Now I’m sure you have heard of the placebo effect? Where the belief that something is going to make you well again actually makes you well again Like when the doctor tell you it’s medicine but it’s actually a sugar pill?

Did you know a minimum of 30% of all medical interventions are just placebo?

So what about negative thoughts? We don’t talk about this but it’s equally just as powerful this is called a nocebo effect, it works in the same way in effecting biology, but the opposite It can cause any disease, if you believe your going to die you can die from that belief

This completely goes against our current belief system The reality is coming forward, the public are now just becoming aware of it It’s a revolution because if you believe genes control your life then your a victim to your heredity

Genetic control is the belief that “genes create our characters” Epigenetic control means above, this means “control above the genes”

This is where it’s recognised that our environment, but more specifically our perception of the environment changes our genetic activity Your going from the victim to the master

What people need to understand about epigenetics is that it’s the readings of the gene that change, not the gene itself If you are born with gene X you will always have gene X, but it’s how gene X will express itself that’s important.

This depends on your life, your character, your behaviour, the environments. These create your thoughts which create your beliefs.

We are creating a cancer the same way we can uncreate it, we have people who have spontaneous remissions all the time They change it not by changing there biology but by changing there mind

Hello everyone today I am going to share the negative thoughts process system and what they are capable of

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

health

Health

How yr thoughts affect gens

<ul><li>People respond to two types of motivation: reward and fear.</li><li>Perfectionism keeps people from finishing their goals.</li><li>Most people quit as soon as life interferes or things get too tough.</li><li>Starting toward your goal on Day 1 isn’t the most important step. It’s getting past Day 2, “the day after perfect.”</li><li>To improve your chances of finishing, cut your goal in half or double your timeline for completion.</li><li>Choose where to fail. Failing at lesser things frees you to succeed at what’s important.</li><li>“Make it fun if you want it done.”</li><li>Don’t let “noble obstacles” hinder your goals.</li></ul>

Finish! Key Takeaways And Highlights

Getting started is hard, but it’s easier than finishing. You may have a bunch of half-finished projects and other half-done stuff. Many people make New Year’s resolutions, but research says that 92% of these intentions falter and fail. More than likely, you’ve spent most of your life choosing to do more than is possible and beating yourself up for not being able to keep up.The less that people aimed for perfect, the more productive they became. Perfectionism kills momentum and keeps people from completing their goals.

Perfectionism Kills

Perfectionism will do its best to knock you down when you work on a goal.Excuses are camouflage for perfectionism. You weren’t perfect, so you threw in the towel. You’re not alone. Everyone wants to get straight As. Nobody aims for Bs and Cs. But getting straight As is challenging and intimidating. That’s why many people don’t even bother trying. To finish your goals, simply start and keep going. Even if you make mistakes, keep going. Starting toward your goal on Day 1 isn’t the most crucial step. That’s putting in Day 2, the day after perfect.

The Day After Perfect

If you want to achieve your goal, aim for 50% completion. That is, cut your goal in half. This will work for goals like losing weight, or running in the morning.Some goals are difficult to cut in half. For those, don’t cut them in half; give yourself more time.So you can apply two tactics – cutting the goal in half or doubling the timeline – to many goals. Slicing your goals in half or extending your timeline may feel like “cheating,” but either step will make you much more likely to reach your targets. Starting small may feel unnatural at first, but you will achieve big results.

Fifty-Percent Complete

Research says that setting realistic goals leads to much better performance than setting overly aggressive targets, but what happens in the workplace where you don’t control the timeline? You may want to have a conversation with your boss about the utility of setting achievable goals.Make sure your workplace goals are the right size from the beginning.

Workplace Goals

Perfectionism has no sense of gray, things are only black or white. You do it perfectly or you don’t do it at all.

Time is your most valuable resource. To achieve your goals, pour that resource into your efforts. That means prioritizing where and how you spend your time. When you grant some of your time to one goal, of necessity you take that time from another goal. You can’t have it all no matter what you try to do. Yes, you can squeeze in a few extra things if you structure your days differently. Even so, you’re going to miss out on something. Instead of biting off more than you can chew and failing, choose what you’re going to fail at and succeed at something that counts.

Choosing Your Failures

If you’re like most people, you spend your life aiming too high. You don’t have to lower your standards, just stay realistic about your time frames and what you can accomplish.You have only two options right now. 1. Attempt more than is humanly possible and fail. 2. Choose what to bomb and succeed at a goal that matters.

