Promethea Greco

“Our excessive focus in the modern world on the power of conscious thought and the benefits of willpower and self-control causes us to overlook the pervasive importance of what might be called “body thinking”: tacit, fast, and semiautomatic behavior that flows from the unconscious with little or no conscious interference. The result is that we too often devote ourselves to pushing harder or moving faster in areas of our life where effort and striving are, in fact, profoundly counterproductive. This is because the problem of choking or freezing up extends far beyond sports or artistic performance.”
― Edward Slingerland, Trying Not to Try: Ancient China, Modern Science, and the Power of Spontaneity

“... work in social psychology has made it clear that cognitive control is a limited resource. When a teacher taps on a dozing student's desk and says: "Pay attention!" it turns out that this is not a metaphor: attention is costly, and if it is "spent" on one task there is less available to spend on another. This phenomenon is known as "ego depletion". ... The moral? Effort is effort, mental or physical.”
― Edward Slingerland, Trying Not to Try: The Art and Science of Spontaneity

“Many lives are almost scandal-proof. Vulnerability comes in pretending to be someone you are not.”
― Sam Harris, Lying

“That’s the worst of our job,” said Race despondently. “So many people keep back the truth for positively futile reasons.”
― Agatha Christie, Death on the Nile