Great quotes from wise people

Here I will collect all the best quotes I come across, with updates now and then. You can bookmark this page and also link to it.

Also check out "100 great quotes about motivation and taking action", a very popular post on my blog.

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"I sometimes think that God, in creating man, overestimated His ability."
- Oscar Wilde

"God made everything out of nothing, but the nothingness shows through."
- Paul Valery

"If God wanted us to fly, He would have given us tickets."
- Mel Brooks

"There cannot be a God because if there were one, I could not believe that I was not He."
- Friedrich Nietzsche

"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh."
"If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him."
- Voltaire

"If you want to organize anything, assume everybody is absolutely stupid. And assume yourself that you're stupid."
- Bayard Austin

"Character is what you know you are, not what others think you are."
- Marvin Collins and Civia Tamark

"I'm glad I did it. Partly because it was well worth it, but chiefly because I shall never ever have to do it again."
- Mark Twain

"The mother of the year should be a sterilized woman with two adopted children."
- Paul Ehrlich

"It is often safer to be in chains than it is to be free."
- Franz Kafka

"Freedom of choice is what you got – freedom from choice is what you want."
- Devo

"Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."
- George Orwell

"There is nothing more evil in the universe than man."
- Robert de Grimston

"The greater the lie, the greater the chance it will be believed."
- Adolf Hitler

"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your common sense."
- Buddha

"If there weren’t people unafraid to be judged insane by their peers, we’d all still be living in caves."
- Jello Biafra

"The mediocre man augments his worth by belonging to a group; the superior man diminishes it."
- Gustave Le Bon

"Those who have some funds think that the most important thing in the world is love. The poor know it is money."
- Gerald Brenan

"Moralistic preaching from hypocritical parents is worse than useless."
- John A. Sanford

"The road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom...for we never know what is enough until we know what is more than enough."
- William Blake

"Wherever they burn books, they will also, in the end, burn people."
- Heinrich Heine

"Nothing matters very much, and few things matter at all."
- Arthur James

"Pessimists never do anything, they sit in the corner and moan and piss and groan and bitch and complain, but they never do anything. The optimists are the ones who do things. At least I’m trying. I'm an optimist on principle."
- Robert Anton Wilson

"Change is not progress."
- Ragnar Redbeard

"Is it progress if a cannibal uses a fork?"
- Stanislaw J. Lec

"Even making love involves power relations, charged with eroticism...There’s so much pleasure in giving orders; there’s also pleasure in taking them. This pleasure of power – well, there’s a topic for study."
- Foucault

"Formal religion was organized for slaves; it offered them consolation which earth did not provide."
- Elbert Hubbard

"As far as I know, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence."
"The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatsoever that it is not utterly absurd. Indeed, in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible."
- Bertrand Russell

"Americans love and hate sex. Sex sells products, fuels popular novels and Hollywood’s star system. And yet, when this commodification becomes literal, when sexual pleasure is bought and sold, Americans are terrified. Sex professionals bear the burden of this fear. Prostitutes have historically been publicly vilified, leaving them vulnerable to attack, abuse, and harassment from all sides. Yet they never seem to run out of clients."
- P.O.N.Y. (Prostitutes of New York)

"Knowledge is not intelligence."
- Heraclitus

"Women today are not satisfied… they want men, but all they find are little boys."
- Charles Manson

"Women are always attracted to power. I do not think there could ever be a conqueror so bloody that most women would not willingly lie with him in the hope of bearing a son who would be every bit as ferocious as the father."
- Gore Vidal

"I do not like work even when another person does it."
- Mark Twain

"A clever person solves a problem, a wise person avoids it."
- Albert Einstein

"Begin! Only by starting can the impossible become possible."
- Thomas Carlyle

"Pornography is rather like trying to find out about a Beethoven symphony by having somebody tell you about it and perhaps hum a few bars."
- Davies Robertson

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
- Albert Einstein

"Do it. Do it right. Do it right now."
- Bobby Riggs

"The significant problems we face cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them."
- Albert Einstein

"You must be the change / You wish to see in the world"
- Gandhi

"Given eight hours to chop down a tree, I would spend six sharpening my axe."
- Abraham Lincoln

"The world doesn't stink. Only sometimes your head is so full of shit."
- Anonym

"If you ask the wrong questions, you will always get the wrong answers."
- Anonym

