Psychiatry. How to Cultivate Mindfulness & the Meditation Habit. Joseph Goldstein - "Mindfulness: What it is and is Not" Interesting Human Conditions. Alain de Botton on Art as Therapy. Dan Pink: The puzzle of motivation. Psychology. Thomas Pynchon. Meaning of life. Philosophy and Psychology. The Story of Mankind. Kierkegaard on Anxiety & Creativity. By Maria Popova “Because it is possible to create — creating one’s self, willing to be one’s self… — one has anxiety.
One would have no anxiety if there were no possibility whatever.” “Anxiety is love’s greatest killer,” Anaïs Nin famously wrote. But what, exactly, is anxiety, that pervasive affliction the nature of which remains as drowning yet as elusive as the substance of a shadow? In his 1844 treatise The Concept of Anxiety (public library), Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) explains anxiety as the dizzying effect of freedom, of paralyzing possibility, of the boundlessness of one’s own existence — a kind existential paradox of choice.
Anxiety is a qualification of dreaming spirit, and as such it has its place in psychology. He captures the invariable acuteness of anxiety’s varied expressions: Anxiety can just as well express itself by muteness as by a scream. Donating = Loving Bringing you (ad-free) Brain Pickings takes hundreds of hours each month. Share on Tumblr. WorldReligions. Improving your reading stamina - How to read at university. When you've finished this page you will be able to... plan how to improve your reading stamina If you're going to fit in all the reading you need to do, you'll need to be able to read for relatively long periods of time, and this means you'll need to increase your reading stamina.
Environment To read for long periods of time, you need to get into 'the zone', so it's important to give some thought to the best place to read - somewhere comfortable and free from distractions. Everyone's optimal reading environment will be different: some people love the library, others prefer the comfort of their own homes - perhaps the sofa, the bath or the bed. After a consideration of the costs and benefits of each location, decide on where you'll do most of your reading. Concentration Concentration spans vary widely between individuals.
Taking breaks is a great way of improving your ability to concentrate. As the graphs clearly show, concentration and memory come and go in peaks and troughs. Andrew Solomon: Depression, the secret we share. How to Win Friends & Influence People. An Antidote to the Age of Anxiety: Alan Watts on Happiness and How to Live with Presence.
By Maria Popova Wisdom on overcoming the greatest human frustration from the pioneer of Eastern philosophy in the West.
“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives,” Annie Dillard wrote in her timeless reflection on presence over productivity — a timely antidote to the central anxiety of our productivity-obsessed age. Indeed, my own New Year’s resolution has been to stop measuring my days by degree of productivity and start experiencing them by degree of presence. But what, exactly, makes that possible? This concept of presence is rooted in Eastern notions of mindfulness — the ability to go through life with crystalline awareness and fully inhabit our experience — largely popularized in the West by British philosopher and writer Alan Watts (January 6, 1915–November 16, 1973), who also gave us this fantastic meditation on the life of purpose.
If to enjoy even an enjoyable present we must have the assurance of a happy future, we are “crying for the moon.” Thanks, Ken.