Showing all posts in The Point

A steady, strong, stable hand can steer a vessel through even the greatest turmoil. We saw this in Britain during the German Blitzkrieg. Rather than giving into fear, Britons went calmly about their daily business and the country carried on. In Taiwan, where the 2019 pneumoniavirus stays under the best containment in the world, people carry on and keep calm as they do.

It’s hard to read clearly while holding a book with shaky hands. Your best bet is to notice fear on the rise. Sense it, smell it in yourself. When you feel the crawl of fear, just ignore it.  · · · →

There’s something about life! We call it vibrance. We call it survival instinct. We call it spunk. No living thing is inclined to die quietly, so when life gets violent the living live violently. Whatever the hardship, it’s never the end. Even the Alamo was remembered. Life and death have much more work for us to do before they allow the transition.

Imagine yourself a tree so alive you’re on living fire, so hot from life that the strongest storm can’t get you wet. That’s an accurate picture. Storms can’t wipe out forests; they only water them and feed them.  · · · →

All our emotions are self-justified. If we’re angry, it’s someone else’s fault. If we worry, well, we should! If we’re happy, it’s because we deserve it. Emotions are the first stop on the highway to lifelong blame-shifting.

Panic is self-induced—always. Same goes for calm. When the unthinkable happens, which it eventually does, it’s all because we weren’t thinking of it. By training ourselves to count on the world being as we presume it is—then making our emotional stability dependent on that world rather than personal choice—we set ourselves up. Counting on ourselves for emotions might be better.  · · · →

Victory requires sacrifice. The same is true for even the most menial results. It takes only a short time to set a better tone, improve your frame of mind, or learn a more efficient way. And, it’s worth it.

The trouble is getting the time to make the time. Sometimes we have to carry on with things less than great. We can’t always make the small sacrifice to be more efficient. We can’t always set a better mood. We might need to wait for the time and resources, making do in the meanwhile. That sacrifice is to not sacrifice, yet.  · · · →