Universal Beliefs

The generic nature of human beings and the ordered nature of the world in which we live tend to evoke very similar beliefs in all of us, which we have called universal beliefs. They include:

1. adherence to a law of noncontratidiction,

2. belief in a an external world of orderly processes,

3. belief in the existence of other persons who share our world and with whom we communicate and live,

4. and belief in also in some ultimate reality with which we must eventually reckon.

Beliefs such as these are a practical necessity if we are to think and function at all.

Arthur Holmes, Contours of a World View

it cannot be done

The man who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the man doing it. -Chinese Proverb

Utah College Football Team Saves Woman Hanging Off A Cliff by Her Hair

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The Best Advice I Ever Got.. Mohomed El-Erian

I remember asking my father, Why do we need four newspapers? He said to me, “Unless you read different points of view, your mind will eventually close, and you’ll become a prisoner to a certain point of view that you’ll never question.” There’s a tendency to operate in a comfort zone and to want to read what is familiar to them. But if you are just used to following one person or one newspaper, you will miss the big shifts.

Mohomed El-Erian, Pimco, quoted in Fortune Magazine

the game

The man who has no problems to solve is out of the game. -Elbert Hubbard

When things go wrong

People need to recognize that life can be unfair, that accidents will happen. None of this is to say that people have to acquiesce to the threats of life, to lie down and not attempt to change anything. There is nothing wrong with positive thinking and the hope that today will go well or that people might repent and treat others better. But (you) should not be shocked and angered when something does go wrong… cultivate the attitude that life is something to work at and that problems are normal. Learning to laugh at normal failures and irritations has been shown to be effective in defusing anger.

Mark Cosgrove, Counseling for Anger

don't put off being happy

Many people think that if they were only in some other place, or had some other job, they would be happy. Well, that is doubtful. So get as much happiness out of what you are doing as you can and don't put off being happy until some future date.  -Dale Carnegie

Officer saves man in wheelchair from being struck by train

You can read more on the story from ABC-7 here. #GOODNEWS

folks who simply are too dumb

Many important things are done by folks who simply are too dumb to know they can’t be done.

Best Advice I Ever Got.. Mort Zuckerman

The best advice I ever got came from one of my professors at the Harvard Business School. 

He told a story about how George Bernard Shaw was working as a clerk in a dry-goods store in Dublin, and he decides to give himself three years to go and write plays in London. And if it didn’t work out he could always go back and be a clerk in a dry-goods store.  

The way I interpreted his advice was to really do what you love. 

Mort Zuckerman, US News & World Report
Quoted in Fortune Magazine

A man with no enemies

A man with no enemies is a man with no character. -Paul Newman  

Video Goes Viral Of Nigerian Boy Dancing In The Rain

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Ability and Achievement

Ability does not guarantee achievement, nor is achievement proportional to ability. So it is important to always keep in mind the other term in the equation – the role of chance. -Leonard Mlodinow

wiser today

A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than yesterday. -Jonathan Swift

Silence

A man is known by the silence he keeps.  - Oliver Herford

Baby Steps

Many of us.. have great dreams and ambitions. Caught up in the emotions of our dreams and the vastness of our desires, we find it very difficult to focus on the small, tedious steps usually necessary to attain them. We tend to think in terms of giant leaps toward our goals. But in the social world as in nature, anything of size and stability grows slowly. The piecemeal strategy is the perfect antidote to our natural impatience: it forces us to think in terms of a process, a sequence of connected steps and actions, no matter how small, which has immeasurable psychological benefits as well. Too often the magnitude of our desires overwhelms us; taking that small firs step makes them seem realizable. There is nothing more therapeutic than action.

In plotting this strategy, be attentive to sudden opportunities and to your enemies momentary crises and weaknesses Do not be tempted however, to try to take anything large; bite off more than you can chew and you will be consumed with problems and disproportionately discouraged if you fail to cope with them.

Robert Greene
The 33 Strategies of War

A man is his own easiest dupe

A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true. - Demosthenes

Humility

Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people CALL ‘humble’ nowadays: he will not be a greasy, smarmy person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is nobody. Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him. If you do dislike him it will be because you feel a bit envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all.

CS Lewis, Mere Christianity

Your job

Make good more attractive than evil.

Delighting in Life

You can't outwit death anyway by "progress" or accumulating wealth; so why not accept your fate, choose values which are authentic, and let yourself delight and believe in the being you are and the Being you are part of?

Rollo May, Love & Will