1. Everybody was a beginner, no work is mastered without investing huge amounts of time. Don’t worry to be ashamed, learning is always accompanied with mistakes and failure. It means you’re in a new territory, you’re developing through trials.
“The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.”
Confucius
I can’t see a way through, said the boy. Can you see your next step? Yes. Just take that, said the horse.
Charlie Mackesy
2. Your ideas are cyclical. What you transmit to others will eventually return to you. What you believe, feel, or envision, you become, attract, or produce. Watch yourself, your thoughts; these are your attractions. You may feel out of control, you’re right and wrong in this. Neither you control or not.
“Your beliefs become your thoughts, Your thoughts become your words, Your words become your actions, Your actions become your habits, Your habits become your values, Your values become your destiny.”
M. Gandhi
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
Aristotle.
3. The mind is a good servant but a terrible master. Thoughts are like maps, they’re useful but they’re not the reality; only a vague representation of it. Map is not the territory. You need to combine reality with ideal thoughts; otherwise you’ll get lost.
“Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.”
I. Kant
4. Try something, the genes try something new with every person. You’re a trial of your source code, humans are a trial of the planet, the planet is a trial of the system and so on. At times “do the things you can’t do, this way you’ll be able to do it.”
“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.”
Robert F. Kennedy
“Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.”
R.W. Emerson
5. Let go of past. The past in your head is an imagination. It’s past for a reason, you’re not that. Besides, how can you forgive others if you can’t forgive yourself? How can you live now if you don’t let go past. Above all, any guilt belongs to all of us, as we’re a macro organism, although every guilt belongs to you due to being this macro organism as well.
We must abandon completely the notion of blaming the past for any kind of situation we’re in and reverse our thinking and see that the past always flows back form the present.
Alan Watts
6. The best way is to take responsibility. Take responsibility of your family, your ancestors, your kind and maybe universe a bit. Freedom comes with responsibility. What’s your position, your doing in the world? Your allowance will be according to it.
When you blame others, you give your power away and when you take responsibility, you take back your power – to make things happen.
Robert N. Anthony
7. Pursuing happiness will lead you to hopelessness until you understand that happiness is the way. The point of music is not the end of the composition; it’s the process. The experience is the happiness, not any kind of belonging. Unhappy people usually live somewhere else than they are, they think happiness is in the future or in another place or an object or someone. The moment has the key in it. It’s a most valuable understanding, free of charge.
“A man asked Gautama Buddha, “I want happiness.”
Gautama Buda
Buddha said, “First remove “I,” that’s Ego, then remove “want,” that’s Desire.
See now you are left with only “Happiness.”
If it’s bearable, then bear it.
Aurelius
8. Fear isn’t there to stop you, it’s a sign of action. Get to know fear, don’t battle it. All emotions are necessary for survival. The brain is a survival mechanism, you’re a survivalist; you need to be scared in order to function well. If you’re scared of new experiences, you got life way too wrong.
‘We only think when confronted with a problem.’
John Dewey
“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”
Plato
9. There’s a solution in every crisis, there’s an opportunity in every moment; seize it. If you didn’t, don’t miss the present opportunities. Focus on the moment. We’re just an ecstatic persona of the universe that has written the script beforehand. You can change things that are up to you, the actor, while playing the game. You must have studied, rehearsed that; if not, improvise.
Commitment is what gets you started, consistency is what gets you somewhere, and persistence is what keeps you going.
10. Effortless effort is the key to life. The best things are natural, cheap and the most essential is easy to achieve. The most magnificent thing in the universe is you, the human. A chat with another person, affection with a beloved, the observation of endless sky cannot be matched with any possession in life. The most amazing experiences don’t require money, only the mediocre ones.
The best things in life aren’t things.
Art Buchwald
11. Focus on what you can control (your reactions) and let go what you can’t control (the outcomes). You’re bound to opportunities and your environment as much as your talent and motivation. You may fail, yet you should be content that you’ve realized yourself. You’re responsible for your own act; on the other hand, if you help the lazy actors you’ll prosper.
“Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our actions. The things in our control are by nature free, unrestrained, unhindered; but those not in our control are weak, slavish, restrained, belonging to others.
Epictetus
12. Be measurable, we all have our limits, know your limit. Know the limits of the others. Your job as a thinker is to find medium among the people. A wise person never chooses, only acts as a mediator. Find a common ground, invest your effort in it. If you’re not in the middle, you must be having fun in the childish games.
“All things are poison and nothing (is) without poison; only the dose makes that a thing is no poison.”
Paracelsus
13. There isn’t intrinsic good or evil in life, there is good or evil for an ideal. You don’t know what is the plan of your family, your country, your society, the planet. Your ideal may not accord with the ideals of the others. Don’t categorize events as good or bad, success or failure. Don’t categorise, don’t label unless it’s inescapable.
