- Mark Twain
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Monday, July 22, 2013
Mark Twain Gives Nine Tips for Living an Extraordinary Life
You may know Mark Twain for some of his very popular books like Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. He was a writer and also a humorist, satirist and lecturer.
Twain is known for his many – and often funny – quotes. Here are a few of my favourite tips from him.
1. Approve of yourself.
“A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.”
If you don’t approve of yourself, of your behaviour and actions then you’ll probably walk around most of the day with a sort of uncomfortable feeling. If you, on the other hand, approve of yourself then you tend to become relaxed and gain inner freedom to do more of what you really want.
This can, in a related way, be a big obstacle in personal growth. You may have all the right tools to grow in some way but you feel an inner resistance. You can’t get there.
What you may be bumping into there are success barriers. You are putting up barriers in your own mind of what you may or may not deserve. Or barriers that tell you what you are capable of. They might tell you that you aren’t really that kind of person that could this thing that you’re attempting.
Or if you make some headway in the direction you want to go you may start to sabotage for yourself. To keep yourself in a place that is familiar for you.
So you need give yourself approval and allow yourself to be who you want to be. Not look for the approval from others. But from yourself. To dissolve that inner barrier or let go of that self-sabotaging tendency. This is no easy task and it can take time.
2. Your limitations may just be in your mind.
“Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”
So many limitations are mostly in our minds. We may for instance think that people will disapprove because we are too tall, too old or balding. But these things mostly matter when you think they matter. Because you become self-conscious and worried about what people may think.
And people pick up on that and may react in negative ways. Or you may interpret anything they do as a negative reaction because you are so fearful of a bad reaction and so focused inward on yourself.
If you, on the other hand, don’t mind then people tend to not mind that much either. And if you don’t mind then you won’t let that part of yourself become a self-imposed roadblock in your life.
It is, for instance, seldom too late to do what you want to do.
3. Lighten up and have some fun.
“Humor is mankind’s greatest blessing.”
“Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.”
Humor and laughter are amazing tools. They can turn any serious situation into something to laugh about. They can lighten the mood just about anywhere.
And a lighter mood is often a better space to work in because now your body and mind isn’t filled to the brim with negative emotions. When you are more light-hearted and relaxed then the solution to a situation is often easier to both come up with and implement. Have a look at Lighten Up! for more on this topic.
4. Let go of anger.
“Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.”
Anger is most of the time pretty pointless. It can cause situations to get out of hand. And from a selfish perspective it often more hurtful for the one being angry then the person s/he’s angry at.
So even if you feel angry at someone for days recognize that you are mostly just hurting yourself. The other person may not even be aware that you are angry at him or her. So either talking to the person and resolving the conflict or letting go of anger as quickly as possible are pretty good tips to make your life more pleasurable.
5. Release yourself from entitlement.
“Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.”
When you are young your mom and dad may give a lot of things. As you grow older you may have a sort of entitlement. You may feel like the world should just give you what you want or that it owes you something.
This belief can cause a lot of anger and frustration in your life. Because the world may not give you what expect it to. On the other hand, this can be liberating too. You realize that it is up to you to shape your own life and for you to work towards what you want. You are not a kid anymore, waiting for your parents or the world to give you something.
You are in the driver’s seat now. And you can go pretty much wherever you want.
6. If you’re taking a different path, prepare for reactions.
“A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.”
I think this has quite a bit of relevance to self-improvement.
If you start to change or do something different than you usually do then people may react in different ways. Some may be happy for you. Some may be indifferent. Some may be puzzled or react in negative and discouraging ways.
Much of these reactions are probably not so much about you but about the person who said it and his/her life. How they feel about themselves is coming through in the words they use and judgements they make.
And that’s OK. I think it’s pretty likely that they won’t react as negatively as you may imagine. Or they will probably at least go back to focusing on their own challenges pretty soon.
So what other people may say and think and letting that hold you back is probably just fantasy and barrier you build in your mind.
You may find that when you finally cross that inner threshold you created then people around you may not shun you or go chasing after you with pitchforks. :) They might just go: “OK”.
7. Keep your focus steadily on what you want.
“Drag your thoughts away from your troubles… by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it.”
What you focus your mind on greatly determines how things play out. You can focus on your problems and dwell in suffering and a victim mentality. Or you can focus on the positive in situation, what you can learn from that situation or just focus your mind on something entirely else.
It may be “normal” to dwell on problems and swim around in a sea of negativity. But that is a choice. And a thought habit. You may reflexively start to dwell on problems instead of refocusing your mind on something more useful. But you can also start to build a habit of learning to gain more and more control of where you put your focus.
8. Don’t focus so much on making yourself feel good.
“The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.”
This may be a bit of a counter-intuitive tip. But as I wrote yesterday, one of the best ways to feel good about yourself is to make someone else feel good or to help them in some way.
This is a great way to look at things to create an upward spiral of positivity and exchange of value between people. You help someone and both of you feel good. The person you helped feels inclined to give you a hand later on since people tend to want to reciprocate. And so the both of you are feeling good and helping each other.
Those positive feelings are contagious to other people and so you may end up making them feel good too. And the help you received from your friend may inspire you to go and help another friend. And so the upward spiral grows and continues.
9. Do what you want to do.
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did so. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
Awesome quote. And I really don’t have much to add to that one. Well, maybe to write it down and keep it as a daily reminder - on your fridge or bathroom door - of what you can actually do with your life.
Courtesty of the Positivity Blog
Sunday, October 19, 2014
Wednesday, August 26, 2020
New ‘Woke’ Wonder Woman Slammed As ‘Overweight, Badly-dressed Frump’
Why is she wearing the “kind of mom-jeans worn by middle-aged mid-western chicks at Shania Twain concerts”?
DC comics has continued to bow to pressure from ‘woke’ trolls online, unveiling a “variant cover of the Wonder Woman 1984” on which the superhero is overweight, has a weird purple skin colour, and sports really bad mom jeans.
The new version of Wonder Woman has seemingly also had a massive breast reduction, following complaints that the superhero’s large mammaries contributed to an overtly sexualised image that sends the wrong message to young girls.
“In place of a dynamic flowing costume, her ensemble consists of an orange boob-tube and the kind of mom-jeans worn by middle-aged mid-western chicks at Shania Twain concerts,” Sheppard adds.
“Her thighs have been rendered so large it is as if the performer Lizzo had spent the entirety of quarantine bingeing on deep-fried Mars Bars and eschewed any fitness regime beyond schlepping between the fridge and the couch,” he adds.
Critics of the variant Wonder Woman questioned why promoting obesity is somehow a more ‘body positive’ image than a fit and...
Tuesday, December 24, 2013
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Saturday, April 13, 2013
Monday, April 3, 2023
Fahrenheit 2023
First they came for the writers.
“Best-selling author Agatha Christie’s books have reportedly become the latest target of sensitivity readers reworking or removing original passages in the new editions of Poirot and Miss Marple mysteries,” the Washington Examiner reports.
The novels, written between 1920 and 1976, “are being stripped of certain language and descriptions that are deemed offensive,” and dialogue by “unsympathetic characters” has been cut out. Dame Christie, who died in 1976, is hardly the only target.
The James Bond literary franchise, Time magazine reports, “will receive a sensitivity review” of the 14 novels written from 1953 to 1966. The review “will see some racially offensive language and outdated stereotypes” removed from the books by Ian Fleming. The author died in 1964, the same year as “Goldfinger,” based on Fleming’s book of the same title and starring Sean Connery as James Bond and Honor Blackman as the unforgettable Pussy Galore, was released.
British author Roald Dahl passed away in 1990, and as CNN reports, his books Matilda, The BFG and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, have been “revised and edited” by an organization called Inclusive Minds.
Language relating to “gender, race, weight, mental health and violence had all been cut or revised, including the removal of words like ‘fat’ and ‘ugly,’ and descriptions using the colors black and white.” The best-selling books of Theodore Seuss Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, pose other problems.
As the Associated Press reports, in And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, “an Asian person is portrayed wearing a conical hat, holding chopsticks, and eating from a bowl.” Geisel’s If I Ran the Zoo “includes a drawing of two bare-footed African men wearing what appear to be grass skirts with their hair tied above their heads.” The books, therefore, “will stop being published because of racist and insensitive imagery.”
As the March 2, 2021 report notes, the books of Dr. Seuss “have been translated into dozens of languages as well as in braille and are sold in more than 100 countries.” So 30 years after his death, and nearly 120 years after his birth, the books of Theodore Geisel are being killed off. Way back in 1953, Ray Bradbury saw it all coming.
A publishing house wanted to reprint Bradbury’s “The Fog Horn” as part of a high school reader. The story describes a lighthouse with an illumination like a “God-Light,” making people feel as though they were in “the Presence.” Editors deleted both “God-Light” and “the Presence” and other authors suffered similar mutilations.
“Every story, slenderized, starved, bluepencilled, leeched and bled white, resembled every other story,” Bradbury wrote. “Twain read like Poe read like Shakespeare read like Dostoevsky read like—in the finale—Edgar Guest. Every word of more than three syllables had been razored. Every image that demanded so much as one instant’s attention—shot dead.”
Bradbury responded by firing the whole lot, sending rejection slips to each one and “by ticketing the assembly of idiots to the far reaches of hell.” For Bradbury, the point was obvious.
“It is a mad world and it will get madder if we allow the minorities, be they dwarf or giant, orangutan or dolphin, nuclear-head or water-conversationalist, pro-computerologist or Neo-Luddite, simpleton or sage, to interfere with aesthetics.” The world did get madder than it was in 1953, and is now far, far madder than it was in 2012, when Bradbury passed away.
The Marxist dogma that the past is nothing but a chronicle of oppression has been institutionalized. The nation lives under the dictatorship of the subjunctive mood (DSM), and unreality rules. Book burners now come disguised as authorities in diversity and sensitivity. What they really represent is...
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Wednesday, April 24, 2019
This Supreme Court Case Threatens the Left’s View of Group Identity, Victimhood
Oral arguments heard at the Supreme Court Tuesday were ostensibly about whether the 2020 census could include a question about citizenship.
But don’t be fooled. The reason this case rocketed to the Supreme Court and has been so hotly contested is that the debate hinges, at bottom, on two starkly different visions of America.
In one vision, what matters is loyalty to and affiliation with a nation-state that is self-contained, independent, civic, and colorbind. In the other vision, priority is given to one’s membership in a subnational group that is based on subjective self-identity (like race or sexual orientation), and association with that group yields benefits and preferences in everything, from hiring to contracting, employment, housing, and even electoral redistricting.
The divide essentially comes down to a commitment to America as a nation vs. a commitment to one’s subgroup and the hierarchy of victimhood.
This is one of the great debates of our time—not just here, but around the world.
Whatever the Supreme Court decides—and an opinion is needed by summer if the Census Bureau is to meet its deadline of printing millions of forms—rest assured that this debate will not go away any time soon.
To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of the death of the nation-state seem to have been greatly exaggerated. Despite pressure from above—from sovereignty-draining, transnational institutions like the United Nations and the European Union—and from below, i.e., from identity groups based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability status, and anything else that can confer conceptual victimhood (and thus special rights) on an individual, the nation-state has shown remarkable resilience.
Defenders of the nation-state remind us that democracy, the rule of law, self-determination, liberty, and everything else Americans and like-minded people hold dear depend on territorially and culturally defined nation-states. Its opponents like to portray the nation-state as archaic, unnecessary, and a gateway to authoritarianism, if not worse.
The Trump administration has championed the sovereignist view, and in 2017 recognized the importance of citizenship by requesting that a question on citizenship be added to the 2020 census.
Progressive groups have left no stone unturned in their bid to frustrate the administration on this front. Notably, these same groups defend a panoply of other census questions that divide Americans by sex, ethnicity, and race.
These groups argue that the citizenship question would depress responses among certain marginalized groups, especially...
Tuesday, November 11, 2014
11 Quotes On Courage.. For Veterans Day...
1. Courage is the discovery that you may not win, and trying when you know you can lose. ( Tom Krause )2. The greatest barrier to success is the fear of failure. (Sven Goran Eriksson)
3. The key to change… is to let go of fear. (Rosanne Cash)
4. If you wait to do everything until you’re sure it’s right, you’ll probably never do much of anything. ( Win Borden)
5. A ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not what ships are for. (William Shedd)
6. Don’t wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions. So what. Get started now. With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident and more and more successful. ( Mark Victor Hansen)
7. Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear. (Mark Twain)
8. Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen. ( (Winston Churchill)
9. Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm. (Winston Churchill)
10. Be brave. Take risks. Nothing can substitute experience. (Paulo Coelho)
11. You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor. (Aristotle)
Sunday, May 15, 2022
Stagflation – Another Blast from the Past
The misery index is one such bit of history, dating back not that far, to the Jimmy Carter presidency of the late 1970s. Calculated by adding the unemployment and inflation rates together, the misery index “measures the degree of economic distress felt by everyday people.”
It is currently just over 12 percent, and that’s being generous given how the government calculates inflation. More on that later. The misery index reached 15 percent just after COVID hit and the country locked down, closing businesses left and right. During the Carter era it topped 20 percent.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was recently interviewed on Fox News and brought up the misery index along with another golden oldie, stagflation. This is a term first used in the 1960s in the United Kingdom, describing a period of a stagnating economy along with rampant inflation, hence the coined term.
Various definitions have been applied to stagflation. Investopedia describes, “Stagflation can be alternatively defined as a period of inflation combined with a decline in the gross domestic product (GDP).” Former Speaker Newt also used the term in his Fox News interview, tying them both together:
We lived through this with Jimmy Carter. It ended up being called stagflation and people ate it up. The unemployment rate and the inflation rate and turn it into the misery index by adding the two numbers together, we have a grave danger of being worse off in another year or a year-and-a-half than we were under Jimmy Carter.
Stagflation may be the anchor hanging on Democrat necks ahead of the November midterm elections. Real GDP contracted in the first quarter of this year by 1.4 percent, negative growth. The last such contraction was during the first half of 2020 when COVID shut down businesses, travel, restaurants, and life in general. Now America is post COVID and the economy should be booming. One more quarter of negative GDP puts us officially into a recession, something the Democrats will be delighted to showcase as they ask American voters to leave them in charge of the nation’s affairs.
Inflation, we were told by Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, was “transitory.” Just a mere blip, a temporary and minor spike in prices, much like calling the BLM riots in the summer of 2020 “peaceful protests.”
Economic realists pounced on Powell’s naïve assessment. “The characterization of inflation as transitory is probably the worst inflation call in the history of the Federal Reserve, and it results in a high probability of a policy mistake,” according to Allianz Chief Economic Advisor Mohamed El-Erian.
Inflation is calculated based on many assumptions of the costs of various goods and services, all plugged into complex formulas that would make any non-mathematician’s head spin. It is the change in cost of this basket of goods that determines the rate of inflation. Like any other formula, the maxim “garbage in garbage out” applies.
For example, energy is only 7 percent in relative importance in...
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