Adopting a growth or a fixed mindset

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S.M.A.R.T

S.M.A.R.T

Goals to achieve a better life

What is Success? Why do you need a Goal?
Success (the opposite of failure) is the status of having achieved and accomplished an aim or objective.

In fact, without setting goals, there is no clear destination. When we do make the effort to set goals, we are forced to contemplate the things we want to achieve 

S = Specific Clearly state the desired outcome

M = Measurable Provide a numerical target that clearly defines what results are necessary to achieve the goals

A = Attainable Goals must be realistic or people will become disengaged

R = Realistic The goal should be realistic and achievable, within the time you’ve set

T = Trackable Goals should be tracked continuously to find out where you have reached, what percentage has been accomplished, how much has to be accomplished, and so on

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The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down

How to Be Calm and Mindful in a Fast-Paced World

   

About the Author
Haemin Sunim is a renowned Zen Buddhist teacher and writer. His book has sold more than three million copies and was a number-one bestseller in South Korea for 41 weeks.

Summary

The World

People typically think that their minds are totally separate from the outside world and that there’s a distinct boundary between the two. But the Buddha teaches that the boundary is paper-thin and ultimately nonexistent. How you view the world negatively or positively is merely a projection of your mind. Your mind establishes your reality.
The world intrinsically is not good or bad, happy or sad; it simply exists.
Your view of the outside world depends upon your interests and what you care about. For example, living a busy life is usually a choice. The world does not care about your activities or responsibilities. You have the option of taking on fewer commitments. You don’t have to feel overwhelmed. A restful mind makes for a restful world.

“When your mind is joyful and compassionate, the world is, too. When your mind is filled with negative thoughts, the world appears negative, too.”

Serenity

Contentment is the key to serenity. It enables you to appreciate the company of those around you. Contentment also allows you to accept your past. You can drop your baggage and acknowledge negative feelings such as anger, stress and irritation. Awareness of your feelings changes your perspective and allows you to examine your emotions from the outside.
Awareness is always available to you. Do not allow negative feelings to build up inside of you; they are poisonous. Meditation, talking with someone or exercising can help relieve the toxicity. Combat painful memories by focusing on the present. Unpleasant thoughts will dissipate when you are in the here and now. You can tame your racing thoughts by being in the present. Don’t view the world through the prism of the past. Unpleasant memories can make you sad. Accept the fact that people and circumstances change. Try to live only in the present.

“When you criticize someone, see if you are doing so out of envy. Your criticism reveals more about yourself than you realize. Even if you are correct, people may still find you unappealing.”

Self-Compassion
Practice self-love. Acknowledge life’s challenges while staying compassionate toward yourself. When you experience overwhelming feelings, list all of your stressors on a piece of paper – including minor things such as responding to emails. Try to relax. Tomorrow you can take care of the items on your list. You’ll be in a good frame of mind when you wake up.

“When we are comfortable with ourselves and have accepted ourselves wholly, others will find us approachable and will like us for who we are.”

Don’t let criticism defeat you, particularly when it comes from people who don’t know you. Don’t be afraid of mistakes. Try to understand what they are teaching you, and accept those lessons with gratitude and humility. Find joy in life and look for humor, a fundamental part of living. Laugh at yourself and with others.
When you are feeling particularly needy and looking to others for consolation, try reaching out to people who need succor, and offer comfort. Assisting others will help you feel better. Caring for others and helping them succeed will brighten your mood. Acts of kindness elevate your spirit and self-esteem.

Negative Emotions

The first step in conquering negativity is recognizing when it’s driving your thinking. The second step is accepting rather than suppressing it. View negative emotions as “raw energy” instead of giving them labels such as “anger” or “hatred.” Accessing that energy can help you realize that a negative emotion is fleeting. It will either disappear or expose another emotional layer. Self-awareness helps you realize that negative emotions merely come and go; they do not define you. Embrace your negative emotions and release them. Get in touch with your subconscious through meditation. Silence allows you to access your innermost emotions.

“Having critics means what you’re doing is getting people’s attention. Have courage, and continue down the path you’re on.”

Pride

Practicing acceptance calms the mind in the midst of constant and rapid change around you. “Swallowing your pride” brings humility, opens channels of communication and allows you to hear everyone. Most people spend their lives resisting reality. 

“Everyone is kind to someone they meet for the first time. The question is how long their kindness lasts. Don’t be fooled just because someone is nice to you at first.”

One reality is that you can’t control other people that’s impossible. Most people have trouble controlling their own minds, much less other human beings. Other people will resist attempts to control them, just as you would. Allow others to have their beliefs and viewpoints. Trying to convince them to see the world through your eyes invariably creates arguments and hurt feelings. Resist the urge to react immediately when you hear something that angers you. Pride often leads to painful disagreements. Winning an argument can leave the other person with hurt feelings. Sleep on it before you fire off an email or text. Quick emotional responses often generate undesirable results.

True to Yourself

Enthusiasm is a positive trait, though it can negatively affect your interaction with others.

Find a middle ground between zealousness and effectiveness.

“With love in our hearts, we find even the most mundane things sacred and beautiful.”

Consider how many people will benefit from a decision you make. If ego drives a decision and needlessly harms others, it is wrong. Don’t save all your kindness and generosity for outsiders. Betraying or ignoring family members and close friends can turn your world upside down.
Don’t allow others to define happiness for you. Be true to yourself; do what makes you happy. Choose happiness over success, because you can be successful and miserable. If you are doing well in life, ask yourself whether you have taken advantage of or hurt anyone. Material possessions don’t compensate for the unhappiness that troubled relationships cause.