"If you judge people, you have no time to love them."
- Mother Teresa

"It's hard to beat a person who never gives up."
- Babe Ruth

"Life is a grindstone. Whether it grinds us down or polishes us up depends on us."
- Thomas L. Holdcroft

"We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give."
- Winston Churchill

"Live as if your were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever."
- Gandhi

"Nobody gets to live life backward. Look ahead, that is where your future lies."
- Ann Landers

"Destiny is no matter of chance. It is a matter of choice: it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved."
- William Jennings Bryan

"Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking."
- Albert Einstein

"For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin - real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life."
- Alfred D. Souza

"In the book of life every page has two sides: we human beings fill the upper side with our plans, hopes and wishes, but providence writes on the other side, and what it ordains is seldom our goal."
- Nisami

"Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment."
- Buddha

"It is not length of life, but depth of life."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"In the game of life it's a good idea to have a few early losses, which relieves you of the pressure of trying to maintain an undefeated season."
- Bill Baughan

"Expecting life to treat you well because you are a good person is like expecting an angry bull not to charge because you are a vegetarian."
- Shari R. Barr

"Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint on it you can."
- Danny Kaye

"And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years."
- Abraham Lincoln

"Difficult times have helped me to understand better than before, how infinitely rich and beautiful life is in every way, and that so many things that one goes worrying about are of no importance whatsoever..."
- Isak Dinesen

"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."
- Albert Einstein

"Attack life, it's going to kill you anyway."
- Steven Coallier

"Life isn't worth living unless you're willing to take some big chances and go for broke."
- Eliot Wiggington

"Being on the tightrope is living; everything else is waiting."
- Karl Wallenda

"On life's journey faith is nourishment, virtuous deeds are a shelter, wisdom is the light by day and right mindfulness is the protection by night. If a man lives a pure life, nothing can destroy him."
- Buddha

"In between goals is a thing called life, that has to be lived and enjoyed."
- Sid Caesar

"The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny."
- Albert Ellis

"Let yourself be open and life will be easier. A spoon of salt in a glass of water makes the water undrinkable. A spoon of salt in a lake is almost unnoticed."
- Buddha

"Your talent is God's gift to you. What you do with it is your gift back to God."
- Leo Buscaglia

"Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die today."
- James Dean

"People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within."
- Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart."
- Helen Keller

"Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them."
- John Updike

"Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not."
- George Bernard Shaw

"When you do not know what you are doing and what you are doing is the best - that is inspiration."
- Robert Bresson

"He who knows others is wise, He who knows himself is enlightened."
- Tao Te Ching

"People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered; forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of being selfish with an ulterior motive; be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies; succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone would destroy overnight; build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, there may be jealousy; be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow; do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough; give the world the best you have got anyway.
You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God; it was never between you and them anyway."
- Mother Theresa

"The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it."

"Never take life seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyways."

"Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow."

"Adopt the pace of nature, her secret is patience."

"Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes."

"Maybe this world is another planet's hell!"

"Being beaten is often a temporary condition, giving up is what makes it permanent."

"Birds sing after a storm, why shouldn't we?"

"The philosophy of the rich versus the poor is this: The rich invest their money and spend what is left; the poor spend their money and invest what's left."

"It's what you learn after you know it all that counts."

"Failing to plan means planning to fail. What are your goals?"

"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as if everything is."

"Never talk defeat. Use words like hope, belief, faith, victory."

"In the practical use of our intellect, forgetting is as important as remembering."

"Failure is delay, not defeat.

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Oscar Wilde on women:

"All women become like their mothers, that is their tragedy; no man does, that is his."

"Never trust a woman who tells you her real age; a woman who tells you that would tell you anything."

"Women are meant to be loved, not understood."

"A woman will flirt with anyone in the world, so long as other women are looking on."

"Women can discover everything except the obvious."

"If a woman wants to hold a man, she has merely to appeal to the worst in him."

"Crying is the refuge of plain women and the ruin of pretty ones."

"If you really want to know what a woman means, which is dangerous, always look at her but never listen."

"For fascinating women, sex is a challenge; for others, it is merely a defence."

