The latest on how to live a healthy a longer life

Sarah Toule (World Cancer Research Fund)

“People should aim to eat at least five portions of vegetables and fruit a day but the more the better. If people find this hard, why not start by adding an extra portion of fruit or veg a day to your lunch or try swapping one of your naughty snacks for a piece of fruit?”

Nietzsche on living dangerously

The secret of realizing the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment of existence is: to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships out into uncharted seas! Live in conflict with your equals and with yourselves! Be robbers and ravagers as soon as you ca not be rulers and owners, you men of knowledge! The time will soon past when you could be content to live concealed int he woods like timid deer!

Friedrich Nietzsche

 The Gay Science: with a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

View Alain de Botton's programme on Nietzsche

Vivian Greene on not waiting for the storm to the pass

"Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass...It's about learning to dance in the rain.”

 Vivian Greene


Whilst this quote might sound over-idealistic and, as my good friend Peter Cooper says "be the kind of thing John Lennon would have written a song about", I  believe it contains a healthy nugget of wisdom.

It's a vote against resignation, against giving in, against just waiting for things to get better.  When I see depressed clients a key message is

 Dont wait to feel motivated - take a small step in the right direction now, and then motivation will follow.

That's the "don't wait for the storm to pass" part.

Dancing in the rain, though, seriously? Well.  the idea of Singing in the Rain is hardly new ..

 I'm also reminded of John Locke's characteristic response in the first series of Lost.

The good idea here  is to adapt to the circumstances we find ourselves in as best we can. Don't assume that you can't do anything positive because there is a storm in our life. You might even find something really positive ...

Yoda on the secret to success

Do or do not. There is  no try                     Yoda

This is a key principle in Behavioural Activation and in Step-by-Step Planning.

Abraham Lincoln on the best way to relieve your own suffering

To ease another's heartache is to forget one's own 

Abraham Lincoln

 See Schwartz  and Sendor (1999) Helping others helps oneself: response shift eff€ects in peer support  for empircal support.
http://old.dsav.asn.au/research/Helping%20others%20helps%20oneself%20by%20Schwartz%20&%20Sendor.pdf

The tale of the two wolves

One evening, an elderly Cherokee brave told his
grandson about a battle that goes on inside people.

He said "my son, the battle is between two 'wolves' inside us all.
One is evil. 

It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance,
self-pity, guilt, resentment,inferiority, lies, false pride,superiority, and ego.

The other is good.
It is joy, peace love, hope serenity,humility, kindness, benevolence,
empathy, generosity,truth, compassion and faith."

The grandson though aboutit for a minute and then asked his grandfather:

"Which wolf wins?..."

The old cherokee simply replied,
"The one that you feed"

This tale can be found in various forms. This version comes from

http://www.nanticokeindians.org/tale_of_two_wolves.cfm

Jack Kornfield's updating of Rudyard Kipling's If

If you can sit quietly after difficult news;

if, in financial downturns you remain perfectly calm;

if you can see your neighbors travel to fantastic places without a twinge of jealousy;

if you could happily eat whatever is put on your plate;

if you can fall asleep after a day of running around without a drink or a pill;

if you can always find contentment just where you are:

                                          you are probably a dog.

http://www.jackkornfield.com/live-present/

T.S. Eliot on the life of a procrastinator

Do I dare Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. 
  For I have known them all already, known them all; Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,   I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Brilliantly read by Anthony Hopkins.

Stephen Hawking on how to be intelligent

“Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change. ”

Stephen Hawking

J.S. Mill on freedom

1. The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. Each is the proper guardian of his own health, whether bodily, or mental and spiritual.

J.S. Mill On Liberty

Robert Sternberg on what makes for a fulfilling intimate loving relationship

Love has three components:

(a) intimacy, which encompasses the feelings of closeness, connectedness, and bondedness one experiences in loving relationships;
(b) passion, which encompasses the drives that lead to romance, physical attraction, and sexual consummation; and
(c) decision/commitment, which encompasses, in the short term, the decision that one loves another, and in the long term, the commitment to maintain that love

Robert Sternberg, The Triangular Theory of Love


I discuss how the Triangular Theory of Love can help you understand - and improve - relationships in  in Achieve Your Potential with Positive Psychology

It was in the papers so it must be true - or "the dangers of autopilot"

"A few years ago, a delivery driver from Doncaster almost drove his car off a cliff. His BMW was left teetering on the edge of a 100ft precipice in Yorkshire after he had followed his satnav’s instructions, despite increasing indications that he had ceded a shade too much control to the gadget. “It just kept insisting the path was a road, even as it was getting narrower and steeper,” the chap explained, “so I just trusted it. I rely on my satnav. I couldn’t do without it for my job"

Marina Hyde writing in The Guardian  March 11th 2015

She mentions this in the context of over-reliance on technology and the England cricket team. I wonder if there are other lessons too such as
- the dangers of auto-pilot (as opposed to mindfulness)
- the pitfalls of obedience to authority
- the pros and cons of advances in technology in general

What do you think?

Woody Allen gives a philosophy lesson to Dianne Keaton in Love and Death

The Quote: "To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering, one must not love. But, then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer, not to love is to suffer, to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love, to be happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy, therefore, to be unhappy one must love, or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness - I hope you're getting this down."

Charles Dickens on separating your personal and work lives

"[T]he office is one thing, and private life is another. When I go into the office, I leave the Castle behind me, and when I come into the Castle, I leave the office behind me. "
             Mr Wemmick in Great Expectations (ch 25, p. 142)

Food for thought - what do you think about being exactly the same person at home and work, as opposed to Mr Wemmick who almost has a split personality?