“Our consciousness may desire money, power and prestige, but our subconscious desires selfless love, harmony, humor, beauty, sacredness, peace and acceptance.”

Getting Along

Many people strive to live in a beautiful home, drive a classy automobile and maintain their youthful appearance. Developing solid relationships is not often as high a priority. Having fulfilling relationships with loved ones and friends enable you to overcome life’s challenges. Cultivating good relationships requires striking a balance between spending too much or too little time interacting. Even the best relationships require participants to have personal space. Enmeshment can create resentment. Avoid conflict by practicing respect and humility. Be genuine and honest. Telling someone that they hurt your feelings is much more effective than going on the offensive. Speaking harshly of others ultimately hurts you the most because negativity will take over your thoughts.

Forgiveness

Forgiving those who may have wronged you isn’t easy. But forgiveness is the only way to unburden yourself and live a happy life. During the process of forgiveness you may experience anger and bitterness. Your circumstances may seem unfair. Acknowledge and accept these feelings. Even though your heart may want to hold on to resentment, make the conscious decision to forgive. Look beneath the surface to see if emotions such as grief, fear or shame fuel your anger. Eventually, you may be able to show compassion toward your adversary. If you continue to clash with another person, perhaps you both share the same character flaws.

“No one is inherently good or bad. Only the circumstance in which we encounter each other is good or bad.”

Love

Like the sun, which provides sustenance to all living things, love is unconditional and encompassing. The more you chase love, the less likely you are to find it. Love will appear on its own time. Love occurs naturally without effort. Trying to love someone isn’t genuine love. Love is not enough to build an enduring relationship; that takes trust, and building trust takes time. Love means trusting another person and being willing to listen to him or her simply out of love. Don’t try to change or improve the people you love. Love means investing your soul in another human being. Infatuation doesn’t require responsibility or commitment. Infatuation focuses on your feelings more than on the other person’s feelings. You don’t have to do anything to prove your love; your presence is often enough.
“Rather than always seeking comfort from others, offer your comfort and listen to others. In the process of helping, you will be healed.”
Your feelings of love may not match the other person’s. Professing your love prematurely can be counterproductive. When a relationship ends, taking a small step away from your bitter feelings can help lessen your pain and keep you stable. Try not to rush into another relationship after one ends; give yourself “time to be whole again.” You can find love everywhere – not only in relationships. Find beauty in the world around you, and you’ll discover love.
True happiness is finding someone who accepts you as you are. Even successful people can feel inadequate if they believe they suffer grievous flaws. Happiness flourishes when you have positive relationships with those around you.

“Do not fight your negative emotions. Observe and befriend them.”

Life presents more of the mundane than the extraordinary and you may find yourself bored, which may be the result of not concentrating. Find contentment in routine activities such as driving to work or standing in line at the grocery store. Pride often stands in the way of honesty.

A Fact of Life
It’s a fact of life: Just as you don’t like everyone, everyone doesn’t have to like you. Don’t worry about other people’s opinions. Try not to be offended. Follow your heart to happiness. How other people feel about you is not your problem – it’s theirs. Life has twists and turns that are out of our control, so live with “panache and flair,” no matter what. Meeting people you admire will give you a boost of inspiration and optimism.

“One lesson of maturity is that we should not take our thoughts too seriously, and must learn to curb our ego and see the bigger picture.”

Thoughts

You can only think of one thing at a time, so be careful with your thoughts. Wise people prefer listening to talking. When you think you know something, you close your mind to new knowledge. Rigid beliefs can prevent you from seeing reality, but you can learn more easily if you are open and admit your deficiencies. Wisdom means looking at both the big picture and at specifics. Don’t race to solve another person’s problems. Listening with sincerity is often enough. Like a poor driver who brakes too often, a poor listener selfishly interrupts good conversations.

Acceptance

Beware of clever tricksters who make grand promises and flatter you excessively. They will make you feel like a winner while, in reality, they have won. Your desire for acceptance and approval doesn’t make you inferior; it’s part of the human condition. To counteract such feelings, help others by volunteering; it can enrich your life and increase your happiness. It doesn’t matter what initially motivates you to volunteer. Working part time or volunteering help you learn about yourself. You will also find out what work environments suit you.

“If we know how to be content, we can relax our endless striving and welcome serenity.”

Career

Some people know as children what they want to be when they grow up. Most people need years to find their calling. The passion to pursue a particular career is not necessarily innate; it can develop through every day experiences. Choose a career that interests you. Don’t worry about what others say. Rely on your instincts. Set goals in life that align with your hopes and aspirations – not someone else’s. The only person you should compete against is yourself.
Be aware of turnover rates when evaluating a potential job. The company’s size or the salary you earn is not as important as its focus and stability. Be wary of organizations that struggle to retain workers. Some employees mistakenly believe that working long hours or foregoing vacations define their value. In fact, how well you do your job and your contribution to your company is more important. No amount of money is worth sacrificing your freedom. Consider your options, make a thoughtful decision and follow through without hesitation.

“Choose happiness, not success, as your life’s goal. If you become successful but aren’t happy, then what is the point?”

Courage

Life comes with no guarantees. Be courageous. Take advantage when opportunities present themselves; you only get so many. Follow your convictions to chart your own unique course.

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The Water Will Come

Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World

      

About the Author

Rolling Stone editor and award-winning author Jeff Goodell writes on modern environmental and energy issues. His other books include How to Cool the Planet, Sunnyvale and Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America’s Energy Future.