Steve Pavlina about creative self-expression

Listen to this very good podcast by Steve Pavlina about creative self-expression, divided into four parts:
---
1) Body (physical needs) — what must you do?
2) Mind (talents and skills) — what can you do?
3) Heart (passion and desire) — what do you want to do?
4) Spirit (purpose and contribution) — what should you do?

Check out the podcast or read the article it's based on.

Here is Steve's description of the podcast:
"Many people have been socially conditioned to believe that a career or job should be chosen based how well it pays and how qualified you are to hold it. This podcast will explain why that approach is completely backwards.

Paradoxically by selecting a career based on money and skills, your financial and career results will be but a pale shadow of your potential. And even worse than that, you will virtually guarantee long-term unhappiness. Going to work each day will become something you only do because you have to, not because you want to, and staying motivated will be very, very hard.

The path for conscious human beings is to focus first and foremost on joyful, creative self-expression. That is far more important than money, skill fit, or even contribution to others. Your own creativity is the very mechanism by which you’ll achieve everything else you could possibly want — including financial abundance, superior talent, long-term fulfillment, and meaningful contribution."

Help to stop ACTA, a huge threat to Internet freedom

SOPA/PIPA was stopped, and now ACTA is threatening the Internet in the same way. Please read this, it's important.

ACTA is an international trade agreement currently being negotiated. One of the major goals is to force signatory countries into implementing anti file-sharing policies.

This will in turn allow corporations and lobbyers to e.g. effectively control the Internet, and make Internet Service Providers responsible for what their users are doing. This would seriously cripple Internet freedom.

Here is what you can do:
- Sign this Avaaz campaign, along with over 800.000 others (and counting)
- If you are in the EU, here are additional ways you can take action
- See this video explaining ACTA's effects

Please share this on Facebook and other social media, informing your network about this danger.

And read more at StopACTA.

Massive Attack's "Singles 90/98" - a list of the missing tracks

In 1998 Massive Attack released an 11 CD boxset called "Singles 90/98", trying to sum up all the singles, remixes and B-side tracks the band had released until then.

But - for some reason Virgin Records managed to leave out a bunch of tracks that should have been included to make the collection complete. I don't know why that happened, but it's typical of record companies to mess up like that.

I will hereby save you the trouble of looking through their entire discography of 12" and CD-single releases to find out what tracks are missing - because I have done just that. And here's the list:

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* Any Love
* Any Love (Bonus)
* Any Love (Inst.)
* Any Love (Acapella)
* Unfinished Sympathy (Nellee Hooper Instrumental Mix)

* Unfinished Sympathy (Perfecto Instrumental)

* Safe From Harm (Instrumental)
* Be Thankful For What You've Got (Funky Mix)
* Be Thankful For What You've Got (Instrumental Funky Mix)
* Be Thankful For What You've Got (Extended Funky Mix)
* Be Thankful For What You've Got (7" No-Rap Version)
* Any Love (Unknown Remix 1 By Larry Heard)
* Any Love (Unknown Remix 2 By Larry Heard)
(one of these two might be "Any Love (Larry Heard Mix)" included in the box)
* Any Love (Unknown Remix)
* Hymn (Unknown Remix 1 By Paul Oakenfold)
* Hymn (Unknown Remix 2 By Paul Oakenfold)
* Be Thankful (Unknown Remix By Nellee Hooper)
* Sly (Dogapella By Underdog)
* Sly (Underdog Version) (this is not the same as "Underdog Mix" which is included)
* Sly (7 Stones Instrumental By Tim Simenon)
* Protection (The Eno Instrumental By Brian Eno)
* Protection (Angel Dust Instrumental By Underdog)
* Three (Dom T's House Of Fortune Mix)
* Karmacoma (The Napoli Trip Instrumental)
* Karmacoma (Radio Edit)
* Risingson (Darren Emerson For Underworld Remix) (promo version lasting 5m29s)
* Risingson (Otherside Instrumental)
* Risingson (Single Mix)
* Risingson (Meyanderthal Mix)
* Risingson (Underdog Instrumental)
* Teardrop (Edit)
* Reflection (Instrumental)

Steve Pavlina about the connection between money and social skills

In edition #42 of Steve Pavlina's "Personal Development Insights" newsletter, he wrote about the connection between money and social skills - namely that financial struggles can be a clear sign of social ineptness.

