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“When you come to one of the many moments in life when you must give an account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been, and done, and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man’s days with a sated joy, a joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that does not hunger for more and more, but rests, satisfied. In this time, right now, that is an enormous thing.”

~ Paul Kalanithi (1977-2015), wrote in his Stanford Medicine essay what he wished to tell his infant daughter.

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My Thoughts:

• Can personal development be a full time job and everything else a hobby?
• Failing to fully live up to my potential will be my only handicap.
• If everyone is busy, who will write stories for us to read?
• If I’m not living my ideal life, here are some potential reasons:
  a. Poor time management and too much clutter – physical, digital and emotional
  b. Administration overhead in all areas of life
  c. Letting our feelings guide our thoughts and actions
• Our fascination with human behavior has led us to commit to grow ourselves and to contribute to others.
• For radical prioritization in our daily life, we just have to remember the finiteness of our existence and whether this task that we’re doing right now will even matter in 2 days or two weeks.
• Someone else has paid for your freedom with their service.
• Why will I compete with you when I can beat what I can be?
• Why are we wild at heart yet tame in our intentions?
• Revolution on the outside without any evolution on the inside is not of much value.
• Why watch news when only Mother nature’s fury, man’s stupidity, and cute cat videos make up most of it. Need To Check Weather? Look up.
• After decision turns out unfavorable, what are you regretting? The decision (past) or the outcome (your current reality)?
• How can I get to understanding my purpose fast? By radically simplifying decision making, I can get to the core of what you want.
• Be prolific. Let your work speak for itself.
• Tough, focused and persistent. You can be all these and still warm to touch.
• Slow down or else you won’t see obvious signs or people and what they’re upto.
• (Personal) Evolution is inside and slow. Revolution is outside and fast.
• When was the last time you gave company to your “me” over a cup of coffee?
• What was a pot before it was thrown at a wheel? It’s upto me to now fill that pot with your passion, love, pain and madness.
• Let your spirit be unknown, let the excitement of your quest be alive.
• Feel pity for the popular celebrity whose every action is questioned and whose every thought is scrutinized.
• You can learn from everyone if you decide to grow each day.
• Love makes us vulnerable like nothing else.
• Why earn something that can be spent just as easily as it is earned?
• Everyone doing it, is not an endorsement that it’s the right thing to do.
• If we choose to win every day, we become all weather winners.
• Hope is only 50% of the equation, the rest is action.
• Don’t win humans with logic, we only understand stories.
• We can’t skip justice, equality, and freedom to get to peace.
• I am a rebel in the subtlest of my mannerisms, but a wild thing in my imagination.
• Sleep and Prana (as told even in the book of Tao of breathing) are the only sustaining forces of our life.
• Success is doing the things others are not willing to do.
• We stop growing because of our relationship with praise and criticism.
• Have the freedom to find your path, but still be high on expecting more from yourself.
• Real wealth is emotional, mental and physical health.
• We just don’t have much respect for salesmen who come to our door. There’s an inner paradigm that needs to shift about selling our ideas in the market place.
• Why earn something that can spent just as easily as it is earned?
• Enjoy the simple things, how much would you give to get the same experience 20 years from now?
• This is all going to end, why not go all in?
• My daily energy is a battery and I should not waste it on activities that don’t matter.
• Pain of regret is far greater than self-discipline.
• It’s ok to drop the ball once in a while. Progress not perfection, my dear.
• Average or Awesome. What do you want to be?
• Wellbeing is a sum of: Autonomy, Purpose, Connectedness.
• Adversity is the rock that’s heavy only if you pick it up. Let it be a marquee and don’t dwell on it.
• You should ask yourself what is preventing you from having a strong sense of wellbeing each day.
• In this knowledge economy, I have to learn how to bring a different social capital to the table.
• Success is the coming together of self-discipline, talent, intelligence, strength and motivation.
• Where my heart lies, there, I’m also boundless in inspiration.
• Have lofty ideals and a noble cause so you can make life endurable.
• Love and respect will always inform each other. One without the other simply can’t exist.
• Self acceptance is the prerequisite for change to occur.
• It is all about SELF CARE AND SELF MASTERY.
• Revenge is giving away the power to resent rather than creating your own beautiful future.
• How To Spend The Day: Positive Feelings + Positive Intentions makes all the difference.
• First get this out of your mind: The idea of what and how you should be. And what and how others should be.
• I think of my dad who makes people try a little harder while around him.
• Where you are extremely passionate, you are wildly resourceful. Where your heart is you are boundless in aspiration.
• Be a reason for someone’s joy every day.
• Don’t fear social rejection. Just prepare yourself for overwhelming attention and learn to reluctantly ignore it.
• Be here in the present moment.
• I’m because we are.
• My dreams will beat yours.
• Our tool is not science and technology, our tool is language and emotion.
• In the age of social media, shouldn’t we have been immune to social distancing?
• Can we be too busy to bother about our notifications? Yes, we can offline.
• It’s ok for things to go wrong. Context matters.
• My thoughts on the Pandemic: Change and uncertainty, the two major upheavals in anyone’s life, have come at the same exact time. Hang in there friend. In the end, we will have each other.
• Most of whom we know must die if we were to live truthfully.
• The only thing that’s sustains life is the talent and diversity of all living beings.
• Aut Viam Inveniam Aut Faciam. In Latin it means “I will either find a way, or make one”.
• Life’s too short to play small.
• KNOWLEDGE is power. But, ACTION makes it empowering!
• Become comfortable with being uncomfortable.