Let Go Of Trying To Be Perfect In Everything

Many people fail to achieve their goals because they think goals must be difficult. One huge lie perfectionism tells you is that goals don’t count if they’re fun. Scientists and others who study goal setting look at various factors, including satisfaction and performance success, measurements that capture “how you felt about the process” and “what you actually got done.For example, losing weight is a worthy goal, but it’s hard. Motivating yourself to run on a treadmill every day is hard. The trick is to make it fun. Figure out how to add joy to your efforts. Fun is personal.

Have Fun and Get It Done

Be careful how you package your fun. People respond, in general, to two types of motivation: reward and fear. Some people live for the reward. When they know what they want, their instinct drives them to achieve. For example, paying off their debt gives them the freedom to go shopping without stress, or wanting to fit into their old jeans motivates them to work out. Fear also motivates people: They fear the consequences of not acting.

Reward and Fear

Sometimes your hiding places – where you go to avoid work – are easy to find, such as watching your favorite show on Netflix when it’s time to clean the house. Some hiding places are sneaky; you think you’re being productive by emptying your inbox, but you’re actually avoiding writing your blog. Identify your hiding places by asking if you engage in “obvious time wasters.” Ask your friends if you spend too much time, effort or money on tasks or hobbies that don’t help you reach your goals.

Your Hiding Places

Noble obstacles are chores you must finish before you can attack your real goals.Noble obstacles often rely on the word “until” – as in, “I can’t do my taxes until I know what kind of business I’m really trying to build” or “Karen won’t start her blog until she’s checked in with a copyright lawyer first.” Using “until” as an excuse seems respectable. It seems as if you’re getting all your ducks in a row before taking action, but in reality, it’s just another form of perfectionism. It can lead you to throw your hands up and say meeting your goal is too hard, so you won’t try.

Your Noble Obstacles

An alternative to saying “until” is saying “if…then.” It sets up a different form of procrastination. You procrastinate or don’t start working because you’ve set an imaginary clock or pre-goal for yourself and waiting for that to happen, you come to feel as if it’s too late to start toward your goal. It’s never too late to try. You always have time to begin.

A New Way To Procrastinate

Unlike emotions, data don’t lie. Use data to measure your progress. Data clarify where you are, but you may find them hard to use. Ignorance is bliss. It’s so much easier to avoid checking your bank account, stepping on a scale, making doctor appointments, and so forth. Data will tell you, for example, that you spend too much at coffee shops. If you buy into the lie of perfectionism, you may avoid the objectivity of data.

Data Don't Lie!

This goes against every sappy motivational statement…but if you dream too big at the start, you curse your finish.

Information helps you measure any number of things related to your goals: time, products sold, pounds lost, miles run, how much money you saved, and the like. Pick one to three aspects of your life to measure. You may be tempted to measure more, but start small and win big. See how simple it is to track your progress. When you’re successful, you can add in measuring more factors. If you’re not happy with your progress, adjust your goal, timeline or actions.

Measure Your Goals And Progress

Setting new goals is easy, but finishing them is hard. In this blockbuster bestseller, blogger and popular speaker Jon Acuff shares his plans to help you actually achieve your goals.

#1 Wall Street Journal bestseller! Jon Acuff, New York Times best-selling author of Do Over, Quitter, and Start, offers strategies for anyone who's ever wondered, "Why can't I finish what I started?" According to studies, 92 percent of New Year’s resolutions fail. You’ve practically got a better shot at getting into Juilliard to become a ballerina than you do at finishing your goals. For years, I thought my problem was that I didn’t try hard enough. So I started getting up earlier. I drank enough energy drinks to kill a horse. I hired a life coach and ate more superfoods. Nothing worked, although I did develop a pretty nice eyelid tremor from all the caffeine. It was like my eye was waving at you, very, very quickly. Then, while leading a thirty-day online course to help people work on their goals, I learned something surprising: The most effective exercises were not those that pushed people to work harder. The ones that got people to the finish line did just the opposite— they took the pressure off. Why? Because the sneakiest obstacle to meeting your goals is not laziness, but perfectionism. We’re our own worst critics, and if it looks like we’re not going to do something right, we prefer not to do it at all. That’s why we’re most likely to quit on day two, “the day after perfect”—when our results almost always underper­form our aspirations. The strategies in this book are counterintuitive and might feel like cheating. But they’re based on studies conducted by a university researcher with hundreds of participants. You might not guess that having more fun, eliminating your secret rules, and choosing something to bomb intentionally works. But the data says otherwise. People who have fun are 43 percent more successful! Imagine if your diet, guitar playing, or small business was 43 percent more suc­cessful just by following a few simple principles. If you’re tired of being a chronic starter and want to become a consistent finisher, you have two options: You can continue to beat yourself up and try harder, since this time that will work. Or you can give yourself the gift of done.

