#mati

I’ve come to think that flourishing consists of putting yourself in situations in which you lose self-consciousness and become fused with other people, experiences, or tasks. It happens sometimes when you are lost in a hard challenge, or when an artist or a craftsman becomes one with the brush or the tool. It happens sometimes while you’re playing sports, or listening to music or lost in a story, or to some people when they feel enveloped by God’s love. And it happens most when we connect with other people. I’ve come to think that happiness isn’t really produced by conscious accomplishments. Happiness is a measure of how thickly the unconscious parts of our minds are intertwined with other people and with activities. Happiness is determined by how much information and affection flows through us covertly every day and year. ↗

— David Brooks

#affection #connections #consciousness #happiness #information

Make New Year's goals. Dig within, and discover what you would like to have happen in your life this year. This helps you do your part. It is an affirmation that you're interested in fully living life in the year to come. Goals give us direction. They put a powerful force into play on a universal, conscious, and subconscious level. Goals give our life direction. What would you like to have happen in your life this year? What would you like to do, to accomplish? What good would you like to attract into your life? What particular areas of growth would you like to have happen to you? What blocks, or character defects, would you like to have removed? What would you like to attain? Little things and big things? Where would you like to go? What would you like to have happen in friendship and love? What would you like to have happen in your family life? What problems would you like to see solved? What decisions would you like to make? What would you like to happen in your career? Write it down. Take a piece of paper, a few hours of your time, and write it all down - as an affirmation of you, your life, and your ability to choose. Then let it go. The new year stands before us, like a chapter in a book, waiting to be written. We can help write that story by setting goals. ↗

— Melody Beattie

#beginnings #dreams #goals #letting-go #new-year

One should never use exclamation points in writing. It is like laughing at your own joke. ↗

— Mark Twain

#clever #exclamation-point #writing #writing-advice

A mathematician is an individual who believes that prophesying that his dog will die if he deprives it of food constitutes a prediction. ↗

— Bill Gaede

#gaede #god #mathematics #peer-review #physics

A brick can be used to represent the zero probability of this book being any good. ↗

— Amy Summers

#brick-and-blanket-responses #brick-and-blanket-test #brick-and-blanket-uses #funny #humor

But when the world is, indeed, in chaos, then an affirmation of cosmos becomes essential. ↗