How to Be Alone: An Antidote to One of the Central Anxieties and Greatest Paradoxes of Our Time
by Maria Popova “We live in a society which sees high self-esteem as a proof of well-being, but we do not want to be intimate with this admirable and desirable person.” If the odds of finding one’s soul mate are so dreadfully dismal and the secret of lasting love is largely a matter of concession, is it any wonder that a growing number of people choose to go solo? The choice of solitude, of active aloneness, has relevance not only to romance but to all human bonds — even Emerson, perhaps the most eloquent champion of friendship in the English language, lived a significant portion of his life in active solitude, the very state that enabled him to produce his enduring essays and journals. And yet that choice is one our culture treats with equal parts apprehension and contempt, particularly in our age of fetishistic connectivity. Solitude, the kind we elect ourselves, is met with judgement and enslaved by stigma. Illustration by Alessandro Sanna from 'The River.' Donating = Loving
10 Differences Between Successful and Unsuccessful People
Everyone strives to be successful, but it doesn’t always come easily. The people who do end up reaching their highest potential always possess certain qualities and habits that allowed them to get there which separate them from those who don’t. Here are 10 differences between successful and unsuccessful people! 1. 2. Complimenting someone is always a great way to show someone you care. Moments of gratitude, each and every one, transform my life each day- and unquestionably have made me more successful and more happy.
13 Things to Remember When Life Gets Rough
We’ve all gone through hard times. And we all get through them. However, some get through them better than others. So what is their secret? Most of it has to do with attitude. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. About the Author Carol Morgan has a Ph.D. in communication and is a professor at Wright State University. Credits: Life hack
Charles Bukowski's Top 10 Tips for Living a Kick-Ass Life
Looking for some pointers on how to live an awesome life? Take it from Charles Bukowski, an American author, poet, short story writer, and novelist who shared his unfiltered views and opinions with the world on everything from art to death. He was a renowned and prolific writer, often depicting the experiences of the downtrodden and depraved people of American urban life, and he provided plenty of great tips on how to spend your days. 1. “I wanted the whole world or nothing.” You shouldn’t settle for anything less than what you absolutely deserve or desire. 2. “I never met another man I’d rather be. No one’s perfect, that’s for sure, but there’s also no point in beating yourself up about it. 3. “What is terrible is not death but the lives people live or don’t live up until their death.” “Some people never go crazy, What truly horrible lives they must live.” Want to go skydiving but have never done it? 4. “You have to die a few times before you can really live.” 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
The art of asking: or, how to ask and get what you want. — Architecting A Life
What does it take to ask for what you want—and then get it? There seems to be a magical art behind creating a great ask, and we all know stories of people who seem to get exactly what they want whenever they ask. Magicians who bend and will the world to their ways. Why is this? What are they doing that no one else seems to be doing? Culturally, it’s not always the norm to ask directly for what you want—or we do a terrible job of it (and women are worse, according to the New York Times). Creating a great ask (and learning the ability to say no) are two skills that successful people learn how to do really well. In addition, I’ve helped clients understand persuasion tactics and develop scripts to ask for what they want, including the delicate art of deciding to do it anyways and asking for forgiveness rather than permission. 1. 2. Is this something that I want to do, and want to do deeply? If you don’t want it at the center of your core, ask yourself why you’re going after it. 3. 4. 5.
How to Find Your Bliss: Joseph Campbell on What It Takes to Have a Fulfilling Life
by Maria Popova “You have to learn to recognize your own depth.” In 1985, mythologist and writer Joseph Campbell (March 26, 1904–October 30, 1987) sat down with legendary interviewer and idea-monger Bill Moyers for a lengthy conversation at George Lucas’s Skywalker Ranch in California, which continued the following year at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. But Moyers and the team at PBS felt that the unedited conversation, three quarters of which didn’t make it into the television production, was so rich in substance that it merited preservation and public attention. As Moyers notes in the introduction, Campbell saw as the greatest human transgression “the sin of inadvertence, of not being alert, not quite awake.” If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. [Sacred space] is an absolute necessity for anybody today. Donating = Loving
Virginia Woolf on Why the Best Mind Is the Androgynous Mind
by Maria Popova “In each of us two powers preside, one male, one female… The androgynous mind is resonant and porous… naturally creative, incandescent and undivided.” In addition to being one of the greatest writers and most expansive minds humanity ever produced, Virginia Woolf (January 25, 1882–March 28, 1941) was also a woman of exceptional wisdom on such complexities of living as consciousness and creativity, the consolations of aging, how one should read a book, and the artist’s eternal dance with self-doubt. So incisive was her insight into the human experience that, many decades before scientists demonstrated why “psychological androgyny” is essential to creativity, Woolf articulated this idea in a beautiful passage from her classic 1929 book-length essay A Room of One’s Own (public library). A year after she subverted censorship and revolutionized the politics of gender identity with her novel Orlando, Woolf writes: Illustration from 'I’m Glad I’m a Boy! Donating = Loving
Joseph Brodsky’s 6 Rules for Playing the Game of Life Like a Winner
by Maria Popova “Of all the parts of your body, be most vigilant over your index finger, for it is blame-thirsty. A pointed finger is a victim’s logo.” The exquisite commencement address is a special kind of art, necessitating in equal parts the vulnerability of sharing personal experience and the challenge of extracting from it wisdom of universal resonance. On December 18, 1988, twenty-five years after his writing had been denounced as “anti-Soviet” in his native Russia and mere months after winning the Nobel Prize in Literature “for an all-embracing authorship, imbued with clarity of thought and poetic intensity,” prolific poet and essayist Joseph Brodsky took the podium at Ann Arbor and addressed the graduating class at the University of Michigan with one of the most beautiful and timeless commencement speeches ever given, offering six invaluable pieces of wisdom on good-personhood and the meaning of life. Brodsky begins: Life is a game with many rules but no referee. Share on Tumblr
