Lessons for Living

Gratefulness appreciates the immediate experience of reality, replacing negative thoughts with thoughts about what’s really going on.

The next time you find yourself in a situation that seems impossible, force yourself to note what happens in the hours and days that follow. In most cases, a solution will evolve over time. The person who has trained herself to observe this develops a faith in the creative power of time. Time is sacred precisely because it possesses this power.

It is key that anger be processed right at the moment it comes up. The longer you let it fester, the more ingrained it gets

Good decision-makers expect losses. Not only do they recover from them well, they anticipate that they will have to tolerate further losses in the future. Freed from the need to be “right,” they have less fear and less paralysis

Love exists only to the degree that it is being expressed. The more it is expressed, the more it grows. This must be taught to children through example. They need to learn that it is their responsibility to be loving, particularly to their siblings. They need to see their parents being loving toward each other every day. They particularly need to see love expressed by adults during times of great stress, during times of conflict, and during those times when the adults are burdened with tedious responsibilities. They need to learn that it takes work to love,

Since the information you need comes from the process of taking action, then the function of goals is to stimulate that process. There is no such thing as a right goal or a rational goal. Start with goals that are available to you right now.

Envy blocks our path because envy makes it impossible to experience meaning. When you envy someone, you are telling yourself you’d rather be on their path than your own. This makes your own path, and life, meaningless.

Giving up on being right takes a lot of work. Our egos are addicted to their self-importance. You have to interrupt your judgments at the moment you make them Note: I really need to work on this even more (have gotten a lot better but still more is needed)