“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.
J.R.R. Tolkien
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
14. Don’t mess with your ego, your ego is just a radar for troubleshooting. That’s it. Go with the flow, otherwise you’ll be stuck. You’re not even you, you’re always you plus something else. You+ husband, you+ lover, you+ citizen, you+employee, you+bus passenger, you+pedestrian.
Ego is a social institution with no physical reality. The ego is simply your symbol of yourself. Just as the word water is a noise that symbolizes a certain liquid without being it, so too the idea of ego symbolizes the role you play, who you are, but it is not the same as your living organism.
Alan Watts
15. Society can be a trap, beware of your social mechanisms. Don’t bother with others anymore than necessary. We’re overly social, too communal. All animals mirror the others’ actions in their brain. Humans are the pinnacle in this. A smile can make other person smile instantly, that’s such an extent. We always tend to conform our beliefs and groups. In group bias, bandwagon effect and desire for social appeal may prey upon you.
I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
Maya Angelou
16. We’re all in the show business. You may be talented, knowledgeable, experienced; you might even be the nicest person on earth. You need at least a bit marketing, a little show off. All people pretend to know something, that’s the nature of knowledge. Everybody deceives the others. We’re a product of sexual deception. We yearn for illusion, we aspire the people who deceives us with illusions.
“Show the readers everything, tell them nothing.”
Ernest Hemingway
“Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion. Life is like a train of moods like a string of beads, and, as we pass through them, they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue. . . . ”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
17. Start anew, the planet restarts itself, our bodies renew, animals die and born in order to continue. You should find a way to restart, reshuffle the deck, surprise yourself. The most casual experiences are amazing for children because children are new in life. You should find new experiences or at least new perspectives on what you do to make it sustainable.
‘Those are dark clouds,’ said the boy.
‘Yes, but they will move on,’ said the horse. ‘The blue sky above never leaves.’
Charlie Mackesy
“Isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?”
L.M. Montgomery
18. Grow up or know your place. We usually crave for our childhood which we were nurtured by the environment. We were always flattered, deceived by the fairy tales. A completely content life it is, yet we had no power even for our individual actions. Children have no power, except whining about trivial things. If you want success, you need to grow up and leave fairy tales, flattery and nurturing by others.
“Most people don’t grow up. Most people age. They find parking spaces, honor their credit cards, get married, have children, and call that maturity. What that is, is aging.”
Maya Angelou
19. Whenever you feel disjointed, whenever others seem absurd, it seems unbearable initially, yet you can play with it. When you’re not in the play, you may analyse the play or create new games. You can create your own absurd, and spend your time with it. Know that everything is absurd for a framework. All is different games, human game, monkey game, commoner game, actor game, planet game….
…With going on living at all: if you’re going to gamble, gamble! And so, either suicide or gamble seem to me to be the great alternatives of this life. And what will the gamble be? The gamble—or the gaming—has to rest on the assumption that this game is superb. No other assumption will work. If I may put it in another way: the game is to be trusted. The universe—you, yourself—it is fundamentally to be trusted. And this is the act of faith which underlies all gambling…
Alan Watts
20. Life is comprised of moments and moments alone. The past and the future are in the moment. Don’t miss the moment, seize it. You will have a wholly life by collecting moments piece by piece. It’s not carpe diem, it’s being here and now, utilizing the instance and trying to maximize your experience from each occasion. Even the sad ones, the terror, the sorrow.
“Life exists only at this very moment, and in this moment it is infinite and eternal. For the present moment is infinitely small; before we can measure it, it has gone, and yet it exists forever. . . . You may believe yourself out of harmony with life and its eternal Now; but you cannot be, for you are life and exist Now.”
Alan Watts
King requested from his minister, to bring him a ring with these magical powers. The minister searched and searched all over for this ring. Most likely the King knew he would never find it, but minister didn’t give up.
He finally went into the slums and found a craftsman who worked in metal. The craftsman turned to his grandfather with this odd request, who in turn went into his workshop and appeared with a ring.
This gold ring he brought out to the minister to present to the king had this phrase engraved on the inside of the ring, “This Too Shall Pass.”
BONUS. Doubt, investigate, counter-claim yourself and all knowledge claims. We all have biases and fallacies. You can’t escape being wrong. You MUST think about other possibilities. Thanks to wrong you’re right. Thanks to false, yours is true. Thanks to minors you’re great. Others imply you like black implies white. All knowledge has reference and it’s a two side game. Don’t forget to be dialectical and contrasting in your arguments.
1. Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.
2. Do not think it worthwhile to proceed by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.
3. Never try to discourage thinking for you are sure to succeed.
4. When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your husband or your children, endeavor to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.
5. Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found.
6. Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.
7. Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
8. Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.
9. Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.
10. Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool’s paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness.
Bertrand Russell