Summary

Imagine a Future Apocalypse

Consider this scenario of a possible future catastrophe: In a hurricane, a 20-foot [6-meter] storm surge engulfs most of Fort Lauderdale and Miami Beach. Sea levels, up more than a foot since the early 2000s, make South Florida susceptible to such surges. Hundreds die – some in the panic after the false news of a reactor breach at the Turkey Point nuclear power station. Miami’s lackluster sea defenses fail quickly. The waters rise, swamping buildings and bringing crocodiles into the dying city. Miami becomes a popular place to go diving – a modern real-life Atlantis.

“Sea-level rise…will reshape our world in ways most of us can only dimly imagine.”

Sea-Level Rise

The science of climate change – global warming, melting ice sheets, rising seas – says this fictional future scenario is possible. Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans and Hurricane Sandy’s 2012 pounding of New York foreshadow such disasters. Rising sea levels will exacerbate storms’ effects. At a posh event about sea-level rise hosted by the Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce, one broker complained of a “fear-fest” when University of Miami geologist Hal Wanless talked of catastrophic sea rise levels of 15 feet by 2100. Predictions vary: US National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA) scientist James Hansen, the “godfather of climate change science,” estimated 10 feet [3 meters] of rise by 2100 if people keep burning fossil fuel at the current rate. Scientists update the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change forecast every six years. Its 2013 prediction of a roughly three-foot sea rise by 2100 didn’t take account of rapid ice-sheet melt, which may push the rise to more than six feet, swamping coastal and low-lying land. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) reported in 2017 that sea rise could range from one foot to more than eight feet by 2100.

“To minimize the impact of sea-level rise…stop burning fossil fuels and move to higher ground.”

The 20th century saw a six-inch [15-centimeter] rise in sea-level; the rate of rise will accelerate in the 21st. To halt it, people must stop burning fossil fuel. Existing CO₂ will linger in the atmosphere for millennia, and that will keep temperatures artificially high. Banning fossil fuels would limit the temperature rise to about 3oF [1.7°C] above preindustrial levels. Continuing to burn them would cause a catastrophic 8oF [4.4°C] rise and cause a sea level rise up to 13 feet over time. Burning existing fossil fuel reserves would eventually cause the drowning of most coastal cities.

“Mobile barriers are to sea-level rise as condoms are to sex: a device you use to protect yourself in a heated moment.”

Some 14,500 years ago, during the so-called Meltwater Pulse, North America’s Laurentide ice sheet and Antarctica’s glaciers melted. Sea levels rose dramatically. The Epic of Gilgamesh, which is older than the biblical story of Noah, refers to a flood, perhaps at a time around 5600 BC, when the rising Mediterranean broke through into the Black Sea. Over the eons, sea levels have fluctuated hundreds of feet due to changes in Earth’s orbit causing ice ages to come and go. At the end of the last ice age, seas rose 13 feet in a century. Then, land bridges connected Britain to Europe, Scotland to Sweden, Thailand to Indonesia, and Asia to North America. Now, instead of Earth’s orbit being at fault in ice melting, human activity that warms the planet is causing a premature thaw and rapid melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.

“When the oil and gas barons of Russia and Brazil make money, they have been sinking it into Miami, a city that is literally drowning [from] combustion of the fossil fuels that made them rich.”

Florida, USA

Pearly grains called “ooids” dissolved to form the porous limestone of South Florida’s once-submerged Atlantic Coastal Ridge; now five million people live on it. South Florida’s native Calusa people were adept at “engineering with water.” For millennia, they lived in harmony with the rising sea until they died of European sailors’ smallpox in the 1700s.

In 1890, the City of Miami’s founder, railroad lobbyist Julia Tuttle, built a house on the ridge. Early settlers drained lower areas of the Everglades to get arable land for free. The 1909 dredging of the Miami Canal preceded the draining of the Everglades. Mosquitoes infested the sandbar of Miami, but promoter Carl Fisher saw its potential. In exchange for land, he funded John Collins to complete a bridge across Biscayne Bay. Hacked clear by poor black laborers, dredged up as muddy sand, and reinforced with rock and mulch, Miami Beach rose from the slime. Spurred by “boosterism,” greed and lax regulation, real estate boomed – until a Category 4 hurricane’s 10-foot storm surge in 1926 left 113 people dead. The market collapsed. Eventually, Florida’s hopeful development dreams resurfaced.

“Of all the hard decisions people who live on vulnerable coasts will have to face, the most difficult one is the idea of retreat.”

Nobody takes ownership of the risk of sea-level rise, while Miami homeowners play financial and emotional “real estate roulette” in calculating when to sell. Politicians fear crashing Miami’s economy by frightening away foreign condo investors. The mismanaged US National Flood Insurance Program effectively subsidizes at-risk property and tempts civic leaders to tamper with flood-zone designations. There looms the difficulty of what Miami artist Xavier Cortada calls a “graceful retreat” from the coast for people whose only equity is their threatened homes.

“Can I get a few more years out of this place, or should I dump my condo on the beach now? Virtually everyone… in Miami makes this calculation.”

The Melting Ice

American climatologist Jason Box studies changes in Greenland’s ice sheets, where massive glaciers are melting much faster than expected and opening up a “new climate land” of untrodden ground. Box predicted the rapid 2012 Greenland melt, partly by factoring in the effects of soot from US wildfires and China’s coal-burning settling on the ice and lowering its albedo – or, reflectivity – thus allowing the sun to melt glaciers more quickly. Antarctica holds seven times more ice than Greenland, but melt proceeds at a quicker – and even accelerating – pace in Greenland. With warming affecting the temperatures of the Arctic air and the Antarctic sea, melting ice itself causes climatic “feedback loops,” leading to heat waves and faster melting. The Earth has a fixed quantity of water. Its mean level relative to land fluctuates as ice ages lock it up or release it. Land levels change due to “glacial rebound.” Undersea currents like the Gulf Stream plus expansion stemming from warming both inexorably affect sea levels. Alaska’s economy relies on fossil fuels. Temperatures are rising twice as fast there as in the rest of America. Security implications loom, with Russia and China among the nations eyeing the Arctic’s trillion-dollar oil, gas, and minerals. Russia sends fighter jets to Alaska’s edge, test-fires missiles off Greenland and, in 2007, planted its flag 10,000 feet down in the seabed under the North Pole.

