Nick DiMaggio > Recent Status Updates

Routine, not-so-interesting jobs require direction; non-routine, more interesting work depends on self-direction.

Human beings have an inherent tendency to seek out novelty and challenges, to extend and exercise their capacities, to explore, and to learn.

The most effective strategy to be able to cope is not really coping per se at all. Indeed, if a performer can change the way they view or interpret a specific situation they can develop the ability to not experience pressure, and to not feel stressed.

The way that human memory works makes it easier to recall experiences that are congruent with the current emotional state.

Optimism can be more productive than pessimism — so be an optimist.

Practice makes permanent — not perfect. Be careful what it is that you are practicing.

Exercise-induced fatigue is predominantly a protective emotion. It’s a psychological state has little to do with a person’s limits.

“It is the nature of desire to get one thing and immediately want the next thing.”

“Ok, many people find it odd to measure things. Many people are also sick, fat, poor, slow, and ignorant as a result of non-measurement.”

Time in nature is a hell of a way to calm the turbulent sea inside our minds.

And so, despite what productivity gurus will have us believe, the key to improving productivity and performance might be to occasionally do nothing at all. Or, at least, not dive into a screen. It prompts us to think distinctly, in a way that delivers more original ideas.

“Building the capacity to be alone probably makes your interactions with others richer. Because you’re bringing to the relationship a person who’s actually got stuff going on in the inside and isn’t just a connector circuit that only thrives off of others.”

New situations kill the mental clutter. In newness we’re forced into presence and focus. This is because we can’t anticipate what to expect and how to respond, breaking the trance that leads to life in fast forward. Newness can even slow down our sense of time. This explains why time seemed slower when we were kids. Everything was new then and we were constantly learning.

Lapsing into glow requires two conditions: The task must stretch a person’s limits and it must have a clear goal. The flow state is a key driver of happiness and growth. It is the opposite of apathy. Flow has the “potential to make life more rich, intense, and meaningful; it is good because it increases the strengths and complexity of the self.”

As we experience fewer problems, we don’t become more satisfied. We just lower our threshold for what we consider a problem. We end up with the same number of troubles. Except our problems are progressively more hallow.

We could say, then, that we’re materialists not only living in this dimension, but also enslaved to and limited by it — because we’ve defined ourselves as a body, living in an environment, at certain times, and our focus is more on matter and less on energy.

Just like the focused beat of a drum that produces a measurable sound wave, the stronger the coherent rhythm of the heart, the more expanded your field becomes.

To put it simply, emotions and feelings originating in the heart play an important role in the way we think, process information, feel, and understand the world and our place in it. Once the heart center is activated, it acts as an amplifier to jump-start the brain, enhance its activity, and create balance, order, and coherence throughout the body.

The “heart’s intelligence”:
The flow of awareness and insight that we experience once the mind and emotions are brought into balance and coherence through a self-initiated process. This form of intelligence is experienced as direct, intuitive knowing that manifests in thought and emotions that are beneficial for ourselves and others.

The body doesn’t know the difference between an emotion created by an experience you are having in the outside environment and an experience you are creating internally by embracing this new, elevated emotion. So when you embrace that elevated emotion and think thoughts that are greater than the self-limiting ones that kept you stuck in the past, your body begins to prepare chemically for the future.

The thought you’re thinking tends to become the experience.

Gratitude is a powerful emotion to use for manifesting because normally we feel gratitude after we receive something. So the emotional signature of gratitude means it has already happened. When you are thankful or you feel appreciation, you are in the ultimate state to receive. When you embrace gratitude, your body as the unconscious mind will begin to believe it is in that future reality in the present moment.

When the mystery of the self is unveiled, we can wake up to the understanding that we are not linear beings living a linear life but instead dimensional beings living dimensional lives. The beauty behind the infinite probabilities that await us is that the only way we can change those futures is to change ourselves in the present infinite moment.

“Forbearance is the sum total of our human virtue.”

To remain oneself in a world that pushes for conformity takes courage. It takes courage as well as temperance to be restrained in a world of excess, where we attack and mock those who don’t indulge in the pleasures we have rationalized and the passions we have excused in ourselves.

While time is ultimately the dictator of our presence here on this earth, we do dictate how we spend it.

It’s a beautiful irony: You’re never content with your progress and yet, you’re always content… because you’re making progress.

It’s the easiest thing in the world to respond to intemperance with intemperance. We have to remember: Someone else’s lack of self-control is not a justification for abandoning our own. Nor is it a good look or a recipe for success and achievement.

An obsession with getting it perfect misses the forest for the trees, because ultimately the biggest miss of all is failing to get your shot off. What you don’t ship, what you’re too afraid or strict to release, to try, is, by definition, a failure. It doesn’t matter the cause, whether it was from procrastination or perfectionism, the result is the same. You didn’t do it.

“Anyone who has not groomed his life in general towards some definite end cannot possibly arrange his individual actions properly.”