Here's the full text, and if you want to read more, check out Pavlina's page on Google+ and his blog, and also sign up (on the left side of his blog) for these newsletters, since he for some reason doesn't publish them on the blog.

Also check out his site, where he has many hundreds of free articles. His writing is very far from "wishful thinking" self-help, instead he's very direct, clear and cuts to the point quickly.




If You're Struggling Financially, Weak Social Skills May Be the Culprit

Often when people are struggling financially, they try to make improvements that never quite work out. One reason is that they're working on symptoms while overlooking the real core issues. If I may be direct, much of the time the main reason people struggle in this part of life is because they have very weak social skills. They may think that limiting beliefs about money, or perhaps a lack of self-discipline, are holding them back, but even people with very abundant lives have limiting financial beliefs and self-discipline challenges.

The real problem isn't your financial skills or your beliefs about money. More often than not, the problem is that you're trying to make money in ways that could be described as socially inept.

People who are socially inept don't understand that money is a social tool. Money is communication. Instead they treat money as an object, as something to collect and acquire. But by using money in this way, they don't realize they're actually trying to use people. And trying to use people is a socially inept way of communicating. People generally don't like to be used as tools, so money doesn't easily flow to socially inept people who attempt to relate to others in this manner. If you're trying to get more money, you're behaving in a socially creepy manner, and so you're going to meet a lot of resistance and will most like meet with failure and frustration.

If you're having some difficulty improving your level of financial abundance, let me share a perspective with you that I think will help. This will be a very down to earth perspective -- no need to invoke the Law of Attraction or use terms like "vibrational match" here.

What Is Money?

We know that money is a medium for exchanging value. But what does that mean?

Let's set aside all conspiracy theories for the moment and focus on the practical reality of what money does for us in our daily lives. Money is used for trade. When we use money, we're trading one kind of value for another kind of value.

Using money amounts to trading goods and services, like trading apples for salt, or shoes for a massage.

Now who participates in these trades?

People. Human beings.

Money may seem more abstract than hard goods and services, so it's understandable that people get confused about how to earn it, but imagine what your financial life would be like if there was no money. What would it mean to talk about financial abundance in the absence of money?

Without money in your life, you'd basically have two options for creating abundance. The first option would be to produce everything you desire for yourself. You'd have to grow your own food. You'd have to self-educate. You'd have to design and build your own shelter, harvest all the resources for it, and invent and build your own tools from scratch. You couldn't use anything like a computer or the Internet unless you invented and developed all your own technology, including building your own communication networks. If you wanted to participate in modern society to any meaningful degree, we can safely rule out the go-it-alone approach.

Your second option for creating abundance would be to engage in trades with other people. There are two aspects to this. First, you need to have something to trade. Second, you need to conduct trades, which are social interactions.

So if you go the trading route (which is the only practical choice for most people), there are two fundamental skill sets that will determine your ability to create and enjoy financial abundance:

1. Your skill at creating value such that others are willing to trade for it. 2. Your skill at executing trades with others.

Both of these are social skills. Let's explore this more deeply...

Creating Value

It's common to think about creating value for others in terms of your mental and physical abilities, including your technical and artistic skills. Can you write software, create music, fix plumbing problems, or mop floors?

But how do you learn these skills in the first place? From your parents. From schools and teachers. From books. From the Internet. And probably from many other sources. Ultimately, however, you learned your skills from people. You wouldn't even have the most basic skills of reading, writing, and speaking if not for other people.

Yes, you can also learn through direct experimentation, but I'm sure you'll agree that most of what you've learned so far ultimately came from human beings. People created those resources and chose to share them with you. If not for the help of others, you'd pretty much be an idiot, at least by the standards of our modern society.

Now think about what an upgrade in your social skills could do for you here. If you were even more skilled socially, you'd be able to gain access to more and better educational and training resources.

Despite the massive amount of content on the Internet, a lot of knowledge is still fairly private, including some of the most current info that hasn't yet trickled down to the Internet. The only way to learn certain information is through people. Additionally, some skills are just much easier to learn directly from people than through free resources.

What determines your ability to gain access to the best proprietary info? You can buy it, but in the absence of money, your access will largely be determined by the strength of your social network, which in turn is largely determined by your social skills.

So the better your social networking skills, the more opportunities you have for skill building.

