I haven't been AS diligent in recording all of the nuggets of wisdom I have come across since coming back from my trip (I have to keep some reason for people to want to interact with me face to face :), but I have read the rest of the posts I wanted to from Raptitude.com. Here they are:
I didn’t realize it, but writing is something I’ve needed in my life for a long time. From here on in I will never not write. It helps me clarify my thoughts and my values. It helps me figure out who I am. In a brief half-year, my goals have become clear to me, and I have no ambivalence about what I want to do with my life.
http://www.raptitude.com/2009/09/whats-your-problem-and-why/
"Children have a precious talent. They become enamored so easily, and by anything. Take a walk through a park with a young child, and it doesn’t take long before he’s stopped, crouched on the side of the path, captivated by a red leaf or line of marching ants. Wide-eyed and oblivious to you and everything else, he just watches. He’s become enraptured by a curious sight that is — to him — a miracle.
"...most of us feel like we’ve lost most of our capacity for bewilderment, somewhere between childhood and high school.With a bit of attention, we can get it back... One eye-opening method is to incorporate the idea of ritual into your daily tasks.
"One thing that all rituals have in common is that they are performed with attention. The participants are fully absorbed in what they are doing, because they believe their actions are important.Essential to this idea is respect for the things and people involved. Throughout your rituals, recognize the value and usefulness of objects as you pick them up. Recognize the sensitivities and virtues of people as you interact with them. Carelessness and haste have no place here.The purpose of ritual is to remind you that what you are doing is significant simply because it is what you are doing right now. Rituals need not have any lofty spiritual or religious pretensions; we’re just trying to cultivate attention.The whole operation doesn’t take any more time than doing it absent-mindedly, and the experience will leave you grateful and mindful for the next part of your day. Those steps all have to be completed anyway, so what would be the benefit in letting your attention wander to something else? There is none that I can think of, but it’s what would happen if you didn’t make a point of doing it all deliberately, by ritualizing it."
http://www.raptitude.com/2009/03/how-to-improve-your-quality-of-life-by-up-to-90/
"Please don’t only do what’s comfortable! That’s a perfect recipe for mediocrity. The older you get, the greater will be the gulf between what you could be and what you are, and the more sorry you’ll be."
"When it comes to meeting people, it’s easy to avoid it because they’re only strangers then. You can always write off a stranger as irrelevant to your life, as you know it right now. But you don’t realize that that stranger could have been your best friend, your mentor, your key to a fantastic opportunity, or even your wife. Everyone you know now was a stranger once.A new person in your life can open a new chapter. They can lead to new lines of work, new passions, new insight about the world and a broader, more colorful identity for you.""What can you do instead [of working for someone else]? Do what your would-be boss is doing. Create something of value, and find the people who value it most. A service or a product that people value, and that others aren’t delivering as well, or at all.If you need help to produce it, you will certainly be able to find a lot of people willing to sell you their time for a flat rate. If you need a method, there are hundreds of established, tested models in the library, online (yes, online), and at the bookstore. Pick one that speaks to you and see what happens."
http://www.raptitude.com/2010/02/3-pieces-of-advice-id-give-my-18-year-old-self-if-i-could/
"The bottom line of almost all self-help, spiritual, or religious literature is that our ability to be happy is determined by our ability to stay in the present moment. The Buddhists, the Toltecs, the Bible, Eckhart Tolle, Ram Dass, Emerson, Thoreau — anyone at all who is known for having found a path to consistent, recurring joy — cites staying present as the essential teaching.
