Josh

“Once you stop struggling to get on top of everything, to stay in absolute control, or to make everything perfect, you’re rewarded with the time, energy and psychological freedom to accomplish the most of which anyone could be capable.”
― Oliver Burkeman, Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts

“What is reality? I like the answer of the novelist Philip K. Dick: It is whatever, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”
― Paul Bloom, Psych: The Story of the Human Mind

“The problem with identity is that it wrecks your ability to think clearly. Identifying with a belief makes you feel like you have to be ready to defend it, which motivates you to focus your attention on collecting evidence in its favor. Identity makes you reflexively reject arguments that feel like attacks on you or the status of your group.”
― Julia Galef, The Scout Mindset: The Perils of Defensive Thinking and How to Be Right More Often

“When grappling with a difficult, unwanted change, it can be natural to try to make sense of what’s happened within the framework of a just world. But there are some changes that occur for no meaningful reason and offer no lessons—they’re just things that happen. And yet in these situations it can still feel satisfying to blame ourselves. Self-blame can be comforting, giving us the false sense that we are in control and are righting some wrong. But it can also take us down a path along which, like Maryann, we become consumed by shame. Because we feel irredeemable, we are unable to take constructive steps forward. Research shows that one way to help prevent this response is to cultivate more self-compassion,27 using an approach developed by the psychologist Kristin Neff. According to Neff, self-compassion involves recognizing your suffering, mindfully engaging with your emotions, and understanding that the pain you’re feeling is part of a shared human experience. This last element is particularly important: if you can contextualize an awful event in your life as something that can happen to other people, too, you’re more likely to depersonalize it and shift toward a more external locus of control—to interpret it as something that’s happened to you, as opposed to something that’s happened because of you.”
― Maya Shankar, The Other Side of Change: The Inspiring Bestseller on Finding Strength and Happiness in Adversity