Home » Personal Development (Page 14)

Category Archives: Personal Development

What is happiness, and how do we get it?

August 17, 2015 2:26 pm / Leave a comment

Order on Amazon today.

Proverbial Beauty, a new book on how to achieve happiness and success, offers a practical guide to changing our outlooks and our fortunes. Here’s an excerpt:

In a single, ringing phrase, Thomas Jefferson captured the essence of the American dream when he declared that all men have the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” And yet, despite Mr. Jefferson’s noble sentiments and laudable achievements, the enduring lyricism of his words spawned an epidemic of confusion and despondency that continues to spread like pestilence through western society.

How precisely does one pursue happiness? We may pursue wealth, pursue fame, pursue gratification of one form or another. But the fiction of pursuing happiness has become a collective obsession that consumes our lives, either by goading us into chasing impossible dreams or by tarnishing the quality of our existence with unwarranted regrets.

Before we set off in pursuit of anything, we ought to know what it is and how to get it. Like many other words and expressions, we toss about the word “happiness” without really knowing what we mean. The definition seems obvious, but the inconvenient truth is that we really have no idea what we’re talking about.

So what is happiness, and how does one get it?

Read the whole excerpt here:

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0815/Goldson_pursuit_of_happiness.php3

The Miracle of Music

August 14, 2015 2:08 pm / 1 Comment on The Miracle of Music

Why do the human mind and heart respond so passionately to an arrangement of sounds and words that provide absolutely no tangible or evolutionary benefit? The answer reveals much about ourselves and the world we live in.

We spend much of our lives looking and hoping for miracles. But the greatest miracle of all is right before our eyes: nature itself, the seamless fusion of all the forces of the world into a unified, unvarying system.

Science itself testifies to this: the principle of entropy, intrinsic to Newton’s second law of thermodynamics, describes the natural state of the universe as tending always toward disorder. In other words, nature’s law cannot account for the laws of nature, cannot explain the original ordering of the natural world that produced the immutable regularity of nature itself. What greater testimony to intelligent design can one find than the unnatural, persistent order evident in every aspect of the workings of Creation?

But what does this have to do with music?

Read the whole article here: http://www.learning-mind.com/the-miracle-of-music-how-sounds-affect-the-human-mind-and-heart/

Embrace Illusion

August 12, 2015 1:49 pm / Leave a comment

We see what we want. We don’t see what’s right in front of us. We need to learn how to look if we want to see what we’ve been missing.

Time — 4:13

Clean up your act and become a better person

July 29, 2015 2:59 pm / Leave a comment

Counting your change as you exit the local supermarket, you discover that the cashier accidentally handed you back a ten dollar bill instead of a five. You pause, debating whether to go back and correct the error or pocket your modest windfall.

What you do next may depend on how fresh the fruit smelled in the produce section. If the tomatoes were over-ripe enough to emit an unpleasant odor, that might be all it takes to set your moral compass spinning.

In a series of social science experiments, researchers observed how exposure to disgusting smells or images can influence our attitudes and behavior: the same self-protective reflex that makes us back away from an assault upon our senses can also make us recoil from offensive behavior. Needless to say, rotten tomatoes have nothing to do with personal character; but once our feelings of disgust have been activated toward repugnant pictures or noxious odors we are more likely to feel aversion toward objectionable conduct and become increasingly repelled by unethical behavior.

That’s the good news. What’s really ironic, however, is that the same stimuli that make us less tolerant of improper actions by others make us more likely to engage in those same kinds of actions ourselves.

Read the whole article here.

Respect the boundaries of the world…

July 17, 2015 2:17 pm / Leave a comment

Proverbial Beauty now available on Amazon.com

What do you mean, “You don’t have a cellphone”?

July 13, 2015 3:05 pm / 1 Comment on What do you mean, “You don’t have a cellphone”?

I’ve always known this day would arrive. But it lay too far off in the future to worry about.

I sat safely atop my own personal promontory, even as the tide surged forward to swallow lesser souls who tested the waters and were lost.

But you can’t stop a tsunami. The Day of Reckoning is at hand. And even if I can hold out a little longer, after all these years of holding out now I feel like I’m selling out. It’s hard to even articulate the words.

Still… here it goes. It may finally be time to get a cellphone.

Click here to read the whole article.

Proverbial Beauty at Amazon.com

Success in Failure

June 30, 2015 6:02 pm / Leave a comment

A righteous man falls seven times.

~Proverbs

But failure only leads to success if we learn the lessons it tries to teach us. Otherwise we prove the wisdom not of Solomon or Churchill but of Einstein and Hegel:

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

What experience and history teach is this — that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.