Only when we’re present do we see beauty, enjoy gratitude, and experience happiness. It’s the moments we’re present for that make life good, so it only stands to reason that being present is something we’d do well to get better at."http://www.raptitude.com/2010/03/how-to-make-mindfulness-a-habit-with-only-a-tiny-commitment/
This post was interesting,http://www.raptitude.com/2009/05/the-results-are-in-experiment-no-1-day-30/
But this one was my favorite:http://www.raptitude.com/2009/04/how-to-always-have-something-better-to-talk-about-than-the-weather/
Oh, and this was a great quote from the Times:
"Fulfillment is a byproduct of how people engage their tasks, and can’t be pursued directly."http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/31/opinion/31brooks.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212
I didn’t realize it, but writing is something I’ve needed in my life for a long time. From here on in I will never not write. It helps me clarify my thoughts and my values. It helps me figure out who I am. In a brief half-year, my goals have become clear to me, and I have no ambivalence about what I want to do with my life.
http://www.raptitude.com/2009/09/whats-your-problem-and-why/
"Children have a precious talent. They become enamored so easily, and by anything. Take a walk through a park with a young child, and it doesn’t take long before he’s stopped, crouched on the side of the path, captivated by a red leaf or line of marching ants. Wide-eyed and oblivious to you and everything else, he just watches. He’s become enraptured by a curious sight that is — to him — a miracle.
"...most of us feel like we’ve lost most of our capacity for bewilderment, somewhere between childhood and high school.With a bit of attention, we can get it back... One eye-opening method is to incorporate the idea of ritual into your daily tasks.
"One thing that all rituals have in common is that they are performed with attention. The participants are fully absorbed in what they are doing, because they believe their actions are important.Essential to this idea is respect for the things and people involved. Throughout your rituals, recognize the value and usefulness of objects as you pick them up. Recognize the sensitivities and virtues of people as you interact with them. Carelessness and haste have no place here.The purpose of ritual is to remind you that what you are doing is significant simply because it is what you are doing right now. Rituals need not have any lofty spiritual or religious pretensions; we’re just trying to cultivate attention.The whole operation doesn’t take any more time than doing it absent-mindedly, and the experience will leave you grateful and mindful for the next part of your day. Those steps all have to be completed anyway, so what would be the benefit in letting your attention wander to something else? There is none that I can think of, but it’s what would happen if you didn’t make a point of doing it all deliberately, by ritualizing it."
http://www.raptitude.com/2009/03/how-to-improve-your-quality-of-life-by-up-to-90/
"Please don’t only do what’s comfortable! That’s a perfect recipe for mediocrity. The older you get, the greater will be the gulf between what you could be and what you are, and the more sorry you’ll be."
"When it comes to meeting people, it’s easy to avoid it because they’re only strangers then. You can always write off a stranger as irrelevant to your life, as you know it right now. But you don’t realize that that stranger could have been your best friend, your mentor, your key to a fantastic opportunity, or even your wife. Everyone you know now was a stranger once.A new person in your life can open a new chapter. They can lead to new lines of work, new passions, new insight about the world and a broader, more colorful identity for you.""What can you do instead [of working for someone else]? Do what your would-be boss is doing. Create something of value, and find the people who value it most. A service or a product that people value, and that others aren’t delivering as well, or at all.If you need help to produce it, you will certainly be able to find a lot of people willing to sell you their time for a flat rate. If you need a method, there are hundreds of established, tested models in the library, online (yes, online), and at the bookstore. Pick one that speaks to you and see what happens."
http://www.raptitude.com/2010/02/3-pieces-of-advice-id-give-my-18-year-old-self-if-i-could/
"The bottom line of almost all self-help, spiritual, or religious literature is that our ability to be happy is determined by our ability to stay in the present moment. The Buddhists, the Toltecs, the Bible, Eckhart Tolle, Ram Dass, Emerson, Thoreau — anyone at all who is known for having found a path to consistent, recurring joy — cites staying present as the essential teaching.
Only when we’re present do we see beauty, enjoy gratitude, and experience happiness. It’s the moments we’re present for that make life good, so it only stands to reason that being present is something we’d do well to get better at."http://www.raptitude.com/2010/03/how-to-make-mindfulness-a-habit-with-only-a-tiny-commitment/
This post was interesting,http://www.raptitude.com/2009/05/the-results-are-in-experiment-no-1-day-30/
But this one was my favorite:http://www.raptitude.com/2009/04/how-to-always-have-something-better-to-talk-about-than-the-weather/
Oh, and this was a great quote from the Times:
"Fulfillment is a byproduct of how people engage their tasks, and can’t be pursued directly."http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/31/opinion/31brooks.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212
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