“The difference between three feet and six feet is the difference between a manageable coastal crisis and a decades-long refugee disaster.”

Barriers Against the Sea

In Venice, Italy, water collects and pools in the Piazza San Marco before high tide. After a storm surge swamped the fifth-century city in 1966, engineers pondered solutions. In 1994, they suggested the high-tech, $6 billion MOSE barrier. The acronym, which stands for “Modulo Sperimentale Elettromeccanico,” was deliberately designed to invoke Moses, the Bible’s great “parter of the waves.” Plagued by corruption scandals and spiraling costs, the barrier was only partially complete by 2016. Wageningen University climatologist Pier Vellinga called the ambitious project “a Ferrari on the seafloor.” MOSE likely will fail to protect the city. Fancy barriers only buy time – and not much of it.

“Most of the water that will drown… coastal cities will come from…Antarctica and Greenland.”

In Rotterdam, Holland, the massive infrastructure project called the Maeslant Barrier stands ready to hold back storm surges – like the killer one of 1953 – coming up the Rhine from the North Sea. The modern city’s public squares – known as “water parks” – act as basins for surging waters. Social attitudes in Rotterdam tend toward living with water instead of fighting it. In 2012, Hurricane Sandy flooded more than 88,000 New York buildings and killed 44 people. Sandy focused minds on protecting the city. Construction on the first stage of a 10-foot-high reinforced concrete barrier should begin in 2019. The barricade is part of a proposed “Big U” that may eventually gird Lower Manhattan and shield wealth-generating areas like Wall Street. New York’s low ground – with its subways and electrified infrastructure – remains vulnerable to Hudson River estuary flooding, which rising sea levels only exacerbate.

For “low-lying nations…climate negotiations were not about economic competitiveness or a global power play. They were about life and death.”

Nature pays little heed to barriers which failed tragically during Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and in the 30-foot tsunami that overtook Kamaishi, Japan. Measures like the US federally-funded Living Breakwaters project provide more innovative approaches to absorbing wave energy and filtering water. Yet, relying on vast, slow-to-build ramparts may breed complacency and delay thoughts of leaving the coast or learning to live with the oncoming ocean.

Greenhouse Gas

Attendees at the signing of the Paris Agreement in 2015 rejoiced as nearly every nation committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions to reduce warming. The foreign minister of the Republic of the Marshall Islands, Tony de Brum, influenced many leaders. Still suffering after effects of nuclear testing between 1946 and 1958, his low-lying Pacific nation of more than 1,000 tiny coral atolls now faces erasure by rising seas as its crops die due to salinization. Subsidies from the US military haven’t improved the infrastructure and leave sea defenses crumbling. In return for letting the US military use the Islands’ atolls, the Marshallese get to live and work in the United States.

“Geoengineering puts faith in the magic of technology.”

In 2015, at Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia, then-Secretary of State John Kerry heard that sea-level rise threatens to leave the vast base inoperable in as few as 20 years. But the Republican Virginia legislature “effectively banned the discussion of climate change,” and blamed “recurrent flooding.” Driven by gas-funded ideology, Congress hushes Pentagon concerns about at least 704 coastal military bases. A 2003 Department of Defense report called climate change a bigger threat to US security than terrorism. Kerry calls it a “weapon of mass destruction.”

Drought catalyzed unrest in Syria and drove up food prices in Egypt, leading to the Arab Spring uprising. While rich nations refuse liability for emission-caused loss, the number of climate refugees is growing, maybe to 200 million by 2050, says the International Organization for Migration.

“The United States… elected a president [Donald Trump] who believed climate change was a hoax and would soon fill his cabinet with climate change deniers of every stripe.”

West Africa

Throughout West Africa, coastlines erode, soils become salt saturated and clean, fresh water dwindles. Lagos, Nigeria, a rapidly growing megacity of up to 21 million people, is divided sharply between rich and poor. Most of Lagos is about five feet above the sea. The condos of the new city of Eko Atlantic – built by alleged corruption kingpin Gilbert Chagoury’s company – will cosset the wealthy. Built on dredged-up seabed, the new city – with its own security force, schools, power plant and water supply – will shelter behind a 25-foot concrete seawall. In an example of “climate apartheid,” extended families in Lagos’s water slums, like Makoko, live in stilt-built shacks. By 2050, three million to eight million Africans may flee the drowning city.

“Human beings have become a geological force on the planet, with the power to reshape the boundaries of the world in ways we didn’t intend and don’t entirely understand.”

The Pump Option

Partly due to developers Scott Robins and Philip Levine, expensive residences fill Sunset Harbour on the low side of Miami Beach. After Levine became mayor in 2013, he charged chief city engineer Bruce Mowry with mitigating the impact of sea-level rise. Mowry installed large pumps to serve low-lying areas plus one-way valves to limit seawater backing up through the sewers. The system worked well in 2014 for so-called “king tides,” unusually high spring tides, but Hurricane Matthew’s 2016 surge overwhelmed it. Other measures underway involve raising entire streets. Samples of floodwater pumped into Biscayne Bay show levels of fecal bacteria hundreds of times higher than state limits. Germs, viruses and algal blooms flourish in cracked sewer pipes and saturated septic tanks. In extreme flooding, septic tanks and coffins float out of the ground. While creative Miami architects design schemes to “work with nature,” the nuclear industry seems to ignore the risk. Despite concerns about the vulnerability of its cooling apparatus to sea level rise, Florida’s Turkey Point nuclear power station recently received approval for two more reactors.