Additionally, how do you learn the relative social value of different skills? How do you learn which skills have high trading value (like performing heart surgery) vs. low trading value (like mopping floors)? You learn this from other people too. Do you have a social network that encourages you to learn and develop skills with high trading value? Or do you have a social network that lets you settle for skills with low trading value? If you have the latter type of social network, why haven't you consciously created the former?

If you aren't able to create much value for others (i.e. high trading value), that will surely depress your income. If this is a problem you're currently experiencing, it means your social network isn't doing a very good job of training you to deliver strong value. And if your social network isn't training you properly, then we have to take a serious look at your social skills, don't we? After all, you're the one who's maintaining your social network. If you wanted to change it badly enough and had the skills to do so, you could certainly do that. Lots of people do.

Some people are just lucky. They're born into amazing social networks that prepare them for lives of abundance. Others have to work at it. Either way, your social network is your responsibility. If it isn't serving you, why not change it?

One again, if your finances are lagging and you'd rather not experience that reality, it means your social network isn't doing its job, which means your social skills are lagging, which means you're not doing your job socially. Financial failure and social failure are the same thing.

Trading With Others

Now let's look at the second aspect of creating abundance. Once you have some value to offer, you can engage in intelligent trades with other people to fulfill the desires that you can't or won't fulfill on your own.

What makes for a successful trade? In the long run, this is also determined by your social network and your social skills. Opportunities for trade will come from other people, largely through your social network. If your social networking isn't bringing you abundance-producing, win-win trades on a regular basis, then again, your social network isn't doing its job. And if your social networking isn't doing it's job, why not? That would imply that you aren't doing a good job of creating and maintaining an empowering network, which in turn points to social skills that are lagging.

My intent isn't to beat you down here. My intent is to help you target the right strategy for growth if you've been struggling to create financial abundance. Some people don't see much improvement even after years of working to improve their finances, and that's largely because they never address the underlying social problems that give rise to scarcity. I think you'll experience a lot more growth if you reinterpret your financial problems as social problems. At the very least, it will give you a new avenue to explore.

How Strong Social Skills Can Create Financial Abundance

So how does abundance result from strong social skills?

Let's revisit our two aspects of trading:

1. Your skill at creating value such that others are willing to trade for it. 2. Your skill at executing trades with others.

Imagine a person who has amazing social skills. What would that look like, and how would it affect the two trade-related skills above?

First, this person would have more educational and skill-building resources than most people. Great social skills can be used to build and maintain an empowering network of intelligent and resourceful friends and contacts. If this person ever wanted help learning anything, there would always be someone to turn to, someone to suggest and offer quality resources.

As great as Google is, there are some questions that are best answered by human beings. Moreover, a human network can provide abundant emotional support, encouragement, and accountability. Google doesn't care if you procrastinate. Good friends, however, do care.

This socially skilled person would also have a better sense of other people's needs. Better social skills means better empathy and listening skills. So s/he would have an easier time figuring out what to do to create strong value for others, value that people would gladly trade for. The socially inept person, by contrast, would be more likely to create something that nobody wanted, which can be very discouraging.

Next, this highly social person could cultivate a social network that delivers a continuous flow of choice opportunities for quality trades. If this person wanted a job, it could be found through his/her social network. If this person wanted to start a business or offer a new product or service, his/her social network would provide plenty of assistance to make that a reality, including abundant referrals of new clients and customers. Suffice it to say that this person would have a serious advantage.

Our socially inept counterpart, however, would suffer major disadvantages across the board. S/he wouldn't be in the best position for attracting educational and skill-building opportunities, and s/he would also miss out on the choicest trading opportunities. Long-term financial scarcity would be the most likely outcome.

My Social and Financial Expansion

When I look back over the past 20+ years of my life, I see a major correlation between my social skills and my experience of financial abundance. During those times when I was the most solo-minded in my thinking, my finances lagged. But when I put some serious effort into social skill-building and expansion, my financial life improved markedly shortly thereafter.

For example, when I decided to become active in the Association of Shareware Professionals in 1999, I went from earning about $300 per month from my computer game sales to more than 10x that within a matter of months. I can directly attribute the improvement in my finances to the education and opportunities that came to me through my expanding social network.

Until I made that commitment to reach out socially in my industry, hardly anyone knew that I existed. I was never invited to speak at conferences. I had no chance of winning awards and getting free publicity for my products. I never had friends emailing me advice and suggestions and sharing resources.

