A humble mindset has significant effects on the cognitive, interpersonal, and decision making skills. Humble people are better learners and problem solvers … Humility is also the only effective antidote to narcissism.*
Anna Katharina Schaffner

Becoming psychologically flexible is key to personal transformation, not overattaching to your current identity or perspectives. Becoming insatiably committed to a future purpose and embracing emotions rather than avoiding them is how radical change occurs.**
Ben Hardy

Here I am,
Banging on about humility again –
It really is an attribute that meets many needs:
Feeling bad about self – humility,
Worried what others think about you – humility,
Needing to see more around you – humility,
Wanting to learn more – humility
Be open to more ideas – humility,
See new possibilities – humility,
Experience more awe and wonder – humility,
Connect more with people – humility,
Be willing to experiment and try different things – humility,
Wanting to change self and direction – humility,
The power to keep going – humility …
Free and available to all to develop.

*Anna Katharina Schaffner’s The Art of Self Improvement;
**Ben Hardy’s Personality Isn’t Permanent.

Listen to what your life calls you to do.*
Otto Scharmer

*Otto Scharmer’s Theory U.

We have a choice whether we wish to continue with evolution on this planet or not. I vote “yes.”*
Keith Haring

People evolve before organisations do.**

The possibility of a human being
evolving across their lifetime is a
staggering notion, and we have far more
agency towards this than we imagine;
I’m not thinking of what we might simply do that
looks different, but how
we lock the important changes into our DNA,
And I cannot think of better places to begin than
humility – which is to know and respect our Self and others
more deeply, then
gratitude – to notice and be grateful for all that
fills and touches our lives, and
faithfulness – to daily find new ways of expressing
who we are and what we have.

*Keith Haring’s Keith Haring Journals;
**Source lost but it could be gapingvoid’s blog or Seth Godin.

Often, without knowing it, we are waiting for a new idea to come along and cut us free from our entanglement.*
John O’Donohue

Prime is the time we establish ourselves in the world on individual, equal terms. Once we have contact again with an essence and a sense of accomplishment, then we can offer ourselves to others for conversation in a new way.**
David Whyte

We are not plants or some
higher form of animal intelligence,
Blame consciousness but life is more
complex for us;
We have to find different ways of dealing with
reality, and have often found this in
ideas and imagination, so,
When we feel
trapped
dead-ended
pointless
hopeless
restricted
dark-minded
repressed
oppressed
clueless
directionless,
Here are five of the best areas for exploration – these from medieval times:
Being as the deepest reality of all things,
The Oneness of all things in unity despite all difference,
The True found in reality and experience,
The Good as the soul of the world, and the
Beautiful as human inspiration and passion.*

In the morning, in my prime time, the things
I’m reading often offer up many of these in thoughts and
experiences and possibilities,
Disentangling me from most things that
hold me fast.

*John O’Donohue’s Divine Beauty;
**David Whyte’s Crossing the Unknown Sea.

I have found that perhaps the greatest gift you can give another human being is the gift of being understood.*
Erwin McManus

Seeing is a form of pure being, unlike watching or looking at. Seeing is why we’re here.**
Anne Lamott

Perhaps understanding others is
our best practice for one day
understanding ourselves.

*Erwin McManus’ The Genius of Jesus;
**Anne Lamott’s Dusk Night Dawn.

Whatever pain you can’t get rid of, make it your creative offering … It’s not that pain equals art. It’s that creativity has the power to look pain in the eye, and to decide to turn it into something better.*
Susan Cain

That’s the process of evolution. An evaluation criteria for determining whether to convert input to output, I think the initial values that the brain is equipped with are pain and discomfort.**
Ryunosuke Koike

We wish there were no pain,
But it’s always been an important element when it came to
life or death, or at least between
stick or twist,
Being awakened to the power of our imagination to face the
pressure of reality, somehow alchemising
transcendence;
It’s likely that we’re here
doing something we’re pretty good at because of pain
rather than comfort.

