13 ideas that can change your life

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Wise thoughts from writers, philosophers and entrepreneurs worth listening to.

1. Remembering death is the best way to avoid thinking that you have something to lose

The memory that I will die soon is the most important tool that helps me make difficult decisions in my life. Because everything else - someone else's opinion, all this pride, all this fear of embarrassment or failure - all these things fall in the face of death, leaving only what is really important. […] You are no longer constrained by anything. You no longer have a reason not to go to your heart.

2. Real life is a game for one player. We are born and die alone

We are too social animals, like bees, ants, we are programmed and controlled by external conditions, we have forgotten how to play and win in the game with ourselves. Swallowed up in competition with each other.

Real life is a one-player game. We are born and die alone. All perception, all memories are individual. After three generations, no one will remember you. Until you were born, no one thought about you. We are alone in everything.

3. We have a lot of time, but we lose a lot

Life has been given to us long enough, and it is more than enough to accomplish the greatest deeds, if we distribute it wisely. But if it is not guided by a good goal, if our extravagance and negligence allow it to flow between our fingers, then when our last hour strikes, we are surprised to find that life, the course of which we did not notice, has ended.

That's right: we didn't get a short life, but made it short.

We are not deprived of it, but shamelessly squander it. As a rich royal property, having passed into the hands of a bad owner, in the blink of an eye scatters in the wind, and property, albeit modest, transferred to a good guardian, multiplies, so the time of our life is lengthened for the one who cleverly disposes of it.

4. Fate is sometimes like a sandstorm that changes direction all the time

If you want to escape from her, she is right there behind you. You are in the other direction - she is in the same direction. And so over and over again, as if at dawn you were drawn into an ominous dance with the god of death. And all because this storm is not something alien that came from somewhere far away. And you yourself. Something that sits inside you. All that remains is to give a damn about everything, close your eyes, plug your ears so that no sand gets in, and make your way straight through this storm. […]

When the storm dies down, you probably won't understand how you could get through it and survive. Did she really retreat? And only one thing will become clear. You will not come out of it the way you were before. This is the meaning of a sandstorm.

5. Let's be content to live in the only time in which we can live - from the present moment to going to bed

You and I are currently standing at the intersection of two eternities: the boundless past, which lasted forever, and the future, which is directed forward until the last moment of the chronology. In all likelihood, we cannot simultaneously live in one and the other eternity - no, not even a fraction of a second. […]

By trying to do this, we can undermine our physical health and mental strength.

“Everyone is able to carry their burden, no matter how heavy it may be, until nightfall,” wrote Robert Louis Stevenson. - Any of us is able to do our job, even the most difficult, in one day. Any of us can live with tenderness in our souls, with patience, with love for others, virtuous until sunset. And this is the true meaning of life."

6. Don't make your goal of success. The more you strive for it, making it your goal, the more likely you will miss it

Don't make your goal of success. The more you strive for it, making it your goal, the more surely you will miss it. Success, like happiness, cannot be chased; it has to come out - and it does - as an unexpected by-product of personal commitment to a big cause, or as a by-product of love and devotion to another person. […]

I want you to listen to what your conscience tells you and follow its advice, using your best strength and knowledge. Then you will live to see how after a long time - a long time, I said! - success will come, and precisely because you forgot to think about it!

7. Most importantly, do not lie to yourself. He who lies to himself reaches the point that he does not discern any truth either in himself or around him

[…] And therefore, it enters into disrespect for oneself and for others. Without respecting anyone, he ceases to love, but in order to, without love, occupy himself and entertain himself, he indulges in passions and coarse sweets and reaches completely to bestiality in his vices, and everything from incessant lies to people and to himself.

8. Do not forget that life itself is an amazing luck, a rare event, an accident of a gigantic scale

Sometimes I just refuse to understand why stale food, cold coffee, refusal to join the company and not being kind enough can ruin people's day completely by deceiving their expectations. Do not forget that life itself is amazing luck, a rare event, an accident of a gigantic scale. Imagine a speck of dust next to a planet a billion times larger than Earth.

A speck of dust is the preponderance in favor of your birth; a huge planet is against him. So stop freaking out over trifles. Do not be like that grouch who, having received a palace as a gift, complains about mold in the bathroom. Stop looking a gift horse in the mouth.

9. Our subjective sensations are actually devoid of substance and meaning. These are transient vibrations, changing like ocean waves

From the point of view of Buddhism, most people attach too much importance to their feelings, identifying pleasant sensations with happiness, and unpleasant ones with suffering. As a result, people strive to get as many pleasant sensations as possible and avoid unpleasant ones. […]

The pursuit of subjective sensations is a tedious and pointless exercise that puts us at the mercy of a capricious tyrant.

The source of suffering is not pain, sadness, or even a lack of meaning. The source of suffering is the very pursuit of subjective sensations, which keeps us in constant tension, confusion, and dissatisfaction.

People will be freed from suffering only when they understand that subjective sensations are just fleeting vibrations, and they stop chasing pleasure. Then pain will not make them unhappy, and pleasure will not disturb the peace of mind.

10. What you sow is what you reap

The way you live your life, the good and evil that you bring to others, and how you generally treat people will come back to you. I call this principle the National Bank of Karma. If you refuse to climb to the top to help save someone's life, someone who is in trouble, you will deposit with this bank. And someday in the future you will be paid back with interest.

11. Man is a part of the whole, which we call the Universe, a part limited in time and space

He feels himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest of the world, which is a kind of optical illusion. This illusion has become a prison for us, limiting us to the world of our own desires and attachment to a narrow circle of people close to us.

Our task is to free ourselves from this prison, expanding the sphere of our participation to every living being, to the whole world, in all its splendor. No one will be able to complete such a task to the end, but the very attempts to achieve this goal are part of the liberation and the basis for inner confidence.

12. You will stop being afraid if you stop hoping

You will ask how you can equalize such different things. But it is so, my Lucilius: although they seem to have nothing in common, in fact they are related. As one chain links the guardian and the captive, so fear and hope, so different from each other, come at the same time: after hope comes fear.

I am not surprised at this: after all, both of them are inherent in an uncertain soul, anxious about the expectation of the future.

And the main reason for hope and fear is our inability to adapt to the present and the habit of sending our thoughts far ahead. Thus, foresight, the greatest of the blessings given to man, turns into evil.

Beasts run only at the sight of dangers, and when they run away from them, they no longer experience fear. We are tormented by both the future and the past. Of our blessings, many harm us: for example, memory brings us back to the experienced torment of fear, and foresight anticipates the torment of the future. And no one is unhappy just for the present reasons. Be healthy.

13. Can't Skip Chapters in Your Book of Life

Life is not like that. You must read every line, meet every character. You, of course, will not like everything. Hell, some chapters will even make you cry for weeks. You will read what you don’t want to read. And you will have moments when you don't want the pages to end. But you must continue. Stories help the world move. Live your stories, don't miss them.