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“He could feel the madness waiting.”

“…Good, like evil, has its own banality….”

An absolute joy to read.

“Possibly we should not even learn English pronouns to be safe.”

Uplifting the mind
-Positive Neuroplasticity: Using our mind to change our brain to uplift our mind
-Four components of well being
□ Attention
□ Outlook
□ Generosity
□ Reliance
-What you practice grows stronger

Cultivating compassion for yourself
-Growing the capacity to meet emotional or physical pain with kindness
-Compassion literally means, suffering with
-Compassion can be described as: A mental state endowed with a sense of concerns for the suffering of others and an aspiration to see that suffering relived
-Give yourself permission to be imperfect

Self-inquiry and radical acceptance
-Fully allowing and embracing whatever is happening in the present without judging it as good or bad.
-Everything belongs
-RAIN:
□ Recognize
□ Allow
□ Investigate
□ Nurture

Emotions: strengthening interception and self-awareness
-Developing self-awareness is about developing clarity within one's-self
-An emotion is a physiological response to relevant stimuli in the body and the brain.
-Emotions activate us physiologically in response to something in our external environment that seems like a threat or an opportunity.

Befriending your inner critic
-Meta awareness, the ability to see your experience.
-"Through being present with mindfulness, you learn to suspend the inner voices in your head that block being open, the voice of judgement, the voice of cynicism and the voice of concern."
-Give the inner critic a name (Hermione Granger) Her goal is to be helpful, but she is not very tactful.

The power of mindfulness
-Awareness, openness, acceptance, inclusion
-How do we relate to what is happening (not focusing on the what is happening)
-"Mindfulness, which frees us up from the grip of aversive feeling, gives us flexibility of attention, buoyancy and spaciousness."

Wired for survival
-We can deliberately activate the physiology of compassion. Polyvagal theory claims that human facial expressions are associated with, or reflect, physical reactions, such as cardiac and digestive changes. Porges argues this theory with observations from both evolutionary biology and neurology.

The science and benefits of self-compassion
-What gets in the way of me being self-compassionate is… the sense that I am being selfish.
-Given the benefits of self-compassion, I would like to reduce my tendencies to... criticize myself and others.
-With the practice of self-compassion, I would like to increase or amplify… the happiness of myself and those around me.
-What would most support me

What is self-compassion?
-Mindfulness
-Common humanity
-Self-kindness

If the fictional company of serial killers and sociopaths helps you unwinding then dive right in and follow our slightly clueless traumatized heroine Jessie Hunt. Grimace as she perceptively avoids all red flags about her new home, her neighbors and her very own husband.

I enjoyed this book for what it was, a welcomed break during quarantine.

5 moments of appreciative attention for every one piece of negative feedback.

Praise leads to performance, more then praise reflects performance.

Praise leads to performance, more then praise reflects performance.

The brain is like Velcro for negative experiences, but like Teflon for positive ones.

Growth, it turns out is actually a question not of figuring out how to gain ability where we lack it, but of figuring out how to increase impact where we already have ability.

We are not making a plan for the future, we’re making a plan for the near past.

The few times I’ve gone out in public without makeup, it’s made the news.

“If I feel depressed, I go to work.” Eleanor Roosevelt

For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
T.S. Eliot

7 Principals:
1. Headline - Get attention by starting with your best material
2. Scorsese - Hold attention with visuals that tell a story
3. Pasta Sauce - Boil down the message
4. No Tailgating - stop using filler
5. Conviction - Convey certainty
6. Curiosity - Maintain an engaged facial expression
7. Draper - Make sure the focus of the conversation plays to your strengths.

Steps to get “Pitch Perfect”
1. Practice
2. Develop distinctiveness
3. Show crisp conviction
4. Keep it short (10-18 min)
5. Display sheer delight
6. Never comment on the question

“...All of us labour, to one degree or another, under the belief that if other people really knew us, if they knew us the way we know ourselves, they would think less of us. That’s the imposter complex. The fear that by showing ourselves we will be exposed as the flayed person we are...”