Mr. Wemmick and "The Aged P.", illustration by Sol Eytinge Jr.

Sol Eytinge Jr. - http://www.victorianweb.org/art/illustration/eytinge/103.html

Mr Wemmick is Jagger's clerk in Great Expectations. He is a totally different character at home and at work. Pip prefers Wemmick at home

Here is the first time in the book we here about this split character :-

Wemmick’s house was a little wooden cottage in the middle of a large garden. The top of the house had been built and painted like a battery loaded with guns. I said I really liked it.

I think Wemmick’s house was the tiniest I had ever seen. It had very few windows, and the door was almost too small to get in.

‘Look’, said Wemmick, ‘after I have crossed this bridge, I raise it so that nobody can enter the Castle.’

The ’bridge’ was a plank, and it crossed a gap about four feet wide and two deep. But I enjoyed seeing the smile on Wemmick’s face and the pride with which he hoisted his bridge. The gun on the roof of the house, he told me, was fired every night at nine o’clock. I later heard it. Admittedly, it made an impressive sound.

‘At the back,’ he said, ‘there are fowls and rabbits. I have also got my own little vegetable garden, and I grow cucumbers. Wait until supper and you’ll see for yourself what kind of salad I can make. If the Castle is ever attacked, I will be able to hold out for quite a while,’ he said with a smile, but at the same time seriously.

He led me to a little leafy shelter which was only a few metres away, but the path that led to it was so winding that it took us quite a while to get there. It was here that our glasses were set out. Our drink of punch was cooling in an ornamental pond, on whose bank the shelter was built. The pond has a small ‘island’ in the middle, where Wemmick had built a fountain.

‘I am my own engineer, my own carpenter, my own plumber and my own gardener. I am my own Jack of all Trades,’ said Wemmick, acknowledging my compliments. ‘Well, it’s a good thing, you know. It pleases the Aged Parent. You would not mind being introduced to him, would you? It wouldn’t bother you?

I felt that I could only agree. Inside, we found a very old man in a flannel coat sitting by a fire. He was clean, cheerful and well cared for, but almost completely deaf. We paid our respects and made some small conversation. Then, Wemmick showed me his collection of curiousities. They were mostly to do with being on the wrong side of the law: a pen with which a famous forgery had been committed, a couple of distinguished razors, some locks of hair, several manuscript confessions written from the prison. These were nicely spread out among small items of porcelain and glass and various things made by Wemmick himself. They were all in that room of the Castle that served not only as the sitting room, but judging from the saucepan on the hob, as the kitchen, too.

We returned to the garden to drink our punch. Wemmick told me that it had taken him many years to bring his property to this state of perfection.

‘Is it your own, Mr. Wemmick?’

‘Oh yes, I have got a hold of it a bit at a time. I have absolute ownership now.’

‘Do you indeed? I hope Mr. Jaggers admires it?’

‘Never seen it,’ said Wemmick, ‘never heard of it. No; the office is one thing, and private life is another. When I go to the office, I leave the Castle behind me, and when I come into the Castle, I live the office behind me. If you don’t mind, I’d like you to do the same. I don’t want to talk about my home in a professional manner.’

Harry Chapin on what things you should and shouldn't change

Sometimes I get this crazy dreamAnd I just take off in my carBut you can travel on ten thousand milesAnd still stay where you are.

Harry Chapin W*O*L*D

That 3 minute clip from Disney Pixar's Up that may bring a tear to your eye ..

Disney Pixar's Up - Married Life - Carl and Ellie

Woody Allen on one of life's little paradoxes

"There's an old joke - um... two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of 'em says, ‘Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.’ The other one says, ‘Yeah, I know; and such small portions.’ Well, that's essentially how I feel about life."

 Woody Allen in Annie Hall

Robert Solomon's Positive Existentialist Vision from Waking Life

Robert Solomon: Existentialism from Bass Mechanism on Vimeo.

The reason why I refuse to take existentialism as just another French fashion or historical curiosity is that I think it has something very important to offer us for the new century. I'm afraid we're losing the real virtues of living life passionately, sense of taking responsibility for who you are, the ability to make something of yourself and feeling good about life. Existentialism is often discussed as if it's a philosophy of despair. But I think the truth is just the opposite. Sartre once interviewed said he never really felt a day of despair in his life. But one thing that comes out from reading these guys is not a sense of anguish about life so much as a real kind of exuberance of feeling on top of it. It's like your life is yours to create. I've read the postmodernists with some interest, even admiration. But when I read them, I always have this awful nagging feeling that something absolutely essential is getting left out. The more that you talk about a person as a social construction or as a confluence of forces or as fragmented or marginalized, what you do is you open up a whole new world of excuses. And when Sartre talks about responsibility, he's not talking about something abstract. He's not talking about the kind of self or soul that theologians would argue about. It's something very concrete. It's you and me talking. Making decisions. Doing things and taking the consequences. It might be true that there are six billion people in the world and counting. Nevertheless, what you do makes a difference. It makes a difference, first of all, in material terms. Makes a difference to other people and it sets an example. In short, I think the message here is that we should never simply write ourselves off and see ourselves as the victim of various forces. It's always our decision who we are.

Victorian publisher HG Bohn on the problem with procrastination

One of these days is none of these days

HG Bohn Proverbs

Horace on it being later than you think

"Carpe diem!"

Rejoice while you are alive;

enjoy the day;

live life to the fullest;

make the most of what you have.

It is later than you think."

and here's a Special (: version of these sentiments.

and Robin Williams in Dead Poet's Society