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Musings During Forced Isolation:

• When and why did my own, lovely home become a prison?
• In times like these, living with purpose – big or small, daily or long term is the only way to win over the mind.
• We’re in this Together: Some of us were training for our first Olympics ever, some of us were planning on getting married, some were stressed about their upcoming exams, some were looking forward to giving birth. But, each one of us has been thrown a curve ball leaving us to scramble, cancel and cope with the new reality.
• Stars are for those who lift their eyes. ~ From Poem By Melcena Burns Denny
• Be supportive and gracious with yourself and others. If someone says about helping you or talking to you and they respond that they can’t right now, there might be some truth to it. Give them some space.
• Just for today, how about you try to go another room in your mind?
• However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. It matters that you don’t just give up. ~ Stephen Hawking.

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Beware the barrenness of a busy life. ~ Socrates

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On Life:

• Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart. ~ Anne Frank, The Diary Of Anne Frank
• Life is a either a daring adventure or nothing. ~ Helen Keller
• You are the sky. Everything else is just the weather. ~ Pema Chödrön
• Little in life is of much consequence. ~ Unknown
• Non ridere, non lugere, neque detestari, sed intelligere. (Not to laugh, not to lament, not to curse, but to understand.) ~ Spinoza
• It snowed last year too: I made a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea. ~ Dylan Thomas
• The really poor man is not the one who lacks money, but he who lacks the joy of the heart. ~ Swami Tapovan Maharaj
• Never forget that life can only be nobly inspired and rightly lived if you take it bravely and gallantly, as a splendid adventure in which you are setting out into an unknown country, to meet many a joy, to find many a comrade, to win and lose many a battle. ~ Annie Besant
• We live in a world where we have to hide to make love, while violence is practiced in broad daylight. ~ John Lennon
• True heroism is minutes, hours, weeks, year upon year of the quiet, precise, judicious exercise of probity and care-with no one there to see or cheer. This is the world. ~ David Foster Wallace
• Easy choices, hard life. Hard choices, easy life. ~ Jerzy Gregorek
• Don’t worry if someone does not like you. Most people are struggling to like themselves. ~ Anonymous
• A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on. ~ John F. Kennedy
• In a closed society where everybody’s guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. ? ~ Hunter S. Thompson
• Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage. ~ Anais Nin
• I’m always in love. If it’s not a person, it’s a flower or a sunset. Love is all. ~ Gloria Vanderbilt
• We have the ability to create sorrow for ourselves, so it means we also have the ability to create joy in our lives. ~ Dalai Lama
• Though much is taken, much abides; and though
  We are not now that strength which in the old days
  Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are,
  One equal-temper of heroic hearts,
  Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
  To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
  ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson (Ulysses) 

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As eaters we find ourselves increasingly in the grip of a Nutritional Industrial Complex—comprised of well- meaning, if error- prone, scientists and food marketers only too eager to exploit every shift in the nutritional consensus. Together, and with some crucial help from the government, they have constructed an ideology of nutritionism that, among other things, has convinced us of three pernicious myths: that what matters most is not the food but the “nutrient”; that because nutrients are invisible and incomprehensible to everyone but scientists, we need expert help in deciding what to eat; and that the purpose of eating is to promote a narrow concept of physical health. Because food in this view is foremost a matter of biology, it follows that we must try to eat “scientifically”—by the nutrient and the number and under the guidance of experts.