productivity

Productivity

books

Books

#1 Wall Street Journal bestseller! Jon Acuff, New York Times best-selling author of Do Over, Quitter, and Start, offers strategies for anyone who's ever wondered, "Why can't I finish what I started?" According to studies, 92 percent of New Year’s resolutions fail. You’ve practically got a better shot at getting into Juilliard to become a ballerina than you do at finishing your goals. For years, I thought my problem was that I didn’t try hard enough. So I started getting up earlier. I drank enough energy drinks to kill a horse. I hired a life coach and ate more superfoods. Nothing worked, although I did develop a pretty nice eyelid tremor from all the caffeine. It was like my eye was waving at you, very, very quickly. Then, while leading a thirty-day online course to help people work on their goals, I learned something surprising: The most effective exercises were not those that pushed people to work harder. The ones that got people to the finish line did just the opposite— they took the pressure off. Why? Because the sneakiest obstacle to meeting your goals is not laziness, but perfectionism. We’re our own worst critics, and if it looks like we’re not going to do something right, we prefer not to do it at all. That’s why we’re most likely to quit on day two, “the day after perfect”—when our results almost always underper­form our aspirations. The strategies in this book are counterintuitive and might feel like cheating. But they’re based on studies conducted by a university researcher with hundreds of participants. You might not guess that having more fun, eliminating your secret rules, and choosing something to bomb intentionally works. But the data says otherwise. People who have fun are 43 percent more successful! Imagine if your diet, guitar playing, or small business was 43 percent more suc­cessful just by following a few simple principles. If you’re tired of being a chronic starter and want to become a consistent finisher, you have two options: You can continue to beat yourself up and try harder, since this time that will work. Or you can give yourself the gift of done.

Jon Acuff is an accomplished writer whose work has resonated with readers around the world. Jon Acuff has published several books that explore a range of topics, from fiction to nonfiction, and has received critical acclaim for the ability to weave compelling narratives. Jon Acuff's writing style is known for its depth and authenticity, and has earned quite a loyal following of readers.

Jon Acuff

Finish

Finish: Give Yourself the Gift of Done

You can’t escape cause and effect, but there is a way of viewing human agency that is motivating, plausible and humane.We feel that we are free, the originators of our own choices, not just conduits through which the chain of cause and effect flows. But think about it a little more and this ‘voluntarist’ conception of free will starts to look untenable.

Thinking About Free Will

A lot of the time, you might feel as though you have freedom to act as you wish (a view known as ‘voluntarism’), but taking into account your history, personality, mood and other factors, there is in fact an inevitability to everything you do.

All Your Choices Are in A Sense Inevitable

Even quantum physics and the randomness of quantum causation cannot offer us an escape because the ability to act randomly is not the same as having free will.

There’s No Escaping the Chain of Cause and Effect

To act free of causes would be to act without reason. Such a freedom would be gratuitous, since the only grounds for our choice would be the power to choose itself.

Having Voluntarist Free Will Would Mean Being Entirely Capricious

We would have no moral character if we did not strongly feel that there were things we simply could not do, and others we felt we must.

The Constraints upon Our Choices Allow for The Concept of Character

To accept that one has done wrong and take responsibility for it is to resolve to try not to do it again and to put right anything that went wrong. We evidently do have the capacity to do this, and that is all that matters.

Praise and Blame Don’t Depend on Absolute Freedom

It is only because we reflect on the things that could so easily have been done differently if conditions or our frame of mind had been slightly different that we learn to take responsibility and do better next time.

It’s Useful to Feel You Could Have Done Things Differently, Even if It’s a Fiction

The ‘compatibilist’ conception of free will acknowledges the causal necessity of the physical world, but it also recognises that, if no one ‘made me do it’, I acted freely.

