body,

My first piece of advice to anyone trying to improve their standing: Wake up early and work out.

There's no such thing as a loser who wakes up at 5am and works out.

~ Sahil Bloom

Education

The ultimate purpose of education is to change an empty mind into an open one.

If you wanna be a good teacher, teach open-mindedness, teach enthusiasm, inquisitiveness, heuristics, and values.

~ Richard Feynman

Never gets old...

Softly the evening came with the sunset.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will.

~ Suzy Kassem

Fear is the path to the dark side.

Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.

~ Yoda

The comfort of the rich depends on an abundant supply of the poor.

~ Voltaire

We sow the seeds of our future hells or happiness by the way we open or close our minds right now.

~ Pema Chodron

You should sit in nature for 20 minutes a day...
...unless you're busy.

Then you should sit for an hour.

~ Zen saying

Sometimes the most productive thing you can do...
...is relax.

~ Mark Black

Discipline is choosing between what you want now...

and what you want most.

~ found on the inter webs

Simplicity, patience, compassion.

These three are your greatest treasures.

~ Lao Tzu

Money is a dopamine storage system.

~ Scott Adams

I'm trying!

Be humble. Be teachable.

The universe is bigger than your view of the universe. There's always room for a new idea.

~ Richard Feynman

It's agonizing!

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

~ Maya Angelou, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings