Quotes about being alive
February 22, 2009 by Vauna Beauvais · 2 Comments
“I have listened. And I have looked with open eyes. I have poured
my soul into the world, seeking the unknown within the known. And I
sing out loud in amazement.”
~Rabindranath Tagore
Indian Philosopher and Nobel prize winning author
It’s better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.
~Chinese proverb
“Sometimes, if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge and lean
over to watch the river slipping slowly away beneath you, you will
suddenly know everything there is to be known.”
~Winnie-the-Pooh. (Fictional bear created by A.A.Milne)
I think laughter may be a form of courage. As humans we sometimes
stand tall and look into the sun and laugh, and I think we are never
more brave than when we do that.
~Linda Ellerbee (1944- ) American Journalist
“The good thing about the past is that it is over.”
~ Richard Bandler, Co-founder of Neuro-Linguistic Programming
“The ideals that have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been kindness, beauty and truth.”
~Albert Einstein, physicist
“Fear less, cherish more; eat less, chew more; whine less, breathe
more; talk less, listen more; hate less, love more; and all good things are yours.”
~Old Swedish Proverb
“Gratitude is wealth. Complaint is poverty.”
~Doris Day, American actress
Always laugh when you can. It is cheap medicine.
~Lord Byron (1788-1824) English Poet
“I sing what is in my heart. My only thought now is to sing as I have never sung before.”
~Betty Robbins
“Sometimes our light goes out, but is blown into flame by another human being. Each of us owes deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this light.”
~Albert Schweitzer, missionary physician
“Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.”
~ Dr. Seuss
“Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.”
- Henry David Thoreau, essayist
Life is short and far too fragile. Whatever you dream of doing, begin. Put a first step or a “down payment” on your schedule and make it happen. Create memories. Have fun. Have an adventure. Take a (reasonable) risk. Be audacious. Laugh out loud. See what happens.
~Philip Humbert
Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.
~Mahatma Gandhi
You are younger today than you will ever be again. Make use of it for the sake of tomorrow.
~Norman Cousins, editor
I live a day at a time. Each day I look for a kernel of excitement. In the morning, I say: ‘What is my exciting thing for today?’ Then, I do the day. Don’t ask me about tomorrow.
~Barbara Jordan 1936-1996, Lawyer, Educator and Politician
Do not take life too seriously. No one gets out alive.
~Hubbard, Elbert
How to set and achieve goals
February 13, 2009 by Vauna Beauvais · 1 Comment
Acheive your goals and feel fantastic!
1. Decide what you want.
Decide exactly what it is that you want in each part of your life
Have your direction become ‘specific’ with ‘purpose’, rather than ‘general’ and ‘free-floating’
.
2. Write It Down
Make each goal clear and in detail and write it down. A goal that is not clear and detailed, and put down in writing, is only really a wish.
3. Set A Deadline
Set a deadline for your goal.
4. Make A List
what are you going to have to do to achieve your goal? Make a list of everything that you are going to have to do to achieve your goal.
5. Organise your list.
Decide what is moer important and what is less important. Priotitise and organise your list into priority actions and secondary actions (and tertiary, if necessary).
6.Take Action
Plan the activities into your diary. Then take action on your plan. Do something. It can be any of them. But get busy. Get going.
7. Do Something Every Day
Do something every single day that moves you in the direction of your most important goal.
You will be absolutely astonished at how much you accomplish when you do this every single day..You’ve clarified your goals, recorded them, determined the price you will have to pay to achieve them, planned them, taken action, and now you are taking action every day towards your chosen goal. The likelihood of success, now, in this area of your life, has grown enormously.
How to benefit from unpredictability
February 12, 2009 by Vauna Beauvais · Leave a Comment
The Impact of the Highly Improbable
Best bits from the Black Swan
I’ve just finished reading a fabulous book called the Black Swan, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. The following is a compilation of (IMO) the best bits from that book.
Apparently we humans have an inibility to predict outliers (black swans) and that, therefore, implies that we have also the inability to predict the course of history (even though we kid ourselves that we can).
Knowledge about the past does not help us to forecast what is going to happen tomorrow (but we believe it does).
As Peter Drucker said, ”Trying to predict the future is like trying to drive down a country road at night with no lights while looking out the back window”.
Taleb believes that we have ‘blind spots’ of perception, regarding our own [lack of accurate] predictions. Reasons for this include:
- You tell yourself that you failed because you were really playing a different game.
- You invoke the outlier (i.e. you are not to blame, the outlier is to blame because it is unpredictable)
- You compensate yourself by saying that you were ‘almost right’
3 Attributes of Black Swans
- unpredictability
- consequences
- retrospective explainability
Knowing that you cannot predict does not mean that you cannot benefit from unpredictability.
- Be prepared for all relevant eventualities.
- Know how to rank beliefs not according to their plausibility, but by the harm they may cause
- Make a distinction between positive contingencies and negative ones, and take maximum exposure to the positive ones.
The Black Swan
Tips:
- The strategy [in life] is, then, to tinker as much as possible and try to collect as many Black Swan opportunities as you can.
- Put yourself in situations where where favorable consequences are much higher than unfavourable ones
- If you engage in a Black-Swan dependent activity, it is better to be part of a group [group members can be ostracised together, which is better than being ostracised alone]
- When making decisions, focus on the consequences (which you know) , rather than the probability (which you don’t know).
- Stop sweating the small stuff - remember that because of the miracle of your existence ( a minute probability - see ‘A Short History of Nearly Everything’) you are a Black Swan and life is a gift.
- Be suspicious of making a ‘because’ to explain anything retrospectively. Try to limit it to situations where the ‘because’ is derived from experiments, not backward-looking history ( see also Druckers way of getting reliable information).
- Train yourself to spot the difference between the sensational and the empirical
- Train your reasoning abilities to control your decisions.
- If you do have to ever heed a forecast, keep in mind that its accuracy degrades rapidly as you extend it through time.
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