Don’t Reject the Concept of Free Will, Rethink It

First-order desires include wanting cake or sex or to scratch yourself; second-order desires are your desires about these desires, such as wishing to resist the desire for cake. Free beings are ones who can act on their desires about their desires, and not just automatically on their desires.

Achieve a Free Will Worth Having by Aligning Your First- and Second-Order Desires

You can’t escape cause and effect, but there is a way of viewing human agency that is motivating, plausible and humane

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

artsandculture

Society, Arts & Culture

How to think about free will | Psyche Guides

If you’re struggling to feel more confident, it’s natural to think about it like this:I don’t feel very confident. So what should I start doing to feel more confident?This is understandable, but often misguided. Because more often than not, confidence is about what you remove, not what you add.See, most of the time people don’t lack confidence in an absolute sense. Instead, their natural, good-enough level of confidence is being blocked or interfered with by inner obstacles like chronic worry and anxiety, negative self-talk, and compulsive avoidance.

Struggling To Be More Confident

Most people who struggle with confidence also experience a lot of anxiety.<ul><li>They’re anxious about what other people think of them.</li><li>They’re anxious about not performing well.</li><li>They’re even anxious about having low confidence!</li></ul>Unfortunately, the natural response most people have to anxiety is to try and cope with it.When you immediately try and get rid of your anxiety by applying coping skills to make it go away, you teach your brain to view anxiety as dangerous. So stop coping with your anxiety and learn to accept it.

Stop Trying to Cope with Anxiety

The people in your life want to be nice and will tell you things that make you feel better:<ul><li>Oh it was great!</li><li>I’m sure it wasn’t as bad as you think.</li><li>Don’t worry, everything will be fine.</li></ul>If you always outsource your emotional struggles to others, you deprive yourself of the opportunity to be confident.Your feelings of inadequacy or insecurity are difficult. But they’re your feelings. And ultimately, managing them is your responsibility.Once you accept responsibility for managing your own feelings, your confidence will emerge.

Avoid Reassurance-Seeking

If you struggle to feel confident and also have a habit of catastrophizing, it’s critical that you learn to identify this habit and then start to break it.Even if you know intellectually that the worst case isn’t likely to happen, if you constantly tell yourself it is, that’s how you’ll feel.Difficult as it can feel in the moment, it is possible to control your attention and not let your mind spiral into catastrophizing and worry. Setting and enforcing good <a href="https://nickwignall.com/mental-boundaries/">mental boundaries</a> is a great place to start.

Put the Breaks on Catastrophizing

From a young age, most of us are taught that it’s important to learn how to deny what you want—whether that’s a candy bar before dinner or dropping out of college because you think it’s boring.It’s hard to feel confident in yourself when you’re constantly denying yourself.A great way to re-discover your confidence is to tone down the self-denial and deference to others, and start <a href="https://nickwignall.com/assertiveness/">expressing yourself and your genuine wants and needs more assertively</a>.

Quit Hiding from What You Really Want

A good way to never feel confident is to always be failing. And a good way to always be failing is to always be trying to control the uncontrollable.By resisting the impulse to control things you can’t actually control you avoid setting yourself up for failure at impossible tasks. And this is something your self-confidence will thank you for.

Let Go of Things You Can’t Control

If you want to feel more confident, focus on eliminating habits that interfere with the confidence you've already got.

Confidence Killers: 5 Habits You Should Give Up to Feel More Confident

<ul><li>Recent studies have shown that events and forces at work today are making happiness less likely for many people, and widening "happiness gaps" between the most privileged and everyone else.</li><li>People who study happiness and promote ways to get more of it keep emphasizing the same cluster of individual-level tips and tools.</li><li>There's something dishonest in minimizing the role of social forces-and that this dishonestly can be rooted in discounting the experiences of people who are hurt or marginalized by those forces.</li></ul>

Social Conditions and Inequality Affect Well-Being

<ul><li>Structural forces affect happiness.</li><li>Slavery was a structural force, setting a pattern of social, cultural, economic, and interpersonal relationships between Black and white Americans that persists to this day.</li><li>The family is a force structured by laws about marriage, divorce, taxes, reproductive health, and the power men historically had over those laws.</li><li>Your social network is a structure shaped by interactions with other structures.</li></ul>

