Tag: Thoughts

In the quest for long-term fulfillment, the willingness to endure short-term discomfort is incredibly empowering.  That, along with the meticulousness/ruthlessness to examine evidence and the audacity to act off it, are some of the most potent weapons a human can wield.

Combine the willingness to work hard, the willingness to act strategically, and the willingness to fall flat on your face… And you end up with the potential for success.

The ability to honestly assess something—casting aside ideology and viewing phenomena through the clear glass of evidence/experimentation—is essential in propagating personal development, a sound democracy, and critical thinking.  Unfortunately this is a painful thing if one has muddied their perception by lying to themselves—choosing empty platitudes instead of sussing through unpleasant causalities.  But once refined,…

Whatever qualities I possess—whether they be “strengths” or “weaknesses”—I strive to hone into TOOLS.  Personally, it seems that the best approach is to employ whatever methods works in a given context (while maintaining ethical standards).  What doesn’t seem to work is fruitlessly scrabbling to uphold some high-handed ideal.

Recklessness is ineffective, but I believe one must be willing to skate right up to the edge of it in order to avoid the regret of lost opportunities—the opportunities that die from a lack of audacity.

In the realm of personal achievement, an adverse environment is not something to blame.  It is something to outwit and conquer, or at the very least, learn something valuable from.

Like everyone else, I like feeling good about my image but that’s a fickle thing; perhaps I screw up, or someone effectively ridicules me, or I don’t perform to my own expectations.  So rather than self-image, I prefer self-respect.  Regardless of how I see myself, I want to trust in my ability to conquer adversity…

I firmly believe that competence beats [doctrine/tradition/etiquette/theory].  So rather than retreat into the safety of dogma, I’d rather aggress into murky arenas that test my beliefs, and realign them with the evidence I see.

Throughout eras and cultures, accomplishment seems to be a relative thing (simply being literate would have been fairly amazing a few millennia ago), and as we are all subject to the creep of entropy, my theory is that the best strategy is to push myself at the fastest, hardest pace that I can prudently sustain…