Both in my own life and in the lives of others, I've seen ample evidence to convince me that financial abundance is largely a result of strong social skills and the intelligent application of those skills. Specifically, this includes the following:

1. Your ability to proactively befriend intelligent, resourceful people and add them to your social network. 2. Your ability to inspire people to refer helpful opportunities to you (resources, leads, clients, etc). 3. Your ability to serve as a positive source of inspiration and opportunities for others (maintaining win-win connections). 4. Your ability to prune and release dead-weight relationships (avoiding win-lose and lose-lose connections).

To be very direct once again, people who suffer financially generally make the following social mistakes:

1. They often behave as loners and spend a lot of time alone or with the same few people (social isolationists). 2. The frequently suffer from approach anxiety and low self-esteem, which discourages them from initiating new connections and creating social expansion (social timidity). 3. They clutter their social lives with losers who have little to offer in terms of support, resources, and skill-building (low standards). 4. When they do meet intelligent and resourceful people, they act passively and fail to establish new friendships (lack of intitiative). 5. They remain loyal to a pity posse that consistently blocks good referrals with fear, jealousy, or sarcasm (clinginess).

I know this sound harsh, but pause for a moment to see if any of this resonates with you.

The Good News

The good news is that if you're currently suffering from financial lack, and if you can see and admit that it just might have something to do with your lagging social skills, there's hope for you yet. :)

It will take time to upgrade your social skills and to overcome related fears and limiting beliefs, but this is a rewarding journey to undertake. If I can go from a shy child who used to play alone in the sandbox to a man who thinks of 3-day public workshops as a form of play... and from debt/bankruptcy to seeing money show up whenever I need it... then why not you?

I can't offer you an overnight fix here (and beware of anyone who promises such silliness), but I do think it will help you to focus on a social upgrade as the key to financial abundance. You can start by browsing my blog's archives and reading some articles on social skills, but this time read those articles with a fresh perspective. How could a social skills upgrade impact your experience of financial abundance?

And if you'd like more help along these lines, please consider attending our February Conscious Relationships Workshop. Although financial abundance isn't the main focus, it's very likely that you'll learn new ideas, tools, skills, and perspectives at this workshop that will help you improve your finances.

As a final thought... the key for me in creating this change was to admit to myself that being a social isolationist wasn't working. So maybe... just maybe... I should try doing the opposite for a while. I was already going bankrupt at the time I made this decision, so I figured I had nothing to lose by changing things up. It seemed worse to perpetuate the patterns I had while sinking into debt, so "do the opposite" seemed like a valid strategy. It took a while to feel comfortable with a more active and varied social life than I was used to, but it worked -- faster than I expected. In fact, on the Myers-Briggs test, I actually flipped from an INTJ to an ENTJ during that time, meaning that I switched from an introvert to an extrovert, at least according that that particular personality test.

In the meantime, after sending this newsletter I'm going to fully enjoy some socially abundant time in Hawaii this week with 130 friends. As I sit on my balcony overlooking the ocean, it's a sunny 79 degrees with a light cool breeze blowing through the palm trees. Lately I've been noticing how much I'm enjoying my life -- and how different things are today vs. how they were many years ago when everything seemed like a struggle. A key turning point was when I decided to step outside my socially comfortable cocoon of familiarity and to become a more active participant in the world. I started small, first by becoming more involved in an industry trade group, then in a larger subset of my industry, then by writing articles for lots of people, and so on. But it all began with the admission that my comfort zone was becoming a cage, and that I had to abandon it in order to keep growing.

In the long run, growth is a lot more rewarding and fulfilling than comfort.

Ironic button, not really related to Pavlina's text.