Structures And Our Feelings

Positive psychology was once revolutionary for the way it turned away from studying and treating dysfunction in individuals toward examining the practices and traits that helped people to flourishUnfortunately, this focus on the individual led many researchers and teachers to consciously reject structural explanations for individual misfortune and unhappiness

Reckoning with Positivity

<ul><li>The evidence for how social forces can undermine or enhance happiness goes well beyond America's determination to marginalize and oppress racial minorities, revealing that any inequality hurts well-being.</li><li>Groups (and often countries) with less power, income, or wealth just aren't as happy as those who have more.</li><li>Only people in the lower half of the income range felt less happy; people who made more money seemed fine as inequality rose.</li><li>A 2011 study found that Americans became less happy as income inequality grew-but not all Americans.</li></ul>

Happiness And Socio-Economic Conditions

<ul><li>Happiness inequality was already rising alongside income and wealth inequality in the years before COVID-19.</li><li>During the pandemic, it appears that well-being became even more difficult for some than others.</li><li>We have created institutions and policies to mitigate the impact of disease.</li><li>The more stringent a country’s policies in restricting citizens’ movements and behavior, the worse they felt.</li><li>These policies were situational, meaning that the circumstances made happiness seemingly impossible for the majority of people.</li></ul>

Happiness And The Pandemic

Many organizations continue to emphasize "easy steps" and "quick fixes" that will make you as an individual happier.These companies discount or underestimate the power of social forces in shaping our happiness and life satisfaction.We need to look beyond tips and tools for individual improvement, toward the ways we can create a social tide that will lift as many boats as possible.

The Limits of Individual Solutions

Social conditions and inequality affect well-being. So, why do we keep insisting 

mindfulness

Mindfulness

How Much Control Do You Have Over Your Own Happiness?

Studies suggest that up to 70% of people have experienced impostorism at work. Imposter syndrome might sometimes motivate people to achieve, but it can also put intense pressure on mental health. As the workplace experience a period of rapid change, it is critical to understand how these two conditions feed into each other and what can be done to prevent them.

Imposter syndrome is a known problem among professionals

Imposter syndrome (IS) shows up differently in people. It commonly makes someone believe they are an intellectual fraud, despite evidence to the contrary. <ul><li>People with IS may feel the need to over-work and over-deliver to avoid being found out.</li><li>They might be high achievers or avoid taking on challenges so they can't be 'found out.'</li><li>They attribute success to luck or hard work rather than ability.</li></ul>

Imposter syndrome (IS) symptoms

A key factor why Impostor Syndrome and burnout overlap is that Impostor Syndrome shows up in a similar way to the third dimension of burnout - the feeling of professional inefficacy. When you are experiencing burnout, you never feel you are doing enough. You feel like the ineffective person on the team. This is very similar to the definition of imposter syndrome. With IS, people develop tactics to compensate for or mask their impostorism, such as taking on too much work to win approval or avoiding promotion because they fear exposure.

Feeling like a fraud

Research shows GenZ workers are most likely to struggle with both imposter syndrome and burnout. Junior staff that launched their careers during the pandemic were unable to observe colleagues in person and adjust to workplace dynamics. They did not receive moments of feedback and reassurance that are vital to building professional confidence. However, older generations are suffering too. <ul><li>On an individual level, imposter syndrome can be tackled by rewiring the brain's response to stress.</li><li>Workers should be encouraged to build cognitive boundaries around their work.</li></ul>

Prevention is key 

Feeling like you’re bad at your job is miserable. Worse, it’s also more likely to lead to professional burnout.

career

Career

The link between imposter syndrome and burnout

As the felt response to a given situation, emotions play a key part in your reactions. When you’re in tune with them, you have access to important knowledge that helps with:<ul><li>decision-making</li><li>relationship success</li><li>day-to-day interactions</li></ul>

Emotions control reactions

“Emotions make our lives exciting, unique, and vibrant,” Botnick says. “Strong feelings can signify that we embrace life fully, that we’re not repressing our natural reactions.”Emotions that regularly get out of hand might lead to:<ul><li>relationship or friendship conflict</li><li>difficulty relating to others</li><li>trouble at work or school</li><li>an urge to use substances to help manage your emotions</li><li>physical or emotional outbursts</li></ul>

Take a look at the impact of your emotions

When you suppress or repress emotions, you’re preventing yourself from experiencing and expressing feelings. This can happen consciously (suppression) or unconsciously (repression).Either can contribute to mental and physical health symptoms, including:<ul><li>anxiety</li><li>depression</li><li>sleep issues</li><li>muscle tension and pain</li><li>difficulty managing stress</li><li>substance misuse</li></ul> Healthy emotional expression involves finding some balance between overwhelming emotions and no emotions at all.