~ In Defense of Food By Michael Pollan

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On Forgiveness:

• Holding resentment is drinking poison and hoping your enemy will die. ~ Unknown
• Forgiveness is giving up all hope in a better past. ~ Unknown
• What doesn’t transmit light creates its own darkness. ~ Marcus Aurelius
• Ring the bells that still can ring
  Forget your perfect offering
  There is a crack, a crack in everything
  That’s how the light gets in
  ~ Anthem – Song By Leonard Cohen

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On Philosophy:

• The Stoics believed in Four Virtues: Justice. Temperance. Wisdom. Courage.
• The greatest error of a man is to think that he is weak by nature, evil by nature. Every man is divine and strong in his real nature. What are weak and evil are his habits, his desires and thoughts, but not himself. ~ In Maharshi and His Message By Paul Brunton
• Satyam bruyat priyam bruyat. Na bruyat satyam apriyam. Priyam cha nanrutham bruyat. Esha dharmah sanatanah. ~ Say the truth that is pleasant. Don’t say the truth if it is unpleasant. Also, never say any untruth even if it’s pleasant. This is the eternal dharma.
• Thirty spokes converge upon a single hub;
  It is on the hole in the center that the use of the cart hinges.
  We make a vessel from a lump of clay;
  It is the empty space within the vessel that makes it useful.
  We make doors and windows for a room;
  But it is these empty spaces that make the room livable.
  Thus, while the tangible has advantages,
  It is the intangible that makes it useful.
  ~ Lao Tzu 

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On Reflection:

• One that starts the day we’re born, and the other starts the day we realize we have only one life. ~ Confucious
• To observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti
• That state of simplest form of awareness alone, is worthy of seeing, hearing, contemplating and realizing. ~ The Upanishads
• Realization of wonder is divinity. ~ Joseph Campbell
• It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities. ~ Dumbledore.
• Think like a man of action and act like a man of thought. ~ Amrie Lewis Birdson
• When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time they seem invincible. But in the end, they always fall. … Always. ~ Gandhi
• When I’m old, how much would I be willing to pay to travel back in time and relive the moment that I’m experiencing right now? ~ Muneed Ali
• Look at me. I have been meditating a very long time but I still want things. I still want good food to eat and clean clothes to wear; I want a warm house, and to be with my wife and family. The difference is that if I don’t get these things then it doesn’t matter. ~ Chime Rinpoche
• Whoever is wondering what will happen next must wonder what happened? ~ Unknown
• The best in any field share: attention to detail, a commitment to perfection they will never attain, and a relentless drive. ~ Adam Grant
• 18 inches is the longest journey, from the head to the heart. It takes a lifetime to bridge those few inches. ~ Unknown.
• As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world – that is the myth of the atomic age – as in being able to remake ourselves. ? ~ Mahatma Gandhi
• I’ll tell you what hermits realize. If you go off into a far, far forest and get very quiet, you’ll come to understand that you’re connected with everything. ~ Alan Watts
• Nobody reaches enlightenment or internal happiness or does serious internal work in group settings. ~ Naval Ravikant
• Eventually you’re burdened by what you’re willing to tolerate. ~ Unknown
• Knowing others is intelligence
  Knowing yourself is true wisdom
  Mastering others is strength
  Mastering yourself is true power. ~ Lao Tzu.
• You have no need to look beyond yourself, what you seek is within you, if only you reflect. ~ Ali Ibn Abi Talib
• Tradition becomes our security, and when the mind is secure it is in decay. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti
• The only Zen you can find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there. ~ Robert M. Pirsig
• Whenever you find yourself on the side of majority, it is time to pause and reflect. ~ Mark Twain
• Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. ~ Victor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
• If you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be. ~ Maya Angelou
• I think I’m on a quest to assemble and gather information, and satisfy my own curiosity and see as much of the world as possible and also try to give some of that back to others. So I think it’s somewhat of a selfish mission, has some altruistic byproducts but I enjoy the really selfish part of it of just learning things. ~ On Life’s Mission By Tyler Cowen
• My name is someone and anyone. ~ Jorge Luis Borges
• I was lying in bed one night and I thought ‘I’ll just quit—to hell with it.’ And another little voice inside me said, ‘don’t quit—save that tiny little ember of spark.’ And never give them that spark because as long as you have that spark, You can start the greatest fire again. ~ Charles Bukowski
• And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
• Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible in us be found. ~ Pema Chödrön
• Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward. ~ Leonardo da Vinci
• I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. ~ Maya Angelou
• What is the best way to spend 1 hour: take a nap:
  What is the best way to spend 1 day: go for a hike
  What is the best way to spend 1 month: vacation, honeymoon: sharing the journey
  What is the best way to spend 1 year: inherit a fortune
  What is the best way to spend lifetime: help others, know thyself.
  ~ Chinese proverb
• Freedom from noise and goal directed tasks, it appears, unites the quiet without and within, allowing our conscious workspace to do its thing, to weave ourselves into the world, to discover where we fit in. That’s the power of silence. ~ Journalist Daniel A. Gross (2014)

