Thought.is

Wisdom comes back when only you stop freaking out. It just can’t get to work on a panicked mind.

This “shakeup” phenomenon is probably a major reason why it’s so hard for human beings to make a lasting major change in life, even if it’s clearly in a better direction. Change the way you do something, and in other areas what used to work might not work anymore.

Breakthroughs tend to come in the form of forehead slapping moments where you realize that you’ve been creating a problem for yourself your whole life, and you realize you don’t have to any more. Often it’s a simple insight you read or hear someone say.

I bet Einstein would have been someone who understood that compound interest applies to much more than money. Compounding works everywhere, and our interests concern a much broader set of values than money.

If you spend a decade reading different people’s accounts of how to be happy, you discover that almost all of them can be boiled down to a few principles, and the primary one by far is to keep your attention in the present moment.

Whether or not you infer religious overtones into this lyric (or into your life), there does seem to be some sort of divine plan to the ups and downs of our lives.

We grow up with this rigid idea that we should behave ethically, as if the word “should” itself is all the reason we need.

I have power over my happiness precisely to the extent I take responsibility for it. You too. Same goes for achievement, wealth, discipline, even the state of the world itself.

Self-love is not how you feel about yourself. It’s what you do for yourself. You can only love yourself by doing, not thinking. Execute feats of love, feats of respect, for your own benefit.

If there’s one thing Friedrich Nietzsche did well, it’s obliterate feel-good beliefs people have about themselves.