“I got a very nice view of two 40-year-old reactors perched on the edge of a rising sea with millions of people living within a few miles of the plant. It was as clear a picture of the insanity of modern life as I’ve ever seen.”

Toms River, New Jersey

After Sandy’s storm surge battered Toms River, New Jersey, stakeholders rebuilt the town exactly as before. In some flood-hit places, the state or federal government will buy out the residents. In Summer Haven, Florida, for example, wealthy residents sued the county and forced it to maintain their flood-damaged road. People must apply evolved human intelligence to avoid catastrophe and mitigate the worst effects of climate change. They may find it hard to believe in the coming inundation, but, inevitably, coastal cities will drown.

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The Way to Wealth

Benjamin Franklin

    

About the Author

A Founding Father of the United States, Benjamin Franklin, born in 1706, was a statesman, revolutionary, author, inventor, scientist, firefighter and chess master. He performed breakthrough experiments on electricity, proved that lightning was an electrical phenomenon and invented the lightning rod. He also devised the Franklin Stove, a simple, effective device that captures the heat of a fireplace and reflects it back into a room; an odometer for horse-drawn carriages; and bifocal glasses. Franklin researched and named the Gulf Stream ocean current. A masterful chess player, he wrote the second known essay on chess published in the United States. He co-founded one of the earliest volunteer firefighting companies in America and served as governor of the state of Pennsylvania. Franklin became a fervent abolitionist, freeing his slaves and opposing slavery in the United States and elsewhere. A tireless public servant, Franklin risked his fortune and his life opposing England’s rule over the American colonies. He was a leader of the American Revolution and contributed to the writing of the Declaration of Independence. He was the first Postmaster General of the United States and helped establish its postal service. During the Revolutionary War, Franklin lived in Paris as the American ambassador to France. After the war, he attended the Philadelphia Convention, which produced America’s Constitution. Franklin is a signatory of the US Constitution as well as of the Declaration of Independence.

Summary

About Taxes

A crowd gathers, awaiting the opening of the doors to an auction. An older man strolls by, and the crowd prevails upon him to share his views of the world. The old man is Father Abraham, and he has no shortage of opinions. He agrees to talk, but only briefly, since “a word to the wise is enough.”

“But dost thou love life, then do not squander time, for that is the stuff that life is made of.”

Members of the crowd express their worries over the current state of taxes. Father Abraham tells them that the government’s taxes are indeed heavy, but nothing compared to the taxes that citizens levy upon themselves with their behavior.

Idleness taxes each “twice as much,” pride “three times” and folly “four times” as much as any government. No state can lessen or abate those taxes; only the citizen’s death provides freedom from their toll.

About “Industry”

A truly onerous government might demand one-tenth of every citizen’s time as a tax payment. But idleness takes much more time than that. Indolence reduces your life span by making you susceptible to illness. Lethargy functions like rust and eats away at human health. Activity keeps you well, in that “the used key is always bright.”

“He who rises late must trot all day, and shall scarce overtake his business at night.”

Time is your most precious asset. Frittering away time means wasting your most valuable possession: the limited days of your existence. You cannot recover wasted time or recapture it when you need more hours to complete some crucial task. Whatever time on Earth is allotted to you will never be enough. Spend it wisely.

“Industry pays debts, while despair increases them.”

Not wasting time means being “diligent.” Work hard every day to achieve what you want. “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.” For the slothful, every task proves arduous. If you sleep late, you have to hurry all day long to have any hope of catching up with your responsibilities before bedtime comes again. If you are lazy, you move at such a slow pace that “Poverty” is certain to catch you.

“Since thou are not sure of a minute, throw not away an hour.”

Stay in control of your business, lest it control you. If you indulge in idle dreams you might lose all you have, never mind any wish of gaining more in the future. “He who lives upon hope will die fasting.” If you can harness the energy of your wishes into “Industry,” you won’t need to dream. Achieving anything requires hard work and suffering, but if you have a “trade,” you possess an “estate.” If your trade is your “calling,” you can ask little more of life, for a calling enables you to work with pride while loving to do what you must to earn a living.

About Procrastination

“Plough deep, while sluggards sleep, and you shall have corn to sell and keep.” Turn your hand to immediate tasks now because you don’t know what obstacles the future might bring. Realize that “one today is worth two tomorrows.” Sitting around and worrying about your problems gives them a chance to grow. Diligent work reduces every difficulty, whether it is spiritual or financial. But tending to your work means doing each task when it should be done and avoiding procrastination. “Never leave ‘til tomorrow what you can do today.” You would feel shame if your boss caught you doing nothing. In this world, regardless of the task, whether it is menial or important, you are always your own boss. You should feel a similar shame when you are idle, even if you work for yourself.

“Keep thy shop and thy shop will keep thee.”

The job before you may seem hard to do and unending, but if you stick to your tasks every day, you will see “great effects.” The more you slack off, the more work will await you when you finally labor as you should. Make “diligence and patience” your bywords. You know that “little strokes fell great oaks,” but when all those little strokes face you, you might wonder if you could take a small break. No; “since you are not sure of a minute, throw away not an hour.” Leisure comes to those who use time efficiently, and you should spend it doing something useful. Only the diligent worker can attain that kind of leisure. A lazy person will yearn for it always. “Many...would live by their wits only, but they break for lack of stock.”

