Your inner critic is a vital part of who you are.Who else knows you so well? Who else can offer such fine-grained criticism,as well as finger your most cunning strategies of self-delusion and sabotage?Such a rich heritage of self-knowledge should be channeled toward self improvement.Instead of blocking out your inner critic , why not use it to burn away all your dross and second-rate pretensions?
DAILY AFFLICTIONS — ANDREW BOYD
Compassion hurts
“Compassion hurts. When you feel connected to everything, you also feel responsible for everything. And you cannot turn away. Your destiny is bound with the destinies of others. You must either learn to carry the Universe or be crushed by it. You must grow strong enough to love the world, yet empty enough to sit down at the same table with its worst horrors.”
Andrew Boyd, Daily Afflictions: The Agony of Being Connected to Everything in the Universe
education
Education doesn’t make you happy. Nor does freedom. We don’t become happy just because we’re free – if we are. Or because we’ve been educated – if we have. But because education may be the means by which we realize we are happy. It opens our eyes, our ears, tells us where delights are lurking, convinces us that there is only one freedom of any importance whatsoever, that of the mind, and gives us the assurance – the confidence – to walk the path our mind, our educated mind, offers.”
― Iris Murdoch
(excrept of “Manuscript found in Accra”)Paulo Coelho
(the main character is discussing about the feeling of uselessness)
Ask a flower in the field: ‘Do you feel useful? After all, you do nothing but produce the same flowers over and over?’And the flower will answer: ‘I am beautiful, and beauty is my reason for living.’Ask the river: ‘Do you feel useful, given that all you do is to keep flowing in the same direction?’And the river will answer: ‘I’m not trying to be useful, I’m trying to be a river.’Nothing in this world is useless in the eyes of God. Not a leaf from a tree falls, not a hair from your head, not even an insect dies because it was of no use. Everything has a reason to exist.Even you, the person asking the question. ‘I’m useless’ is the answer you give yourself.Soon that answer will poison you and you will die while still alive, even though you still walk, eat, sleep and try to have a little fun whenever possible.Don’t try to be useful. Try to be yourself: that is enough, and that makes all the difference.(excrept of “Manuscript found in Accra”)Paulo Coelho
Competition increases performance, but collaboration increases learning.
However, in schooling—especially when a student is first learning a
skill—successes, rather than failures, build character and esteem.
Competitive approaches kill the drive for learning if the student rarely finds
himself in the winner’s circle. Competition leads to sorting which, to a very
young person, often fosters feelings of disappointment, which diminish the
innate desires to participate in the activity—in this case, learning.
www.MarvinMarshall.com
Bill Gates’ 11 Rules of Life
Bill Gates’ 11 Rules of Life
Rule 1: Life is not fair — get used to it!
Rule 2: The world won’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.
Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won’t be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.
Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.
Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping — they called it opportunity.
Rule 6: If you mess up, it’s not your parents’ fault, so don’t whine about your mistakes, learn from them.
Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you are. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent’s generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.
Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools they have abolished failing grades and they’ll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.
Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don’t get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.
Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.
Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.