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a tumblr meme about replacing self deprecating humor with over the top self belief humor.
not even kidding, was doomscrolling, this jumped into my feed and burnt itself into my brain and 4 years of doing precisely that later, i'm better than ever and it's also just a way to break the ice sometimes.
Here in darkness, everything's okay. Listen to the waves and let them fade away. Here comes a thought.
Here Comes a Thought from Steven Universe was genuinely life-changing for me. It's all about mindfulness and allowing yourself to process negative thoughts without punishing yourself for having them.
This episode came when I was really struggling with anxiety, like multiple crying breakdowns a week. It finally lead me to getting therapy and I'm in a much better place now, but I still come back to it when I'm feeling overwhelmed.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
When I started my now mostly unused school laptop with dualboot (Windows/Debian) at 3 AM in the basement to solve a router issue. This pretty cheap laptop booted in mere seconds to a completely usable state, sparing my tired self from waiting in the cold for too long.
Right there, in the middle of the night, a flash of inspiration struck me!
How could it be that my way too expensive desktop gaming PC took longer to be ready for everything than this old piece of plastic? What if I completely switched my main machine to Linux, not only for testing, but for real? How awesome would it be to have customization freedom and full control over my own device, without a company spying on me, taking away options or using me as their guinea pig for the next untested updates?
And that's how it began. Linux Mint as a safe start, then Kubuntu for more customization with KDE Plasma. After that, EndeavourOS for the latest software, and finally Arch Linux ... for the lulz (btw).
“There were all kinds of things I was afraid of at first, ranging from grizzly bears to ‘mean' horses and gun-fighters; but by acting as if I was not afraid I gradually ceased to be afraid.” ― Theodore Roosevelt
This is a very brief summary of my 2 year MBA: business school is the scientific method applied to business.
"Never perfect. Perfection goal that changes. Never stops moving. Can chase, cannot catch."
It's a video game quote but it helped me realise that there is always some aspect that can be changed for the better
"Everyone you know is facing a battle you know nothing about. Be kind always."
As someone who hasn't had to go through anything that hard, finally accepting this one was so important
Two things, actually. "You are fired", and "You are hired". Also, does "I do" count?
"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."
- Ferris Bueller, from the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
I love that movie for so many reasons.
I loved that if you stayed through the credits there was a small bit there.
I think it was the first movie to do that.
Probably most speeches by Conan O'Brien.
"Work hard, be kind, and amazing things will happen" at 23:09 in Conan O'Brien's 2011 Dartmouth College Commencement Address: https://youtu.be/KmDYXaaT9sA
Conan Addresses The Harvard Class Of 2020: https://youtu.be/VI2B3sZ1GaY
Very riveting stuff.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/KmDYXaaT9sA
https://piped.video/VI2B3sZ1GaY
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
If we could understand but a flower it could change our life.
"Security does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Life either a daring adventure or nothing.”
Wow -- great one I haven't heard this before
Starting listening to podcasts is what has probably made the biggest change in how I see the world. It's difficult to single out any individual thing from there but one worth mentioning would be the realization of no free will. It's quite a different looking world once you realize that things happen because of other things that happened in the past - not because an agent with free will just decided to do so.
"Lead, follow or get out of the way."
“The most important step a man can take is the next one”
And
“Sometimes a hypocrite is nothing more than a man in the process of changing”
I’ve always prided myself on being empathetic and sympathetic to people no matter what. During the me too times, a lady was being interviewed about why survivors and victims don’t go to the authorities about their treatment from (men) powerful people.
She said something along the lines of “stand with us if you want things to change, but don’t you dare stand opposite to tell me how offended I’m allowed to be”. In an instant I realised I’d been guilty of minimizing the suffering of others simply because I’d not been through what they’d been through (in a sense - if I wouldn’t be offended why should they?). Changed my whole outlook on life actually
Be excellent to each other, and party on dudes.
It's so simple but genuinely words to live by.
"Excellence is not an act, but a habit" - Aristotle teaching that good comes from the whole, not from a single step. Focus on the whole, and the steps will follow.
"So, what's the next action for this?" - the GTD approach to task management teaching me to be specific and then go do it (or plan it, or delegate it). This really kicks me into productivity mode.
This saying in my local tounge
Which roughly translates to
"You small, I big , this thought of world is incorrect, A Thirsty man feels the the ocean is smaller than than a glass of fresh water"
Imagine above is a really Catchy rhyming.
I don't think anyone will understand but here it is in local tounge trying to write the sound in English.
Tu nano, hu moto, e khyal jagat no koto. Tarsa ne to dariya karta loto lage moto.
I'm unfamiliar with your language, so take this attempt at translation with a grain of salt:
You are small and I am big, this is but a fantasy of the world. For thirst is larger than the vastness of the ocean.
It's likely a metaphor for how any desire (thirst) is infinite (ocean) and cannot be satiated. By trying to resolve your desire it will only grow and increase your suffering.
This further ties into the illusionary nature of worldly matters in the first sentence. For example if you desire say friends, money, knowledge, or anything else, you'll likely have more of that than others, which makes you feel big. However these desires have grown into a prison for you, and that actually makes you smaller than someone who has found liberation from them, who might otherwise appear lonely, poor, or ignorant.
I am not older than you, i just have been young longer
If you won’t care in 10 years, don’t care now.
(In reference to bad things happening)
This was my approach to things even as a kid. I didn't care who got the bigger "half" between my brother and I, because I wasn't going to care once I'd eaten it. All I would remember is that I'd eaten it :)
Wow, that's impressive - most kids are very tuned into jealousy
It's usually not so much jealosy as a sense of fairness. Sometimes that judgment is skewed, maybe they don't remember they had the largest part last time for instance, but kids tend to be ok with situations they percieve as fair and very unhappy with situations that seem unfair.
“You cannot love someone else until you love yourself.”
My dad raised me on this. If don’t see yourself worthy of love from even yourself, you’ll never be able to accept it from someone else. Healthy love is mutual. Also, this ties back into the idea that if you don’t see yourself worthy of love, it means you need to work on yourself until you do rather than trying to fill that gap with someone else.
I found that same nugget just under a decade ago. Dropped off the dating scene to work on myself. It really made me reflect. I'm still working on myself and honestly I suspect I will be for a while to come.
It took me over 6 years after my first serious relationship to really start figuring myself out and getting in tune with who I really was. I’m definitely still on the path and I realize more and more why my last relationship ended. It really was the best thing for me at the time.
When I first came across that wisdom I realized my desire in a relationship was to just pour myself into the other person, basically worship them. But not for their benefit, but to distract myself from myself. It's fairly easy to see how that goes wrong.
I'm still learning, and I've found even more stuff I need to work on, but either I get there or I don't, what matters if I never stopped trying.
"The first thing that jumps to your mind isn't always what you truly think. Sometimes, it's just what you've been trained to think. What matters, is what you do next"
I grew up in a really racist, queerphobic environment, and that comment really helped me by letting me give myself space to undo the bigoted indoctrination I had been taught, without getting trapped in guilt and self disgust whenever one of the racist or bigoted things I was raised with jumped in to my mind.
It let me recognise the bigoted thought as something I was trained to think, rather than being what I actually believe, and by recognising it, I could disempower the thought, and start to unlearn it
Similarly if you shit talk yourself in your head to motivate yourself it really will eventually start to condition you that way even if it does motivate you
That's a powerful thought.
Conditioning significantly influences our psyche.
These thoughts that are the result of conditioning are like knee jerk reactions.
Our brain is designed to conserve energy so it actually prioritises conditioned knee jerk reactions rather than introspective thoughts.
One needs significant amount of training to bypass this process.