About Trust

Those who spin their cloth without ceasing can wear as many garments as they wish. Being industrious means giving “steady, settled and careful” attention to your work and life, and using discrimination in trusting others. The best situation is to have your own business, because “he that by the plough would thrive himself must either hold or drive.” In your daily labors, you can choose to be the plowman or the mule. And if you are the mule, you will be under someone’s yoke. However if you choose to be the plowman, you must plow every single day.

“Want of care does more damage than want of knowledge.”

Tend to that which is yours, for “want of care does more damage than want of knowledge.” Keep your eye on your workers. Leaving them to do as they please is like leaving your wallet open so they might take whatever they want. Trusting others too much is a sure path to ruin. If you take care of your own affairs, then you know you have a supervisor you can trust. “If you would have a faithful servant, serve yourself.” But if you supervise affairs for yourself, make sure you don't neglect any aspect. “For the want of a nail the shoe was lost; for the want of the shoe the horse was lost; and for want of a horse the rider was lost.” What might seem like a tiny moment of carelessness or disregard can have profound, far-reaching negative effects.

About “Frugality”

Even if you are industrious and watch your affairs carefully, all will be for naught if you are not frugal. Spending what you earn on fleeting pleasures is deceptively easy, but “a fat kitchen maketh a lean will.” If you want wealth, you must earn money and save it. Saving is far more difficult than acquiring. You should dispense with “expensive follies,” because “Women and wine, game and deceit / Make the wealth small and the want great.” Little expenses add up. If you engage in many small indulgences, you will drain your pockets. “Fools make feasts, and wise men eat them.”

“Always taking out of the meal tub and never putting in, soon comes to the bottom.”

At the door of the auction house, Father Abraham reminds the members of the crowd that they have gathered to buy things they do not need. “You call them goods, but if you do not take care, they will prove evils to some of you.” If you repeatedly buy things you do not need, before long you will have to sell that which you need. Vanity is a great source of foolish spending. Many people go about looking quite fine and fashionable, but with their stomachs crying out for food. “Silks and satins, scarlets and velvets, put out the kitchen fire.” Fine clothes and wares are not necessities; they’re not even “conveniences.” By such indulgences the genteel sink to being beggared, and then must borrow from those they would not ordinarily bother to greet on the street. If you are industrious and frugal, then you need never borrow, since borrowing is the ruin of honor. “A ploughman on his legs is higher than a gentleman on his knees.”

About Pride and Debt

To learn the true value of money, “go and try to borrow some.” Someone who tries to find a loan will meet only anguish. Pride can push you past any reasonable sense of expenditure. If you acquire one lovely item, you will want 10 more. Squelching the first urge to buy is far easier than fulfilling all the desires that your first purchase will trigger. Keep to your station. Dressing above your status makes your peers envy you and your betters think you foolish. What good is being proud of fancy clothes when they bring suffering to your family? Pride won’t make you healthy, “ease your pain” or make you a better person.

“When the well is dry, they know the worth of water.”

Going into debt means giving away your freedom, dignity and power. “The second vice is lying, the first vice is running into debt.” You might like the idea of buying now and paying over a six-month span, but during those six months and likely beyond, your creditor has the true control of your life and affairs. If you must pay late, you will be too embarrassed to see the person you owe, and will sneak about, making excuses and sacrificing your honor for pennies. If you are free, you shouldn’t be fearful or mortified to encounter any other individual. But being in debt robs you of your character and your moral fiber. “It is hard for an empty bag to stand upright.”

“Fond pride of dress is sure a very curse Ere fancy you consult, consult your purse.”

What if the government issued a law saying you could not “dress like a gentleman or gentlewoman,” or eat a fine meal? You would argue strenuously that you should be able to wear what you please and dine as you like. Yet when you put yourself in debt, you subject yourself to an identical “tyranny.” All authority over your life resides with your creditor, who can put you in prison for debt or sell you as a servant to earn back what you owe.

“A small leak will sink a great ship.”

You may think you have a bargain when you sign your debtor’s contract, and, with all the time the terms of your debt provide, you’ll have no problems paying. But when you owe money, time seems to move faster than usual, and money accrues more slowly. Remember, too, “Creditors have better memories than debtors.” Creditors pay close attention to the calendar and are ever mindful of the date. You may hope your creditors will forget the day your note comes due, but they never will.

The term of your debt will inevitably feel and then prove to be much shorter than you would like it to be. “Those have a short Lent who owe money to be paid at Easter.”

“For age and want save while you may, No morning sun lasts a whole day.”

Acquiring funds will always be difficult, but expense is perpetual – the only certainty you will face aside from death. “It is easier to build two chimneys than to keep one in fuel.” You are far better off going to bed hungry than waking up owing anything to anyone. “Get what you can, and what you get, hold.”

About Knowledge and Good Advice

“Reason and wisdom” should form the basis of the “doctrine” you follow. Even if you practice being thrifty, practical and conscientious, you still need “the blessing of heaven.” Ask for this blessing with humility, and do not neglect those who clearly lack that blessing. Act with modesty, be charitable and aid the less fortunate.

“In the affairs of this world, men are saved not by faith, but by their want of it.”

Experience “keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.” You can offer wise counsel, but “they that cannot be counseled cannot be helped.” Just because someone hears your advice does not mean that he or she is going to change. At this point, Father Abraham ceases talking and goes on his way. The people gathered had listened to him with great attention and nodded their approval at much of what he had to say.