Aim for regulation, not repression

<ul><li>What am I feeling right now? (disappointed, confused, furious)</li><li>What happened to make me feel this way? (They brushed me off with no explanation.)</li><li>Does the situation have a different explanation that might make sense? (Maybe they’re stressed, sick, or dealing with something else they don’t feel comfortable explaining. They might plan to explain more when they can.)</li><li>What do I want to do about these feelings? (Scream, vent my frustration by throwing things, text back something rude.)</li><li>Is there a better way of coping with them? (Ask if everything’s OK. Ask when they’re free next. Go for a walk or run.)</li></ul>

3. Identify what you’re feeling

Emotions get the best of everyone sometimes, but there are a few things you can do to take back control.

mentalhealth

Mental Health

How to Control Your Emotions: 11 Strategies to Try

There is no god, no nation, no money, no human rights, no law and no justice, outside the common imagination of human beings.

New York Times Bestseller A Summer Reading Pick for President Barack Obama, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg From a renowned historian comes a groundbreaking narrative of humanity’s creation and evolution—a #1 international bestseller—that explores the ways in which biology and history have defined us and enhanced our understanding of what it means to be “human.” One hundred thousand years ago, at least six different species of humans inhabited Earth. Yet today there is only one—homo sapiens. What happened to the others? And what may happen to us? Most books about the history of humanity pursue either a historical or a biological approach, but Dr. Yuval Noah Harari breaks the mold with this highly original book that begins about 70,000 years ago with the appearance of modern cognition. From examining the role evolving humans have played in the global ecosystem to charting the rise of empires, Sapiens integrates history and science to reconsider accepted narratives, connect past developments with contemporary concerns, and examine specific events within the context of larger ideas. Dr. Harari also compels us to look ahead, because over the last few decades humans have begun to bend laws of natural selection that have governed life for the past four billion years. We are acquiring the ability to design not only the world around us, but also ourselves. Where is this leading us, and what do we want to become? Featuring 27 photographs, 6 maps, and 25 illustrations/diagrams, this provocative and insightful work is sure to spark debate and is essential reading for aficionados of Jared Diamond, James Gleick, Matt Ridley, Robert Wright, and Sharon Moalem.

philosophy

Philosophy

creativity

Creativity

New York Times BestsellerA Summer Reading Pick for President Barack Obama, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg From a renowned historian comes a groundbreaking narrative of humanity’s creation and evolution—a #1 international bestseller—that explores the ways in which biology and history have defined us and enhanced our understanding of what it means to be “human.”One hundred thousand years ago, at least six different species of humans inhabited Earth. Yet today there is only one—homo sapiens. What happened to the others? And what may happen to us?Most books about the history of humanity pursue either a historical or a biological approach, but Dr. Yuval Noah Harari breaks the mold with this highly original book that begins about 70,000 years ago with the appearance of modern cognition. From examining the role evolving humans have played in the global ecosystem to charting the rise of empires, Sapiens integrates history and science to reconsider accepted narratives, connect past developments with contemporary concerns, and examine specific events within the context of larger ideas.Dr. Harari also compels us to look ahead, because over the last few decades humans have begun to bend laws of natural selection that have governed life for the past four billion years. We are acquiring the ability to design not only the world around us, but also ourselves. Where is this leading us, and what do we want to become?Featuring 27 photographs, 6 maps, and 25 illustrations/diagrams, this provocative and insightful work is sure to spark debate and is essential reading for aficionados of Jared Diamond, James Gleick, Matt Ridley, Robert Wright, and Sharon Moalem.

Yuval Noah Harari is an Israeli public intellectual, historian and professor in the Department of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author of the popular science bestsellers Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century.

Yuval Noah Harari

Sapiens

Be tolerant with others and strict with yourself.

If it is not right, do not do it, if it is not true, do not say it.

The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.

Just that you do the right thing. The rest doesn’t matter.

You don’t have to turn this into something. It doesn’t have to upset you.

Marcus Aurelius was a Roman emperor, He held one of the most powerful positions in the world. If he chose to, nothing would be off-limits. We can learn so many things from his wisdom.

