Have intense confidence that they can achieve anything, but only when they’re not an ass about it. So, have humble confidence or cool confidence?
PROMPT: Admiration
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Tag Archives: Positive Psychology
PROMPT: Principles
What principles define how you live?
Before traveling, empty my cup. Before returning home, empty my cup.
Collect experiences, not geegaws.
Wishing for the world to be some other way is a grand waste of time.
If there is a river flowing toward where I want to be, surrender to it.
See humor everywhere, especially in myself.
Be content with who I am at the moment, while struggling to be a better version in future editions.
Strive to find the non-adversarial path.
Keep looking until I see what is beautiful in all things and creatures.
Don’t attempt to construct anyone else’s list of principles to live by.
Feel the sensations that arise without letting the mind amplify them out of proportion.
Seek only simple pleasures, enjoy them fully, and then move on.
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PROMPT: Inaction
Daily writing prompt
Write about a time when you didn’t take action but wish you had. What would you do differently?
The older I get, the more I find regret to be a sucker’s game. I was the me then that I was, wishing the me then was the me now is just a waste of angst. Learn and move. Learn and move. No regret.
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PROMPT: High School
A psychology teacher taught us about what he called “the gestalt of expectations.” It’s when one builds an alternative reality in one’s mind (typically a worst-case scenario) and then one acts as though it is a reality, when – in fact – it is not. (Though sometimes it creates a self-fulfilling prophecy situation, which — of course — triggers selection bias in people of the unexamined life.)
It was my introduction to what I would come to know as the most fundamental insight of human existence — i.e. that one’s experience of the world is not the world itself, and while one has minimal influence over the latter, one can have tremendous influence over the former. One can even train oneself to perceive difficulties and sorrows as learning and growth opportunities.
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PROMPT: Positive Change
Daily practice of feeling gratitude. (As opposed to being grateful that one November day a year and wallowing in how horrible everything is the other three-sixty-four.)
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PROMPT: Community
That’s a tough one because while I see value in communities, I’m also concerned that there is a rising trend toward tribalism and nationalism that will not be good for anyone — not to mention a shift toward virtual communities where anonymity and disconnect lead to people to act as though they were raised by hyenas. (I do know that, in reality, that’s an insult to the marvelous hyena, but I think it makes a sort of point for the non-hyena expert.)
I’ve been amazed at how India manages to have an intense sense of community in such a vastly super-tribal environment. (I’m using “supertribe” in Desmond Morris’s sense — i.e. a community which is too big for everyone to know everyone else, and which has a group dynamic that reflects that fact.) But it’s not as though there isn’t a dark side to this intensity of community — patriarchy, sectarian conflict, disempowered societal segments, etc.
America, by comparison seems to be experiencing a dearth of true community, which is driving people toward virtual “communities,” and in virtual communities people seem to fall into the shittiest versions of themselves. Not to mention the lack of community’s contribution to what I’ve heard called a “mental health crisis.”
I guess my preferences would be that community be: 1.) real and not virtual. 2.) that it exploit the advantages of diverse membership instead of wallowing in homogeneity and group think. 3.) that it doesn’t create overclasses and underclasses. And that, 4.) Community norms minimally negate individual freedoms.
That said, I’m not at all sure that the above criteria can be reconciled. Maybe the tradeoffs are too strong. Maybe – in our super-tribal world – the closest-knit society will always be the most xenophobic [fearful / disliking of outsiders,] and maybe tolerance and egalitarianism will always be accompanied by societal degradation. I have observed a strong inclination for people to think of compassion as a zero-sum game.
As I said, a tough one.
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PROMPT: Secret Skill
Mind control. I can control my mind with my mind.
[NOTE: I’m not sure what “secret” has to do with it. Anything one blabs across the internet is — by definition — not a secret. Though the skill I mention takes place in a purely subjective realm, so — in that sense — might remain unknown to the general public.]
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PROMPT: Confident
I don’t think that’s a question I can meaningfully answer. I think each person has more confidence and courage in some dimensions of life than in others. A given observer tends to see the person who is the most confident in the areas in which that observer is least confident and think of that person as the most confident — when that person might be quite lacking in confidence in areas to which the observer isn’t being attentive.
It was eye opening to read about Audie Murphy, a man who won the Congressional Medal of Honor for single-handedly taking on a unit of Nazis, a man who had a successful career in film, but also a man who was said to have been tremendously shy and awkward around strangers. It would be all in the context in which one saw Murphy that might make one think he was the most or least confident person around.
Quite frankly, the person who appears the most confident in all aspects of life is probably also the most full of shit.
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FIVE WISE LINES FROM WILLIAM JAMES [Feb. 2025]
Our view of the world is truly shaped
by what we decide to hear.
The greatest weapon against stress
is our ability to choose
one thought over another.
The art of being wise is
the art of knowing what to overlook.
We have grown literally afraid to be poor.
We despise anyone who elects to be poor
in order to simplify and save his inner life.
Whenever two people meet,
there are really six people present.
There is each man as he sees himself,
each man as the other person sees him,
and each man as he really is.
NOTABLE MENTIONS:
We may be in the Universe as dogs and cats
are in our libraries, seeing the books
and hearing the conversation,
but having no inkling of the meaning of it all.
My experience is what I agree to attend to.
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PROMPT: Perspective
Daily writing prompt
How do significant life events or the passage of time influence your perspective on life?
I’m getting more at ease with Death by the day. In a broader sense, it’s progressively easier to not get worked up over the everchanging and unpredictable nature of the world.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 