“If you will not hear Reason, she will surely rap your knuckles.”

The minute the old man leaves their company, however, everyone who has so enjoyed his speech immediately does the opposite of everything he had advised. The doors to the auction open, the crowd rushes in and everyone begins to bid and spend. Some spend money they possess, and others spend money that belongs to them only for a day or a month or six months, depending on the terms they could negotiate.

Richard Saunders, the author of Poor Richard’s Almanack, considers buying cloth for a new coat, after some reflection, he decides thriftily to keep wearing his old one. He leaves the auction, telling those who would read his thoughts, “I am, as ever, thine to serve thee.”

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This Messy Magnificent Life

A Field Guide

               

About the Author

New York Times best-selling educator Geneen Roth teaches writing workshops about personal growth and speaks nationally, including on 20/20 and the Today Show.

Summary

Daily Life Is Full of Beauty

You don’t need to keep thinking something is wrong with you. Be comfortable with who you are, as you are. Let yourself feel all that you feel, but without having to act on every feeling. Reflect on your emotions without accepting the worry, loneliness and lack of self-esteem they sometimes breed. Living with a constant sense of having to be better is a form of suffering. Daily life is full of beauty. Relinquish the dramatic narratives of the past and "drop the me" so you can turn to the “peace and quiet joy” that are always present.

Issues with Food Aren’t About Food

Many people believe their problems will disappear if they lose five, 15 or 50 pounds. But after every diet, even when they do lose weight, pain and difficulties remain. Food isn’t the problem. Avoiding pain is the basis of any addiction. As long as the root pain remains, so will addiction to food, money, sex, alcohol or anything else. Addictive behavior and its ramifications destroy you but also serve you by distracting you from real pain. These behaviors provide a problem – something to focus on that isn’t the larger issue hiding behind whatever the addictions conceal.

“Stop trying to be the self you imagine you would be if you were smarter, prettier, thinner, kinder, more accomplished than you are.”

Dieting doesn’t make your pain disappear, or the weight-loss industry wouldn’t make $60 billion a year. Your sense of emptiness inside is real. To stop eating when you’re full is to recognize an ending, a void in your life. Eating to fill that silence doesn’t work. Instead, listen to it. When you’re at the table, take a moment to notice the silences between eating and not eating.

“There isn’t a someday. There never was. No one has ever been to the future that you keep putting your life on hold for.”

People often want more, even of something they don’t really want, to avoid having nothing. Get comfortable with the emptiness that you’ve been avoiding. You will learn more about a sadness you don’t understand and discover how more food can never satisfy the longing that remains. Identify the longing and address it.

Establish Boundaries

Food issues often arise when women worry about how others will touch, desire or use their bodies. Food acts as a means of numbing confusing, intrusive physical experiences. The Red String Project can teach you about your personal boundaries. Find a length of string and sit down. Make a circle around your body with the string. How close is too close?

“Drop the war. End the Me Project. Stop trying to get rid of, improve, resist or otherwise fix yourself.”

Many people don’t know their borders, so they let other people invade their physical and psychic space. Not everyone believes in “energetic boundaries,” but everyone knows when someone stands too close or senses it when someone is invading their “personal space.” Worldly and capable people – homemakers, CEOs, therapists, lawyers and artists – fall apart when they finally learn it’s okay to limit how others approach them. For many people, women in particular, a childhood of inappropriate touching or poking creates confusion about what’s acceptable for other people to do to their bodies. In November 2016, 27 million women responded to a call on Twitter to share stories of sexual assault. For some, it happened at home. For others, it was their only source of love. Their stories presented continuing pain and distress.

“Attention is everything. Without it, all else is a temporary fix and no long-lasting change is possible.”

Recognize that the situation that abused you is over and no longer has power over you. That doesn’t mean you’ll stop feeling emotions about what happened. Knowing that it no longer has power won’t necessarily provide lasting peace. A the moment when someone touched your body without your desire or consent, a set of ideas and beliefs attached themselves to you and to that moment. Learning to untangle those ideas and beliefs will help you regain the power you lost. Recognize that you are an adult who has the right to choose how close someone gets to you.

Cultivate Attention and Noticing

Where does your attention go? If you see the world through the lens of all that you don’t have, then you only see what you’re missing. Many people associate something lacking with loneliness or scarcity. But having more or enough doesn’t bring satisfaction. That comes from how you attend to the world around you. If you lost all your savings, you might be grateful for things you don’t think to notice now, like sunshine or your favorite mug.

“When a woman’s energy is tied up in judging her body, it ties up her power as well.”

In moments of crisis, panicky thoughts draw you into your own private hell. Instead, focus on your breath. Consider how many things you thought were wrong before the crisis. Your thoughts are a product of your attention, and where you put this attention is how you will experience the world. Give yourself one minute, five times a day, whenever you want, to notice the world around you. Rather than the constant stream of thoughts in your head, observe where you live, work and breathe. Several times a day, notice a single full breath, from your first intake of air all the way to the final moment of exhaling.

“We’re not sure what the sadness is about or why we feel inconsolable, but we’re sure the solution is to take more, have more, eat more.”

These practices will help you become more aware. They cultivate a “puppy mind,” a mind that delights in the world. Change where you focus your attention so that your attempts to overcome addictions, behaviors and pain can provide more than temporary solutions.

Your Ghost Selves

Everyone carries around former selves. These “ghost children” live in stories of the past that continue into the present. They tend to arise in response to a trigger, and they feel very familiar. They come with frequently told stories about abandonment, loss and failure that years of repetition turn into your most authentic truths. Ghost children’s appearances and their stories spur many people’s addictive patterns. Voices of ghost children are often debilitating. Addictive behavior exists to drown them out.