5 life lessons from Marcus Aurelius - Part 1

In terms of making meaningful and authentic decisions, we are a species walking a narrow bridge with two chasms framing our way: the finite and the infinite. On the finite side lie the fixed conditions of everything we are. These are the facts of our existence that force us to live in certain ways: the needs of our body, the wiring of our brain, and the pull and push of necessity. On the infinite side lies a universe of potential — all the things we think we might someday do or become, a future full of possibilities with no set course laid out.

Two Chasms

Both sides have their sirens’ calls that beckon us with promises of comfort, and both risk rendering us unable to move forward authentically in our lives. For the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, the wise but hard task of life is to walk the path between these two abysses: to be neither finite nor infinite but find the middle way.

Two Sirens

For many of us, the finite side, the reality and necessity of life, is all there is: a world that Kierkegaard calls “aesthetic.” The problem is that if we live only for our needs and whims, then life will rattle by without anything bigger. When we live only for the aesthetic, and embrace too fully the finite alone, we risk losing ourselves. We can do this in two ways. One is to become a slave to our desires — a kind of hedonistic automaton. Another is to become a faceless, uninteresting drone among the masses — or, as Kierkegaard put it, “an imitation, a number, a cipher in the crowd.”

A Person Of No Importance

Kierkegaard believed that the finite is not all there is to being human. There is also the infinite — the recognition that we have the capacity to choose and direct our lives in essentially any way we can dream. But spending too much time gawping at the cosmos of possibilities we face is not entirely healthy. For a lot of people, it’s terrifying.

A Deer Caught In The Headlights

Most of us can remember the anxious vertigo that comes in those “infinite” moments of life, when you leave your parents’ home, end a relationship, or stare at the blank first page of a novel. To know the infinite is also to be dreadfully aware of the vastness of the future. In a phrase Kierkegaard made famous (philosophically famous, anyway), this is to experience and know the “dizziness of freedom.”

The Dizziness Of Freedom

For many people, the anxiety and panic that comes from confronting the vast potential of life is crippling. There’s a paralysis that comes in being unable to choose, because there are too many choices to make, and too many potential options to choose from. For so much of our lives we’re led by the hand by those around us, or we’re given easy and impulsive answers from our biology. However, a human is someone who can take stock of things and who can — who has to — make decisions that no one else will make.

The Paralysis Of Choice

Kierkegaard’s advice is that we must each “learn to be anxious.” We must take a stand where we will but get used to facing outward. We must take a step along that narrow bridge between the infinite and finite. After all, like a spinning top, we risk toppling and losing our very selves when we stop moving.There’s a paradox in all this (and Kierkegaard is particularly fond of paradoxes) and we must hold two seemingly contradictory beliefs in tandem, while never giving sway to either.

We Must Learn To Be Anxious

We must recognize that we are puny and insignificant — primates running on hormones and synapses. But we must also recognize that we are powerful beyond belief, that each of our decisions reaches out into the future, and that our decisions define our future. Embracing and living with this paradox is a maturing of the soul and it is a necessary step in becoming a human being. As Kierkegaard wrote, “I will say that this is an adventure that every human being must go through.” We all live in contradiction. Wisdom comes in accepting that.

We Play A Solo Tug-Of-War

...even the richest personality is nothing before he has chosen himself, and on the other hand even what one might call the poorest personality is everything when he has chosen himself; for the great thing is not to be this or that but to be oneself, and this everyone can be if he wills it.

Christ was crucified because he would have nothing to do with the crowd (even though he addressed himself to all). He did not want to form a party, an interest group, a mass movement, but wanted to be what he was, the truth, which is related to the single individual. Therefore everyone who will genuinely serve the truth is by that very fact a martyr. To win a crowd is no art; for that only untruth is needed, nonsense, and a little knowledge of human passions. But no witness to the truth dares to get involved with the crowd.

It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand.

The thing is to understand myself: the thing is to find a truth which is true for me.

According to Søren Kierkegaard, we are each pulled in two directions: toward the "finite" or the "infinite." When we lean too far in either direction, we risk living stagnant and inauthentic lives.

Everyday we risk losing ourselves. We either become the plaything of our desires or we are crippled by indecision. We must avoid both.

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Motivation & Inspiration

How Not To Be A Phony: Kierkegaard On The 2 Main Ways We Lose Our True Selves

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