Monthly Archives: January 2015

Accept Yourself, Accept Others, Find Balance – How to Achieve Healthy Relationships

From my post What are Relationships? we know that a relationship is the shared reality that is created when two independent entities interact and influence each other.  With this philosophical basis as our ground, we can now derive some corollaries

Two independent entities interact in a relationship.  What this means is that if I want to be in a relationship with you, I need to be separate from you.  If I try to please you and end up trying to win you over by doing everything you like and therefore becoming you–melding my identity into a dependent identity–then I am no longer independent and we cannot form a relationship.  This is a common relationship mistake people make.  I cannot have a relationship with myself.  My separate personalities can, but I as a summation of all my personalities cannot have a relationship with myself.  Therefore if you try to become the person you like, do not be surprised when they do not want to form a relationship with you: it’s impossible: you are them, there is nothing to form a relationship with.  At the same time I am unable to have a relationship with myself, I am already in a relationship with myself, and if you are most people you want relationships with other people and not with yourself: you already have it.

In order to achieve this you have to Accept Yourself.  Accept yourself for who you are, a separate independent identity of a person.  Whoever you happen to be: be OK with it in the sense that you acknowledge yourself as an independent identity with independent properties.  If you are unsatisfied with your properties you can work on self improvement (Part 1: Mindset and Logic) but you must accept that you are who you are.

In order to achieve this you also have to Accept Others.  If you are narcissistic and self centered and do not acknowledge the independent identities of other people as they are with independent properties, then you cannot form relationships with them.  This is the opposite of the above disorder: instead of trying to become the person you like, you try to turn their independent properties into properties that depend on you, basically trying to turn other people into versions of yourself.  It would be good to learn some Respect for others, perhaps that will help you accept their external existence. 

In a relationship, two independent entities influence each other.  Let’s prove this by contradiction.  Let’s say two independent entities are in a relationship but do not influence each other: I make my decisions in complete independence to Bob, someone I’ve never met on the other side of the world.  Bob also makes his decisions in complete independence to me, who he’s never met.  Our decisions may propagate and impact each other through the shared physical reality of Earth, but  only  through transitive relationships (I am related to Joe who knows Bob so if I impact Joe then through Joe I impact Bob).  There is no direct relationship and therefore no shared reality between me and Bob.  Without a shared reality, there is no relationship. Therefore, in a relationship, two independent entities influence each other.

In order to be in a relationship, you have to Achieve Balance between influencing the other person enough such that the relationship exists and influencing too much such that the other person’s identity becomes dependent on you.  The same statement applies to the person you are forming a relationship with.

Thus: Accept Yourself, Accept Others, Achieve Balance!

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Wise Life Quotes 2

“If you want to choose your lifestyle, you cannot be picky about what careers you want to pursue. If you want to choose your career, you cannot be picky about what cities/lifestyles you want to live in” – Francis Chen (Quora)

A loving person lives in a loving world.
A hostile person lives in a hostile world;
everyone you meet is your mirror. – Ken Keyes Jr.

From Reddit’s What is one powerful sentence that will change the way I look at life forever?

  • People aren’t against you, they’re for themselves
  • Irish Proverbs:
    • There is misfortune only where there is wealth.
    • There is no pain greater than the pain of rejection
    • The road to hell is paved with good intentions
    • Though wisdom is good in the beginning it is better at the end
    • The best way to keep loyalty in a man’s heart is to keep money in his purse.
    • Speed and accuracy do not agree.
    • Pride feels no pain.
    • Only the rich can afford compassion.
    • Marriages are all happy; its having breakfast together that causes all the trouble
    • No use carrying an umbrella if your shoes are leaking.
  • The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel.
  • We judge others by their actions and ourselves by our intentions.
  • In social psychology, they have a name for it! It’s called the Fundamental Attribution Error, and it states that when we explain behavior of others, we have a tendency to overestimate the role of dispositional characteristics and underestimate the role of situational influence. But when we are explaining our behavior (moreso justifying our “incorrect” behavior) we blame it on situational influence, and not our dispositional attributes (AKA our intentions,or personality).
  • Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is who you really are, while your reputation is merely what people think you are” – John Wooden
  • “If it is to be, it is up to me.”
  • The world doesn’t hate you nor love you; it just doesn’t care about you.
” Life is all about giving back. Start early.
Doing something you love is not work.
Don’t ever do anything just for the money.
Making a contribution to your family, job, or friends is what really drives satisfaction.
Grandchildren are the greatest!
Phase into retirement slowly.
Stay around young people. They will keep you young.
Maintain balance in your life through your family, religion, career, friends, and hobbies.
Networking is about giving — not taking.
Take chances with your career. Don’t be afraid to take a step backward.
Keep your sense of humor. There is fun to be found in most everything we do.
A strong religious belief can solve a lot of problems.
Long, happy marriages are related to many common interests.
A wonderful spouse is a true gift.
You are never as good or as bad as you may think you are. Stay humble.
Curiosity and maintaining an open mind seem to be underrated leadership traits.
Don’t avoid the screening tests and early warnings about your health. ” – WILLIAM J. WHITE http://hbs1963.com/wisdom/lifes-lessons/

“Doing nothing is the wrong concept. You never do nothing, because even when your body is still your mind is churning and processing information.