“Stop believing your thoughts. You are not your beliefs, opinions, emotions or thoughts.”

Though it may seem painful or scary, listen to the stories that your ghost children tell. They exist because some moment in your history was too traumatic for you to experience at that time. Each of your ghost children remains frozen in time. Fear of ghost children gives power to that moment when you were a frightened child. Listening allows the beliefs surrounding that story – ideas about how worthless or incompetent or unlovable you might be – to dissolve. Inviting a ghost child to join you will introduce unpleasant feelings. But they will soon bring tenderness for the little person whose fear now has a place to rest. The monsters will fade as you understand the complexities and confusions of the situation. You will experience the present without the shadows of the past.

Triggers as Teachers

Triggers happen in an instant and send you flying through a story an inner voice is telling. Triggers differ for everybody. They come from “your history and vulnerabilities.” You believe your feelings are an accurate assessment of who you are, and you get lost in self-reproach, blame and victimhood. Many people have an inner bully who narrates all the things they did wrong to wind up in a negative current situation. Listening to that, they start to live in an imaginary place where things are different. The actual present is a pale comparison to their fantasies. Most people believe what the bully voice says because it seems to provide instructions on how to never feel bad again.

“Power is not a function of what we do, say or achieve if it is not also connected to how we live in our physical selves.”

Noticing when triggers happen diminishes their power. Certain physical sensations provide clues to triggering: feeling small, having a hollow chest, being drained of emotions, or feeling paralyzed and indecisive. The suffering that this voice engenders is not who you are. That voice is a prison.

Don’t believe it. Don’t go into the fantasy of another reality. Stay present to recognize what a trigger does to you, and you can open the prison door.

Blaming

The memory of pains you accrued in childhood linger into adulthood. Identifying how adults hurt you or did not protect you is part of acknowledging the pain and confusion that created the ghost children, the triggers and the prison cell. The problem extends when blaming continues. To recognize not only that you are in a prison, but what makes you choose to live in one, is to break out and be truly free.

“There are many ways of truth telling, but the best way I know is to ask questions and be relentlessly honest in answering them.”

Being disappointed in others and blaming them for behaving completely in their own character but other than you wish is a prison cell of your own making. The question becomes why you insist on expecting people to be other than they are. Blaming them for behaving as they always do makes no sense. Only your thoughts create your prison. List the people in your life whom you blame for the pain and suffering you experience. Write what they did to you, what you thought they should have done and how you feel about them. Ask how you participated in the situation. Recognize if your actions facilitated their behavior in some way. This honest assessment will help you stop living as a victim.

Complaining

Complaining about a situation never helps. To complain is “like eating rat poison and waiting for the rat to die.” Complaining makes you avoid the present by reliving a past moment and comparing it to a fantasy situation. Complaining is a common form of communication. Overcoming it takes effort. For many people, conversation becomes an exchange of complaints. Learn how not to share your misery or frustration. Avoiding complaining is hard in the beginning, but it quickly becomes worthwhile as you begin to notice other things. You will have novel life experiences to share and complaints will fade as your means of engagement with the world.

Living in the Present or for the Future

The advantage of therapy is giving your challenges to someone else to help you fix them. But, you don’t need to wait for a therapist, a knight in shining armor or anyone else to save you. You save yourself every day. That doesn’t mean therapy isn’t important or helpful. Therapy teaches many people that “no” or “I don’t want to” are acceptable messages to say to others. These are important lessons. Therapy won’t produce a magic moment when all your problems disappear. You will likely always have voices telling you what’s wrong and pains that plagued you when you were younger. Therapy won’t make them go away. But it can teach you how to deal with them day to day.

“It’s time to be your own authority.”

Is life going to be better in the future, or is it pretty good right now? Waiting for life to improve, for the fairy dust to settle and turn everything magically better, means not looking at today and realizing how good it is. Many people have already done a lot of work on themselves, and yet they wait for everything to be perfect, for all their problems to disappear. But what if okay is okay? Some days, when you feel really good, bad things might happen – like experiencing rejection, making mistakes or disappointing others. These events aren’t all of who you are. You and your situation might not be perfect, but it’s good enough.

“What’s Not Wrong”

The monk and teacher Thich Nhat Hanh asked students at his Buddhist farm, Plum Village Center in France, to raise their hands if they were not suffering from a toothache. Everyone did. The experience of “not-a-toothache” is worth recognizing and celebrating. He proposed his students celebrate their lack of toothaches and consider all their other toothache-free moments in life. Day to day, problems loom large. Unfortunately, that means you can easily forget all that’s good or painless. Ask, “What’s not wrong in your life?” five times a day. Spend 10 seconds on it each time, and realize how much good is around you that you might ignore.

“Let me remember to pay attention to the ordinary, not just to the extraordinary.”

Be careful about making life rules for yourself, even about good things you want to cultivate. Rules start to feel like obligations, and you will feel compelled to break them. That fuels and repeats a cycle of shame and punishment. Let ideas be present in the moment. You can use them as possible touchstones for later use – or not.

Beauty

If you have trouble sleeping, don’t berate yourself over the hours lost. Instead, create a ritual, like stepping outside and opening your arms to the stillness of the stars. Beauty is present in how you see the world. Today’s culture associates beauty with youth, but that positions beauty as something “to be seen” and not as an act of seeing. View the world beautifully. Where wonder and delight exist, so does beauty. If it takes the form of, say, a bright blue vest completely unsuitable for your work or home life — but that makes your heart swell — then let that blue vest provide the enchantment your life deserves.

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