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It’s no accident, I think, that tennis uses the language of life. Advantage, service, fault, break, love, the basic elements of tennis are those of everyday existence, because every match is a life in miniature. Even the structure of tennis, the way the pieces fit inside one another like Russian nesting dolls, mimics the structure of our days. Points become games become sets become tournaments, and it’s all so tightly connected that any point can become the turning point. It reminds me of the way seconds become minutes become hours, and any hour can be our finest. Or darkest. It’s our choice. But if tennis is life, then what follows tennis must be the unknowable void. The thought makes me cold.  ~ Andre Agassi

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On Now:

• We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty. ~ Maya Angelou
• You can see and hear with your eyes and ears, but you can’t experience anything without the presence of mind. ~ Swami Vivekananda
• You either walk inside your story and own it or you stand outside your story and hustle for your worthiness. ~ Brene Brown
• Water the roots, not fruits. ~ Sant Kabir
• Do it alone. Do it broke. Do it tired. Do it scared. Just do it! ~ Unknown
• Start by doing what is necessary. Show up and then do what is possible, then you will find yourself doing the impossible. ~ St. Francis of Assisi
• We have, in my view, created a society in which people find it harder and harder to show one another basic affection. In place of the sense of community and belonging, which we find such a reassuring feature of less wealthy (and generally rural) societies, we find a high degree of loneliness and alienation. Despite the fact that millions live in close proximity to one another, it seems that many people, especially among the old, have no one to talk to but their pets. Modern industrial society often strikes me as being like a huge self-propelled machine. Instead of human beings in charge, each individual is a tiny, insignificant component with no choice but to move when the machine moves. ~ The Dalai Lama, Ethics For The Millennium
• It’s always Now. ~ Eckhart Tolle
• When I let go of what I am I become what I might be. – Lao Tzu.
• The truth of the matter is I will never feel like doing the things that are tough or difficult or uncertain or scary or new, so I need to stop waiting until I feel like it. ~ Mel Robbins
• Carry a portable paradise with you at all times. ~ Paramahamsa Yogananda

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On Productivity:

Read more thoughts HERE.

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On Time:

• Turning pro changes what time we go to bed and what time we get up. It changes how we organize our day. It changes what we read and what we feed our bodies. The amateur tweets, the pro works. ~ Steven Pressfield, Turning Pro
• Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. ~ Susan Ertz
• Slow down and enjoy life. It’s not only the scenery you miss by going too fast — you also miss the sense of where you are going and why. ~ Eddie Cantor
• Adopt the pace of nature, her secret is patience. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Things which matter most should never be at the mercy of things which matter least. ~ Johann von Goethe, German poet
• And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair. ~ Kahlil Gibran
• To be completely cured of newspapers, spend a year reading the previous week’s newspapers. ~ Nassim Taleb
• If you’re not careful you can follow your passion right into poverty. ~ Srini Rao
• Take extreme ownership. ~ Ex-Navy Seal Jocko Willink
• Freelancers! Know your mission. Before you quit your job. ~ Read On The Internet

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On Gratitude:

• If you look at what you have in life, you’ll always have more. If you look at what you don’t have in life, you’ll never have enough. ~ Oprah Winfrey
• The simplicity of the mind is shown in how you experience gratitude. ~ Acharya Vivekji
• Man’s chief delusion is his conviction that there are causes other than his own state of consciousness. ~ Neville Goddard In The Power Of Awareness
• Could fulfillment ever be felt as deeply as loss? Love must reside in the gap between desire and fulfillment and in the LACK! Not in the contentment. ~ Kiran Desai
• Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it. ~ Helen Keller
• A key doesn’t matter until it doesn’t work. We only look at things closely when they don’t work. – Unknown
• Be the one who nurtures and builds. Be the one who has an understanding and forgiving heart. Be the one who looks for the best in people. Leave people better than you found them. ~ Marvin J. Ashton
• Dead people receive more flowers than the living ones because regret is stronger than gratitude. ~ Anne Frank