(Almost) 50 Amazing Facts

1. If you are right handed, you will tend to chew your food on your right side. If you are left handed, you will tend to chew your food on your left side.
2. If you stop getting thirsty, you need to drink more water. For when a human body is dehydrated, its thirst mechanism shuts off.
3. Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying.
4. Your tongue is germ free only if it is pink. If it is white there is a thin film of bacteria on it.
6. The Titanic was the first ship to use the SOS signal.
7. The pupil of the eye expands as much as 45 percent when a person looks at something pleasing.
8. The average person who stops smoking requires one hour less sleep a night.
9. Laughing lowers levels of stress hormones and strengthens the immune system. Six-year-olds laugh an average of 300 times a day. Adults only laugh 15 to 100 times a day.
10. The roar that we hear when we place a seashell next to our ear is not the ocean, but rather the sound of blood surging through the veins in the ear.
11. Dalmatians are born without spots.
12. Bats always turn left when exiting a cave.
15. The owl is the only bird to drop its upper eyelid to wink. All other birds raise their lower eyelids.
16. The reason honey is so easy to digest is that it’s already been digested by a bee.
17. Roosters cannot crow if they cannot extend their necks.
18. The color blue has a calming effect. It causes the brain to release calming hormones.
19. Every time you sneeze some of your brain cells die.
20. Your left lung is smaller than your right lung to make room for your heart.
21. The verb “cleave” is the only English word with two synonyms which are antonyms of each other: adhere and separate.
22. When you blush, the lining of your stomach also turns red.
23. When hippos are upset, their sweat turns red.

29. The attachment of the human skin to muscles is what causes dimples.
31. The sound you hear when you crack your knuckles is actually the sound of nitrogen gas bubbles bursting.
32. Human hair and fingernails continue to grow after death.
33. It takes about 20 seconds for a red blood cell to circle the whole body.
36. The only part of the body that has no blood supply is the cornea in the eye. It takes in oxygen directly from the air.
37. Every day 200 million couples make love, 400,000 babies are born, and 140,000 people die.
38. In most watch advertisements the time displayed on the watch is 10:10 because then the arms frame the brand of the watch (and make it look like it is smiling).
40. The only 2 animals that can see behind itself without turning its head are the rabbit and the parrot.
41. Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.
44. Women blink nearly twice as much as men.
45. German Shepherds bite humans more than any other breed of dog.
46. Large kangaroos cover more than 30 feet with each jump.
47. Whip makes a cracking sound because its tip moves faster than the speed of sound.
49. If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle; if the horse has one front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds received in battle; if the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural cause.
50. The human heart creates enough pressure while pumping to squirt blood 30 feet!

P.S. I took out those I thought weren't that amazing. :)

How to be happier - with a little help from Gretchen

I just finished reading Gretchen Rubin's very good book "The Happiness Project" (2009), her story about how she for an entire year worked practically and psychologically to become happier. She did this in the everyday family life she already had, instead of traveling to some other place to realize herself.

This is not a traditional self-help book, but a true and very rational story of how a privileged person didn't feel happy enough, started to read a lot of about the science and psychology of happiness - and managed through defined steps to change her mindset and habits and thus become happier in the process.

You don't have to read the book to learn from her experiences or follow her advice. She has a free "tool box" website with seven practical points to follow, and on her blog you can read about her experiences that year.

And if you want to buy the book for inspiration, check out the e-book edition (Amazon US or Amazon UK) or the paperback edition (Amazon US or Amazon UK)

Remember that you can use e.g. the free e-book software Calibre for PC and Mac to automatically convert any e-books you buy (including Kindle) to your device's format, it's very easy.

And fueled by Rubin's ambitions and success, I hereby declare that January will be the start of my own happiness project. Of course we all want to be happy, but I want to make it truly my priority from now on. Because if I am happy, I can be a better person for everyone else in my life and better know what I want.

Here's the publisher's description of her book:
"Rubin is not an unhappy woman: she has a loving husband, two great kids and a writing career in New York City. Still, she could - and, arguably, should - be happier. Thus, her methodical (and bizarre) happiness project: spend one year achieving careful, measurable goals in different areas of life (marriage, work, parenting, self-fulfillment) and build on them cumulatively, using concrete steps (such as, in January, going to bed earlier, exercising better, getting organized, and 'acting more energetic').

By December, she's striving bemusedly to keep increasing happiness in every aspect of her life. The outcome is good, not perfect (in accordance with one of her 'Secrets of Adulthood': 'Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good'), but Rubin's funny, perceptive account is both inspirational and forgiving, and sprinkled with just enough wise tips, concrete advice and timely research (including all those other recent books on happiness) to qualify as self-help.

Defying self-help expectations, however, Rubin writes with keen senses of self and narrative, balancing the personal and the universal with a light touch. Rubin's project makes curiously compulsive reading, which is enough to make any reader happy."