13 ideas that can change your life

1. The memory of the death - the best way to avoid thinking about the fact that you have something to lose

Steve Jobs speech to students at Stanford University, June 12, 2005.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon - the most important tool that helps me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. [...] You have unfettered. You have no reason not to follow your heart.

2. Real life - a game for one player. We are born and we die alone

«On reading, happiness, decision-making habits, honesty and much more"Naval Ravikant.

We too are social animals, like bees, ants, we are programmed and manage external conditions, we have forgotten how to play and win the game with himself. Absorbed in competition with each other.

A real life - a game for one player. We are born and we die lonely. All perceptions, all the memories are individual. Through three generations no one will remember. Until you came into the world, none of you thought. We are in all alone.

3. Not much time we have, but many lose

"On the brevity of life," Seneca.

Life is given to us long enough, and it abundantly enough for the accomplishment of the greatest cases when distribute it wisely. But if it is not directed kindly purpose if our wastefulness and carelessness allow it to flow out from between us finger, then strikes when our last hour, we were surprised to discover that life, during which we did not notice, expired.

That's what we did not get a short life, and made it short.

We do not lack it, and it shamelessly squandered. As a rich royal heritage by going into the hands of the evil master, in the blink of an eye scatters in the wind, and the property, albeit modest, kindly passed the keeper, multiplied, and time our life is extended for one who cleverly dispose of them.

4. Fate sometimes like a sandstorm that keeps changing direction

«Kafka on the Shore"Haruki Murakami.

Do you want to escape from it - it is right there for you. You're in a different direction - it there too. And so over and over again, if you're at dawn drawn into a sinister dance with the god of death. And all because of this storm - not someone else's, that he came from far away. And you yourself. Something that sits inside you. It remains only to spit on everything, close my eyes, my ears, did not get to the sand and wade straight through the storm. […]

When the storm dies down, you're right, and he do not understandHe is able to pass through it and survive. Did she really stepped? Only one thing is clear. From it you go not the way it was before. That is the meaning of a sandstorm.

5. Let us be content to live in a single point in time in which we live - from now until bedtime

«How to Stop Worrying and Start Living", Dale Carnegie.

You and I are in this moment we stand at the crossroads of two eternities: the boundless past that last forever, and the future, which is directed forward to the last moment of chronology. In all probability, we can not live at the same time and in one, and in another eternity - no, not even a fraction of a second. […]

Trying to achieve this, we can undermine your physical health and mental strength.

"Everyone is able to carry his burden, however hard it may be, before the arrival of the night, - wrote Robert Louis Stevenson. - Each of us is able to do its job, even the most difficult, for one day. Any of us can live with tenderness in my heart, with patience, with love for others, virtuous before sunset. And that this is the true meaning of life. "

6. Do not put a goal to success. The more you strive for it, making it its goal, the more likely you will miss it

"Man's Search for Meaning", Viktor Frankl.

Do not put a goal to success. The more you strive for it, making it its goal, the more likely you will miss it. For success, like happiness and can not chase; He has to get - and it turns out - as an unexpected side effect of personal loyalty to a large case or as a by-product of love and devotion to another person. […]

I want you to listen to what your conscience tells him, and carried her advice, having used it in the best strength and knowledge. Then you will live up to in order to see how after a long time - a long time, I said! — success come, and just because you forgot to think about it!

7. The main thing - do not lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself comes before that too is no truth nor in itself, nor a circle does not distinguish

«The brothers Karamazov", Fedor Dostoevsky.

[...] And so, part of the lack of respect and to themselves and to others. Not respecting the one ceases to love, and that without love, take yourself and entertain, passions and surrenders rough to sweets and comes completely to bestiality in his vices, and all of the continuous lies and people, and himself himself.

8. Do not forget that life itself - amazing luck, a rare event, an unexpected event on a gigantic scale

«Black Swan. Under the sign of unpredictability"Nassim Taleb.

Sometimes I just can not understand why the food is stale, cold coffee, a refusal to accept the company and under the amiable reception can completely ruin a day people, deceived their expectations. Do not forget that life itself - amazing luck, A rare event, an unexpected event on a gigantic scale. Imagine a speck of dust near the planet a billion times larger than the Earth.

Mote - an advantage in favor of your birth; huge planet - against him. So throw hysterical over nothing. Do not be like that killjoy, who, having received a gift in the palace, complaining of mold in the bathroom. Enough to look a gift horse in the mouth.

9. Our subjective experience is actually deprived of substance and meaning. This transient vibration, variable as the ocean waves.

«Sapiens. A brief history of humanity"Yuval Noah Harari.

From the perspective of Buddhism, most people attach too much importance to their feelings, identifying with a pleasant feeling of happiness, and unpleasant - with suffering. As a result, people tend to get the most pleasant sensations and avoids unpleasant. […]

The pursuit of subjective sensations - a tedious and pointless exercise, he gave us the power of a capricious tyrant.

Source suffering no pain, no sorrow or even the absence of meaning. Source of suffering - the very pursuit of subjective sensations, which keeps us in constant tension, confusion, dissatisfaction.

People freed from suffering only when they realize that the subjective sensations merely fleeting vibration, and stop chasing pleasures. Then the pain will not make them unhappy, and enjoyment will not disturb peace of mind.

10. What goes around comes around

"To the tops are no short cuts," Ed Viesturs.

The way you live your life, good and evil, which you bring to others, and how do you generally treat people, will return to you again. I call this the principle of "National Bank of Karma." If you choose not to climb to the top, to help save someone's life, someone who is in trouble, you will make a deposit in the bank. And sometime in the future you will pay back with interest.

11. Man - this is part of the whole, which we call the universe, a part limited in time and space

Albert Einstein letter Robert Marcus.

He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest of the world, which is a kind of optical illusion. This illusion has become a prison for us, restricting us to the world of their own desires and affection for a narrow circle of people close to us.

Our task - to free ourselves from this prison by extending the scope of its participation to all living creatures, to the whole world in all its splendor. Nobody will be able to perform such a task to the end, but do attempt to achieve this goal is part of the liberation and the foundation for self-confidence.

12. You will cease to be afraid of, if they hope to stop

«Moral letters to Lutsiliyu"Seneca.

You may ask how it is possible to equalize just two different things. But the way it is, my Lucilius: though it seems that there is nothing to do, in fact, they are connected between them. As one strand binds the guard and prisoner, so fear and hope, so dissimilar to each other, come together: after the hope is fear.

I was not surprised at this: because both of them are inherent in the soul uncertain, undisturbed by the expectation of the future.

And the main reason of hope and fear - our inability to adjust to the present and the habit to send our thoughts far ahead. Since foresight, the greatest of these individual benefits, turns into evil.

Animals flee just at the sight of the dangers, and get away from them, no longer experience fear. We have the same worries and the future and the past. From our many blessings do us harm: for example, the memory brings us back to the weathered torment of fear and foresight to anticipate the future of flour. And no one is unhappy only on the current reasons. Be healthy.

13. You can not skip chapters in the book of his life

"The pillow thought," Courtney Peppernell.

Life is not so arranged. You should read each line, to meet each character. You will, of course, like not all. Hell, some of the chapters even make you cry for weeks. You will read something that does not want to read. And you will be times when you do not want to end with the page. But you must continue. Stories help the world move. Live your stories, do not miss them.