Proverbial Beauty: Read now at Amazon.com

The Key to Personal Success… Just Ask!

June 29, 2015 2:15 pm / Leave a comment

Does this sound familiar?

You’re running out the door to take your wife to the airport, only to discover you have a flat tire. You don’t have time to wait for a taxi or the auto club. You want to ask your neighbor for a ride, but you’re afraid it’s too much of an imposition.

Or… you see someone on the subway reading a book by your favorite author or about a topic you find fascinating. You want to strike up a conversation, but you’re afraid of intruding on the other person’s privacy.

Or… you have a lead on a promising job opportunity, and an acquaintance has dealings with your prospective employer. You want to ask her to make an introduction, but you don’t want to put her in an uncomfortable position.

Maybe you’re afraid of rejection; maybe you’re afraid of overstepping the bounds of the relationship; maybe you’re afraid of being a pest.

Sure, there are boundaries, and sometimes we do cross them. So if these scenarios arise often, you might need to examine whether you’re overly needy.

But most of us aren’t looking for such situations; they just happen. And when they do, here’s the key: just ask!

Click here to read the whole article.

The Power to Change the World

June 22, 2015 2:52 pm / Leave a comment

With so much senseless violence dominating the headlines, from Charleston, South Carolina, to Syria and beyond, it’s worth revisiting this story of heroism and the power of the individual to change the world.

On the afternoon of September 18th, 2014, a teenage driver lost control of his SUV as he sped down Salt Lake City’s Indiana Avenue. The GMC Yukon tore through the safety barrier, went airborne into a ravine, and landed upside down in three feet of water and the bottom of the gully. Dazed or unconscious, strapped in by their seat belts, the driver and his two passengers had minutes before they would drown.

What happened next offers a welcome relief from the relentless litany of strife and suffering that fills the headlines. Moments after the crash, nearly a dozen bystanders waded into the waist-high water and, working in unison, flipped the massive vehicle over onto its wheels, lifting the crash victims out from under the water and saving their lives.

But it might never have happened. As horrified onlookers stood frozen and stared at the capsized SUV, Leo Montoya, Jr., an out-of-work locksmith, overcame the Bystander Effect, plunged into the current and dove under the water in an effort to save the occupants. Unable to free them from their seat belts, only one option presented itself.

Turning toward the crowd, Mr. Montoya shouted, “We have to get this vehicle back on its wheels. Now, now, now!” Prompted by his commands, some of the men standing on the roadside began following him into the water. With so many pairs of hands and shoulders at work together, the Yukon rolled up and over until it was back on all four wheels and the passengers were clear of the water. When firefighters arrived, they freed the occupants and rushed them to the hospital.

The collective effort of bystanders saved three lives. But only because one person showed them the way and convinced them to follow.

The incident calls to mind another scene that happened 3,326 years ago after the exodus from Egypt at the splitting of the Sea. Faced with Pharaoh’s chariots bearing down on them from behind and the imposing expanse of water ahead, the Jewish people’s faith in God wavered. “Were there not enough graves in Egypt that you had to bring us out here to die?” they railed against Moses. The situation was impossible; there was no hope.

Until one man spoke up. Nachshon ben Aminadav, the prince of the tribe of Yehudah, cried out to the people: “If the only way to escape the Egyptian army is to go forward, then forward we must go. Let us do what we can and trust God to do the rest.” And with that, he waded out into the sea.

Inspired by his words, the people followed him. Deeper and deeper they advanced into the waters until, as the water reached Nachshon’s chin, the sea split before and around them, offering both the means of the Jews’ escape and the method of the Egyptians’ destruction.

What kind of person marches into the sea assuming that a path will open up to make way for a desperate nation? The same type of person who would charge forth and rally a dozen men to overturn a ton of steel, the type of person who understands that no matter how daunting the odds, there is no way to know the limit of human potential until we have pushed human potential to the limit.

What’s more, the potential of the many may remain unrealized until a singular individual shows that he has no interest in probabilities and, through sheer determination, awakens the collective spirit through which the impossible becomes reality.

We all want to be good and do good, and change the world for the better. But we lack confidence in ourselves, we lack the conviction to act, we lack the courage to risk failure. So we miss opportunities for greatness – not just by failing to charge into the breach, but by not expecting more from ourselves, by not setting the bar of human achievement and human integrity a little higher.

In one heroic moment, one man can inspire a world of others to change themselves. And the more we change ourselves, the more we change the world.

Just ask Leo Montoya. “As far as I know, a couple of kids get to live because of my actions,” Mr. Montoya told reporters. “I feel like I’m somebody.”

Originally published at Aish.com.