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23. It is literally impossible to have personal obligations to a corporate entity. You can have all the loyalty in the world to individuals, but your company sees you as a resource and a healthy skepticism towards them and their goals is necessary for societal health!
28. It can be really hard to know who is right during an intense disagreement. A really powerful heuristic is to have each party summarize the other's point. The party who can do so to the satisfaction of their opponent is more likely to have a correct perspective.
29. Neutrality and Tolerance are not virtues, they are contracts. They are an agreement to leave someone alone as long as they leave you alone. In most cases that's a good deal! It's a pretty shitty choice to make when there are nazis around, though!
30. If you add up all of the humans in the world and all of the resources in the world we'd have enough for everyone's needs to be met. But the privileged have to choose interdependence rather than exploitation and war, and they don't know how.
32. Much of computer science can be summed up as follows: It is sometimes useful to convert one complex question into a large set of yes-or-no questions -- most of which you can often ignore -- to better understand the problem you're really solving.
33. You are literally the world's leading expert in yourself, in your own life, in your own tastes and wants and needs. There is nobody else on earth with access to that information, and your job on earth is to speak your truths -- ideally in ways that enrich the lives of others.
34. By the same token: nobody else on earth is responsible for you. Taking care of yourself -- physically, emotionally and spiritually -- is not optional. You're on the hook for your body, for managing your own emotions and for choosing beliefs that empower you.
35. Accepting responsibility for your physical health means training yourself to recognize and respond to the signals your body sends you about what it needs. (I am very bad at this). Drink when you're thirsty, eat when you need to, get enough sleep. Your body *needs* these.
36. Managing your emotions means learning how to process your emotions without forcing everyone around you to do it for you. This is not intuitive to everyone and it's not obvious when you don't know it - you have to learn. This thread is great! https://t.co/3tn3xq1MW2
37. Do you know what spirits are? Spirits are stories. The spirit world is the shared narrative context of some group. That group is bound together by their stories - this is literally what "religion" means, from the latin to "bind together".
38. So what's accepting responsibility for your spiritual health? It means paying attention and applying intention to which stories you accept as "true" for the context that is you. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy focuses on this, actually! It's a great tool for spiritual health!
44. Someone once said that the opposite of a small truth is a falsehood, but the opposite of a Great Truth is another Great Truth. This is real. Look we don't, as angry monkeys, have any reason to think our minds can even comprehend all of reality. Contradictions are inevitable!
45. Holidays are wonderful. Did you know you can commemorate and celebrate your own holidays, though? Feed a bunch of friends every year on the anniversary of passing the bar exam, or go for a day trip on the anniversary of getting your first car, you know?
47. If something is really hard? It's okay to stop. Stuff isn't supposed to be hard, generally. Doing hard stuff is heroic, and often unnecessary. Generally there's an easier way to meet the needs you're working hard to try to meet. Focus on outcome, not on following a process.
49. Feelings are senses, no different from vision or hearing. It's just that they're telling you about internal changes instead of external ones. Ignore them and you're ignoring the internal functioning of the machine that hosts your story. That's bad! :)
50. It’s ok to do things slowly, with incremental steps over an extended period. What you get is different than a thing built all at once. Not better, not worse - often harder to articulate but more powerful once you’ve crossed a certain threshold.
52. Make art, it’s good for you and then as a bonus you always have gifts to give friends. Just buy some paper and some markers, maybe throw in some watercolors. Or get into photography or pottery or whatever. Make something real with your hands.
56. Don't ask for permission OR ask for forgiveness. Instead, radiate intent -- make it transparently obvious what you intend to do and when, and make it clear that you'll stop if anyone asks you to. This is a great way to get things done inside of organizations.
58. Consciousness is your awareness of your own awareness. It has nothing to do with intelligence. No matter how smart you are you cannot be “aware” of another person’s awareness in the same way. Epistemological humility is necessary.