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On Parenting:

• Go home and love your family. ~ Mother Theresa
• Teach children how to shorten the refractory period of their emotional reactions. ~ Dr. Joe Dispenza
• When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” ~ Fred Rogers
• Mothers who know, do less. They allow less media in their homes, less distraction, less activity that draws their children away from their home. They spend more time with their children; more time eating together, more time working together, more time reading together, more time talking, laughing, singing, and exemplifying. These mothers choose carefully and do not try to choose it all. ~ Julie Beck
• “When you come to one of the many moments in life when you must give an account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been, and done, and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man’s days with a sated joy, a joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that does not hunger for more and more, but rests, satisfied. In this time, right now, that is an enormous thing.” ~ Paul Kalanithi To His Daughter In His Stanford Essay
• What good has bringing up the kids done. I have been the mom who did not introduce him to pot or her groovy boyfriend. For 20 years, signing permission slips, planning elaborate Easter egg hunts, making sure my boys had sneakers to wear. Even forgetting that I don’t have anything for his dinner ready for my husband. Trips to the park, movies, dairy farms and museums. ~ Unknown
• It’s not only children who grow. Parents do too. As much as we watch to see what our children do with their lives, they are watching us to see what we do with ours. I can’t tell my children to reach for the sun. All I can do is reach for it, myself. ~ Joyce Maynard
• Until the core maternal relationship is resolved, most men are doomed to repeat the dysfunctional childhood patterns. ~ The Show Two And Half Men
• The goal of parenting should be to raise children with a healthy self-image and self-esteem, ingredients vital to success in school and life. That means accepting children the way they are born. ~ Jane E. Brody

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On Empathy:

• Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around. ~ Leo Buscaglia
• “How do 1 see the big picture and hold the world’s pain, and at the same time see all of the bright edges of joy? I think that’s at the center of my question.” ~ Poet Ada Limón
• All of our humanity is dependent upon recognizing the humanity in others. ~ Archbishop Desmond Tutu
• When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” ~ Fred Rogers
• Life is an adventure in forgiveness. ~ Norman Cousins
• People don’t care about how much you know until they know how much you care. ~ Theodore Roosevelt
• Empathy is created when we imagine ourselves in someone else’s shoes. It doesn’t mean we have to end up in the same place. ~ Aspen Baker
• I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. ~ Maya Angelou
• Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. ~ Plato
• The truth about rage is that it only dissolves when it is really heard and understood, without reservation. ~ Carl Rogers

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On Technology:

• This is a common refrain about social media: that they make people behave worse than they do in “real life”. On Twitter, I snark. On Facebook, I preen. On Instagram, I pose. On Snapchat, I goof. The internet and social media don’t create new personalities; they allow people to express sides of themselves that social norms discourage in the “real world”. Preener, snarker, poser, goof: they’re all real, and they’re all me. ~ Derek Thompson
• I am not inspired by helping you find Chinese food at 2am in Dallas, or swipe right to get laid. I want to use tech and data to make the world a better place. ~ Nancy Lublin
• The central event of the twentieth century is the overthrow of matter. In technology, economics, and the politics of nations, wealth in the form of physical resources is steadily declining in value and significance. The powers of mind are everywhere ascendant over the brute force of things. ~ George Gilder (technology thinker)

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On Change:

• If you want to awaken all of humanity, then awaken all of yourself. If you want to eliminate the suffering in the world, then eliminate all that is dark and negative in yourself. Truly, the greatest gift you have to give is that of your own self-transformation. ~ Lao Tzu
• Glaciers are trying to tell us something. ~ Erin Pettit
• We cannot train women and forget about the men. We should train men to know the potential of women. ~ Sakena Yacoobi
• “It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built up upon a renunciation of
  instinct.” ~ Sigmund Freud In His Book, Civilization And Its Discontents
• You become old when you refuse to change your habits. ~ Yogananda Parahamsa
• Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself. ~ John Dewey

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Words That Changed This Life..

Read more HERE.

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Namasté Life: Words I Wish Someone Had Said To Me Much Earlier

Read more HERE.

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Questions, just ask!

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