I have a strong dislike against “wasting time.” I don’t like myself when I spend time on nonsense. And so I fill all of my day with “constructive things.” My walk to work is filled with podcasts, the time waiting for the food to bake filled with news articles. While eating I entertain myself with shows or Ted talks or whatnot.

The best decision I made in the last weeks was to stop most of that.

Aristotle recommended to take walks – especially while discussing with another person. And now, walking to work with just my mind and the scenery and passing people as company I feel more relaxed. I feel serene. I learn to understand myself better, just the way a meditation clears my mind.

I mentally plan my evening or reflect on the day – conflicts with the boss, troubles, things I achieved, things I learned. I finally notice the food I’m eating.

The list goes on. I’m not going to stop consuming information and I’m not going to stop using podcasts on some long walks – but I live more consciously, more aware, more relaxed. It’s small changes and suddenly I’m happier and can handle stress better.

I think we all tend to drown our minds – emotions, thoughts, worries, little wins, conversations we had or want to have and much more – we drown all of it in manufactured emotions (reddit, games, tv, …) and interesting, and valuable, but ultimately unnecessary information.

When you say “doing nothing” you confuse something. You are doing things all the time, your brain never takes a break. But when you “do nothing” you finally allow your brain to breathe and process all the things it needs and wants to process. I think all these modern diseases – sleeping problems, stress, depression, distractability, even obesity,… – they have a lot to do with the fact that we don’t allow our brains anymore to breathe. We bombard them with stuff – either information or, worse, emotion – and in order to handle this stuff other important tasks – housekeeping tasks such as consolidating memories, reflecting about one’s feelings and health and happiness, planning healthy food, considering how to bring up that issue with the boss – are drowned in a sea of emotion and information. They are drowned in a wonderful wealth of “stuff to process” that ultimately prevents our brains from ensuring their own – our – mental and physical health.

We are indoctrinated with an idea that time needs to be “spent”. That’s why you wonder what people do when they don’t do all the things you do. I tell you what: they engage with others and, more importantly, with themselves. They learn who they are and what they value. Without any effort their minds plan the future and consolidate memories of the past.

That, I think, means to be truly alive. “The unexamined life is not worth living,” said Socrates. The modern version is maybe this:

The person that lives solely in emotions and information from the outside, the person that never pulls itself out of this messy reality and gives itself over to a mental spa, a time of healing and processing, a time of reflecting, feeling, thinking, seeing, worrying, planning, smiling, that person doesn’t live.

Take a walk. Leave the iPod and your phone at home. Find some trees or a place with a nice view. It’s even okay if you just lie down on the couch or stand in the shower or sit at your desk, with your eyes looking past the screen. Just be you, for a moment. And then watch, carefully, without judgement, all those things that happen in your mind while you “do nothing.” – ALooc

http://attemptedliving.tumblr.com/post/64965685814/reddit-wisdom

80% of life is just showing up. You don’t need qualifications, motivation, brilliant ideas, or any other crap. The person who wins is simply the person who shows up. If you show up every day, there’s nothing you can’t achieve. – Day9 Sean Plott on reddit

In the absence of all compassion, all hope disappears, leaving the strongest powerless. – reddit

Those who wasted youth actually saved it and those who saved youth actually wasted it ( Niaz Fatehpuri)

Stephen Colbert: “You must always make the path for yourself.  There is no secret society out there that will tap you on your shoulder one night and show you the way. Because the true secret is, your life will not be defined by the society that we have left you. To paraphrase Robert Boalt, society has no more idea of what what you are than you do, because ultimately, it only has your brains to think with. Every generation must define itself, and so make a world that suits itself. SO, if you must find your own path, and we left you no easy path, then decide to choose the hard path that leads to the world you want.”
Do or do not … there is no try.” — Yoda
You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don’t make money your goal. Instead, pursue the things you love doing, and then do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off you. – Maya Angelou
The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it. -W.M. Lewis

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Wise Business Quotes

Business

“Don’t worry about doing something initially that will constrain you in the long term because if you don’t win in the short term there won’t be a long term anyway” – Paul Graham

His curiosity about the world and openness to it is summed up in the spirit of a Chinese-style calligraphy painting behind his desk. “Set your goals high; make friends with different kinds of people; enjoy simple pleasures. Stand on high ground; sit on level ground; walk on expansive ground.” – Li Ka-Shing

Li’s younger, more high-profile son Richard has a stake in a family trust but runs his own telecom empire. He says he follows two of his father’s business lessons. The first is to “leave something on the table for the other side” in business transactions because that will help to bring deals back to you in the ­future. The second is a message his father wrote down for him when he was younger: Success is all about planning, study­ing downside risk and execution; “arrogance leads to failure.”

“Where is my lead, what is my edge. Wherever you’re ahead, focus on that. If you’re trying to win, your opponent won’t give you the time to train your weaknesses, so push ahead and exploit your strengths.” – Day9

What do entrepreneurs know that no one else knows? – Quora

To find out when more Life Education Curriculum is released, subscribe on the side! Follow on Twitter, on Facebook, on Google+, on Tumblr.  Please share your comments to this post below.