7 Strange Questions That Help You Find Your Life Purpose. One day, when my brother was 18, he waltzed into the living room and proudly announced to my mother and me that one day he was going to be a senator.
My mom probably gave him the “That’s nice, dear,” treatment while I’m sure I was distracted by a bowl of Cheerios or something. But for fifteen years, this purpose informed all of my brother’s life decisions: what he studied in school, where he chose to live, who he connected with and even what he did with many of his vacations and weekends.
And now, after almost half a lifetime of work later, he’s the chairman of a major political party in his city and the youngest judge in the state. In the next few years, he hopes to run for office for the first time. Don’t get me wrong. Most of us have no clue what we want to do with our lives. Chances are you’re more like me and have no clue what you want to do. Part of the problem is the concept of “life purpose” itself. Think That Meditation Is A Waste Of Time? Watch This! Meditation has quickly become one of the most talked about and used conscious practices in the modern world.
Various religious leaders, spiritual gurus, professional athletes, celebrity figures and probably a number of your family and/or friends all swear by it to being a key part in their lives. As a person who practices meditation somewhat regularly, I can personally understand not only its benefit but also why it continues to grow and be adopted by more and more people worldwide. Despite its continued growth and popularity, meditation -like so many other practices -is not without ridicule, as a large portion of the world’s population are still happy to classify it as pseudoscientific, or a waste of time. In response to this common classification, the group at Big Think have created an easy to understand short video that explains the neuroscience behind meditation. Removing The Skepticism. Instinct Can Beat Analytical Thinking - Justin Fox. Researchers have confronted us in recent years with example after example of how we humans get things wrong when it comes to making decisions.
How to Master the Art of “Effective Surprise” and the 6 Essential Conditions for Creativity. By Maria Popova “Passion, like discriminating taste, grows on its use.
You more likely act yourself into feeling than feel yourself into action.” This column will change your life: can you think yourself well? 'Feeling ill can serve a kind of function: it’s a way of enforcing a slowdown.' Illustration: Phil Wrigglesworth for the Guardian The school summer holidays are upon us – and for anyone who's a teacher, who lives with one, or who's merely friends with one, that means only one thing: Teacher Holiday Sickness Syndrome, a name I just made up for a phenomenon I certainly didn't.
Within hours of the final bell, it seems, half the nation's educators contract a cold or something similar, necessitating several days of duvet-based self-pity. For anyone who's sceptical of the general idea that you can think yourself well – "You'll never get over that ebola infection unless you stay positive! " – this curious syndrome stands as a rebuke. 27 Life Changing Lessons to Learn from Eckhart Tolle. 5 Steps Toward a Leap of Faith. Whether you’ve quit something of your own free will or been forcibly ejected, starting over always requires a leap of faith.
Assessing Your Emotional Intelligence: 4 Key Questions. Here we go again, down the rabbit hole of research, where we discover that some of our more cherished beliefs about ourselves are either dead wrong, or just partly right.
Keep in mind that “we” includes me, thanks to the research I did for Mastering the Art of Quitting. This time, the subject is emotions—and whether we know what we’re feeling and what we do with that knowledge. A friend of mine takes umbrage when I broach the idea with him. The Art of Looking: How to Live with Presence, Break the Tyranny of Productivity, and Learn to See Our Everyday Wonderland. 25 Things Every Woman Should Have By The Time She Turns 25. 1.
Enough confidence to no longer feel the need to justify what she eats, who she dates or what she wears, not only to other people, but to herself. 2. A bank account with three months’ living expenses in it. 3. Only the phone numbers, Facebook friends, weekend plans, and roommates she actually wants. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.
Stop Making Plans: How Goal-Setting Limits Rather Than Begets Our Happiness and Success. By Maria Popova “Uncertainty is where things happen.
It is where the opportunities — for success, for happiness, for really living — are waiting.” “The job — as well as the plight, and the unexpected joy — of the artist is to embrace uncertainty, to be sharpened and honed by it,” Dani Shapiro wrote in her beautiful meditation on the perils of plans. But while embracing uncertainty may be the cure for our epidemic of anxiety and the root of the creative spirit, it remains an art enormously challenging and uneasy-making for the human psyche. Instead, we try to abate the discomfort of uncertainty by making long-term plans and obsessing over everyday to-do lists. What Are You So Afraid Of? Ikonoklast Fotografie/Shutterstock Almost Everything You Need to Know About Phobias Ask almost anyone you meet and they’ll claim they have a phobia of some kind—whether a simple common fear, like fear of spiders, or a seemingly irrational fear, such as a fear of buttons, or even wool.
While phobias are common, it is far from clear where they come from and what causes them—even to the sufferer. 7 Life-Learnings from 7 Years of Brain Pickings, Illustrated. By Maria Popova “Presence is far more intricate and rewarding an art than productivity.”
In the fall of 2013, as Brain Pickings was turning seven, I wrote about the seven most important things I learned in those seven years of reading, writing, and living. 9 Mind-Bending Epiphanies That Turned My World Upside-Down. Over the years I’ve learned dozens of little tricks and insights for making life more fulfilling. They’ve added up to a significant improvement in the ease and quality of my day-to-day life. But the major breakthroughs have come from a handful of insights that completely rocked my world and redefined reality forever.
The world now seems to be a completely different one than the one I lived in about ten years ago, when I started looking into the mechanics of quality of life. It wasn’t the world (and its people) that changed really, it was how I thought of it. Maybe you’ve had some of the same insights. 1. The first time I heard somebody say that, I didn’t like the sound of it one bit. The Right Way to Get to Know Yourself. 30 Things To Start Doing For Yourself. #4 Is Absolutely Vital. Declare Your Independence! 5 Ways to Kick-Start Your Life. 5 Questions That Can Change Your Life. By Warren Berger What can a question do? If it’s the right question, it can change your life. In my research on the power of inquiry for my book A More Beautiful Question, I learned that asking challenging questions—of others, and particularly, of yourself—can do everything from helping you overcome fears to enabling you to make better decisions and life choices.
Why are questions so powerful? 6 Questions You Must Ask Yourself Before Making a Change. 5 Questions That Can Change Your Life.