stress management

Why do carnivores calm down so efficiently after an adrenaline surge?

So they can digest their food.

Why do herbivores (prey) do the same?

Same reason; different food.

It doesn't matter if you're the predator, the prey, or a human sitting in a staff meeting. We all want to make the best use of what we have right now.

Life is all about making stories, then catching yourself before you take them seriously.

five sentences

The more anxious I am, the more selfish I get without being aware of it.

There's nothing wrong with me. I just have some habits I may want to change.

Everything that takes me out of my habit energy is an opportunity.

Now is my chance to step out of my habit energy and see what i've been missing.

THINGS I KNOW:

1. Printing out an article about dendritic cell subsets, and then stapling it, does not mean I know anything more about them.

2. It is still very satisfying.

3. Especially if the article has color diagrams.

"What the hell is water?"

This commencement address by David Foster Wallace is pretty good:

"Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed."

two quotes I like

"It is much more engaging and enlivening to talk about the cultivation of self-regulation, for example, than the management of anger." --Claire Failkov (from spam email)

"entrepreneurs from Steve Jobs to Mark Zuckerberg are in the business of discovering things that users don't already know that they will want" - Tim O'Reilly (from Slashdot)

hope

I'm setting limits with someone, needing to limit my contact with them. I'm worried they'll 'hold out hope' for more, no matter what I say.

Sometimes hope is just an expectation wearing a party dress.