*Susan Cain’s Bittersweet;
**Ryunosuke Koike’s The practice of Not Thinking.

Being present demands all of us.  It’s not nothing.  It may be the hardest thing in the world.*
Ryan Holiday

*Ryan Holiday’s Stillness is the Key.

The idea is simple. You have a purpose so big and inspiring it transforms your entire life.
Ben Hardy

An overnight success almost never is. Might as well plan for the journey.**
Seth Godin

Of course, you may have planned a trip
rather than a journey,
Or a jaunt, an outing, an excursion, or even a junket;
However, the longer the travel,
The greater the variety of sceneries, topographies, terrains and
perspectives, and the greater the possibility of
change, and even transformation, a re-connecting with
the wild without and the wild within:
meaning has to be located outside ourselves –
discovered in the world rather than our own psyches.^

*Ben Hardy’s Personality Isn’t Permanent;
Seth Godin’s blog: All at once and quite suddenly;
^Anna Katharina Schaffner’s The Art of Self Improvement.

A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.*
Joseph Campbell

Fear is self-focused. Day-to-day our fear is about us … And generosity is about others. “How can I help?”**
Seth Godin

The hero’s journey begins
in humility, which is to know oneself and
to recognise others –
The truth of you and the truth of me;
Erich Fromm would perhaps say that
we are thus brought into the presence and
promulgation of beauty:
Here lies the connection between beauty and truth.
Beauty is not the opposite of the “ugly,” but of
the “false”;
it is the sensory statement of the suchness of a thing
or a person.^

Suchness is about being oneself, which
also turns out to be one of the most
difficult things
we’ll ever do –
So many forces pulling us from
without and within:
The great law of life is: be yourself.
Though the axiom sounds simple, it is often the
most difficult task. To be yourself, you have to
learn how to become who you were dreamed to be.
Each person has a unique destiny.^^

It is difficult because to be ourselves
we must not only recognise but
empathise with others, so that
our deepest joys can meet their deepest need,
And vice versa –
The hero, more than anyone, knows that
they are not super-human.

To have a shot at this, there is great benefit in
beginning the day alone; I stretch David Whyte’s words to
cover more than our paid work, to describe our
greater contribution, something he names
Prime:
Prime is the time we establish
ourselves in the world on
Individual, equal terms.
Once we have contact again
with an essence and a sense of
accomplishment, then we can offer ourselves
to others for conversation in a new way.*^

*Anna Katharina Schaffner’s The Art of Self Improvement;
**Seth Godin’s blog: Generosity and fear;
^Erich Fromm’s The Revolution of Hope;
^^John O’Donohue’s Benedictus;
*^David Whyte’s Crossing the Unknown Sea.

I love that word treasure. What if we saw ourselves that way? As worthy of treasuring?*
Sam Radford

This is your mistake, which means there’s something valuable in it, something that can teach you about yourself.**
William Seighart

Anne Lamott lists three conditions
toxic to the soul:
Perfectionism,
Contempt for self,
Wanting to be right and better than^ –
A fourth, and a result of this trio, is to perhaps
look away from the messes and mistakes we make,
Fearful of what we may find:
With the mistake your life goes in reverse.
Now you can see exactly what you did
Wrong yesterday and wrong the day before
And each mistake leads back to something worse^^.

Lamott is always disarming in her personal honesty,
Finding a way to tread the healing side of the
self-compassion/self-destructive line,
Helping us to learn how to follow because
it is likely that we, too, are ailed by
at least one of these injurious conditions, finding
at least three soul-skills we are capable of:
Curiosity is one way that we know
our souls are functioning.
So is deep goodness.
So is presence.^

Curiosity,
Goodness,
Presence:
We can do these.

*Sam Radford’s blog: Guard the good treasure entrusted to you;
**William Seighart’s The Poetry Pharmacy;
^Anne Lamott’s Dusk Night Dawn;
^^From James Fenton‘s The Mistake, William Seighart’s The Poetry Pharmacy.