Kennedy fried chicken mmm mmm good.
A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
— Albert Einstein (via reluctantbuddha) (via rahmin)
I enjoyed this.
A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
— Albert Einstein (via reluctantbuddha) (via rahmin)
I enjoyed this.
you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next timeHe goes on to talk about how when he first started in the VC business, he was so afraid of failure that he worked overly hard to prevent any failures. But failures were unavoidable in the VC business in 2001 - 2003, and during that time Fred and his firm had a lot of them. He doesn't hide from those failures and he doesn't deny them, he embraces them.
I think embracing failure is one of the things that makes this country such a great place to do business in. In many parts of the world, if you fail once, you are done. People won't touch you with a ten foot pole. But here in the US, it's almost a badge of honor. And our President explains why.
We've of course heard this all before. I think most people if you asked them would tell you that they embrace failure and its lessons, but I think what people say and what they feel are very different here. We all have this fear.
With that said, I do feel so much differently about failure now than I did even a few years ago. When I look back at my "careerography," which was written right before I moved to NYC at the end of 2006, my strong fear of failure and my equally strong fear of other's perceptions of my failures are very evident. I guess for me the worst part of failing was not so much of what might go wrong, but more so of what others might think of me when things go wrong. I do feel different now. That's not to say I'm not afraid to fail, I still feel that fear. But I am no longer afraid to openly discuss my failures...in fact as Fred says, I wear them like badges of courage.
Everyone has failures. What distinguishes us is how we deal with them.
But, wait. Should it be breaking news that a single person can’t juggle knives and explain quantum physics while polishing off an artichoke? Breaking news and a shock to the researchers themselves, as it turns out. Originally, the team of researchers, whose findings are published in the Aug. 24 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, were trying to find out what unusual cognitive gifts multitaskers possessed that made them so successful at multitasking. They’re still looking. “Multitaskers were just lousy at everything,” said Clifford I. Nass, a professor of communication at Stanford and one of the study’s investigators. “It was a complete and total shock to me.” Initially suspecting that multitaskers possessed some rare and enviable qualities that helped them process simultaneous channels of information, Professor Nass had been “in awe of them,” he said, acknowledging that he himself is “dreadful” at multitasking. “I was sure they had some secret ability. But it turns out that high multitaskers are suckers for irrelevancy.”I'll be the first to admit I have my moments where I'm in the middle of 5 things all at the same time. I'll also admit that I'm usually on the computer doing something while on a phone call (checking email, looking things up, etc), and I KNOW that I'm not doing either task (talking on the phone or reading on the internet or email) particularly well, yet I can't help myself. I've been more aware of my multitasking over the last few months, making an effort to only have one thing in front of me at a time, but I have to say it is REALLY hard. Multitasking is a really hard habit to break. I wonder if that in a world where multitasking is supported, encouraged, heck even forced, we're putting ourselves in a position to have to work more in order to make up for mediocrity.
